This blog post has absolutly nothing to do with real estate, but was a fun August evening for me. My nine year old son, Cody, has been after me to go camping and sleep overnight in a tent. I have been agreeing to do it, but sort of “shining” him on as far when we would do it. Well, finally I ran out of excuses and we decided to do it on Friday night.
A sad ending for a moose
We hauled our sleeping bags, tent and camp chairs to a undisclosed “secret” location, roughly in south Anchorage, in a heavily wooded section off the coastal trail; That’s the coastal trail the moose and bears use, not the paved one made famous by ex-mayor Tony Knowles.
We set up our tent and spread out our sleeping bags and went for a walk. We tried to sneak up on some Sandhill
Sand Hill Cranes take flight
Cranes, but that didn’t work out so well. It seems the huge Sandhill Cranes are very wary and next to impossible to sneak up on. After we sent the cranes to flight, we stumbled upon a moose carcuss. The poor moose must have fallen through the ice this past winter and died there, or some other similar sad fate. Cody thought it stunk, but was very cool to see it.
On the way home, we walked past a hornets nest on the ground that was as big as an adult persons head. We took a couple photo’s of the hornets coming and going, seriously preparing for the coming cold weather. Bee nests must have some magnetic attraction to little boys, because the nest kept drawing Cody back in it’s direction.
A large hornets nest
Cody kept coming up with ideas to get rid of the nest and kill the hornets. I reminded Cody that bees have a mom, and we should “live and let live” and we managed to leave the hornets alone and not get stung.
We came back to our campsite and built a fire. I was in the middle of eating a hotdog I had cooked in the campfire on a stick. Cody had walked back to get something out of the tent. He backed out of the tent, and stood up. I looked at him, just as a black bear walked up the trail and stopped right behind Cody at the tent. Ten minutes ago, I had just put my camera in the tent, so I couldn’t take a photo, but a single frame could have showed Cody, the black bear and the tent all in the same frame.
I called out “Bear!” to Cody. I said “Cody, come here!” several times, but Cody seemed frozen looking at the bear. Finally he came to me, while the bear stood and looked at us. Then Cody and I started waving our arms in the air and
Father and Son camping trip
saying “Go Away, bear!” The bear took a few more steps our direction, to my concern, and then turned and ambled into the woods. We could hear the bear in the forest as he carved out a new path around our campsite.
At first I thought the bear must have smelled my hot-dog, but the more I thought about it, I think the bear was just taking a walk down the path and was surprised to see us camping so close to his path. I pondered the risk, and decided we shouldn’t call mom because she would have insisted we come home. We ate our food by the fire late into the night, without further incident.
That evening in our sleeping bags inside the tent we kept hearing sounds in the night, but still managed a good nights sleep. I thought that was a fair amount of interesting things for one “dad and son” evening! I’m sure Cody and I will remember and re-live that evening for a long, long time!
But a lot to do with living a better quality life for all of us!
