Homestead Park

We were in Anchorage yesterday and I was going to write on that trip in my next posting. This morning, however, I had such an interesting experience with the wildlife out our back door that I decided to write on that instead. First I do want to show you what we have to look out on from our motor home. There is view over looking a river valley and beyond that are the Chugach Mountains.

The above picture was taken at 11:30 PM. Seems like the light never goes away here. I have been up at 2:30 AM and even then there is some light. It really is too bad  that we have had the summer solstice, we now are loosing 20 seconds of daylight every day! Back to my story of what I saw this morning. Mary Jo, my sister-in-law, came to our door reporting that she had been viewing eagles building a nest in a tree in the valley. I went out and by the time I saw those birds they were in the trees above the river. While I was watching them, one swooped down into the river. He seemed to be struggling there with a big fish, it certainly took him a few minutes to pull it out of the river! Maybe he had captured a king salmon which are now running. When we were in Anchorage at Ship Creek we saw those fish swimming near the top of the water. There were a lot of them, but the fishermen in the area did not seem to be reeling many in. At this time of the year they are coming in from the ocean and swimming upstream in Ship Creek. While watching the eagle wrestle with his breakfast,we saw a moose and her two babies come out of the brush.

 

If you enlarge the picture you may be able to see the moose better. I can't zoom very far with my little camera. We watched them grazing for awhile. Mama moose would look up at intervals and stare off in our direction. I don't think she could have seen us but she was certainly appearing very wary of her surroundings. All the while Mary Jo and I were standing there, a white-crowned sparrow was entertaining us with her song. Actually, she wasn't the only one singing. The whole valley in front of us was filled with songs of various birds. A sense of peace and contentment pervaded the landscape. I couldn't help but think of what Robert Browning wrote: " God's in His Heaven. All's right with the world."