Thanksgiving Weekend (Nov. 25-28, 2010)

After 3 days of straight rain, we woke up Thursday morning to rain that eventually turned into snow. We spent Thanksgiving day with a family from our school. It was a small gathering of ten people, most of whom we already knew. We got outside on a few occasions this weekend; hiking and walking down to the beach.

On Friday at dusk we hiking through the Kenai Wildlife Refuge. Towards the end of the hike I spotted a snowshoe hare in its full white winter coat hop off deeper into the woods. We did the same hike of Saturday, this time in the afternoon. We were hoping to see more animals than the previous day. We spotted a flock of Common Redpoll birds, but that was it. Common Redpolls have a gorgeous splash of red on their chests with some dark barrings on their sides. Apparently it is not uncommon to see them in large flocks in winter.

On Sunday we found ourselves needing a hike we had not done in awhile, so we headed out to Captain Cook State Park. The wind was very brisk and the sky was extremely clear. We had once been told that you can see Denali from Captain Cook on very clear days. Well, this was a very clear day and we're pretty sure that the mountain we were looking at way off in the distance was indeed Denali. We walked along the beach with a low tide. On the way back we took the trail up through the woods. We decided to pull off at an overlook. While there we suddenly heard a bird screech. Looking up we saw a bald eagle. It was approximately 20-30 feet above us. Because the wind was so strong and the eagle was going into the wind, it was hovering. It hovered right over our heads from about a minute before taking off. When we jumped back onto the trail, I caught a glimpes of something white perching in a tree. We crept up on the mysterious creature and found two bald eagles perched next to each other. Shortly after, they took off into the sky. We also spot a cow and calf moose a few moments later. What a great day for animal sightings!