Birthday dinner in the puckerbrush

Today was my sister’s (the one with the broken ribs and the two ginormous dogs) birthday.  I had made arrangments with her son to have a surprise birthday dinner party for her.  The surprise turned out to be not so much a surprise but the dinner party was still fun, once we actually got there that is.

Sis’s friend, Rosa, does not drive when it is snowing.  Since she lives in Alaska that doesn’t really leave her much of a season for any kind of road trip.  Knowing that Rosa’s presence is important to sis I agree to drive out to pick her up and then return her after dinner.  Remind me never to agree before finding out just where I am agreeing to travel to will you?!

For some the term puckerbrush brings a blank stare.  For others that are aware of it’s true meaning it causes a stare as well but not a blank one, more one of “oh piffle, fill up the tank”.  The snow is still falling but the roads are pretty clear so the drive isn’t too bad.  Until the moose crossing area.

Why the highway department puts up those silly signs will always remain a mystery.  As if the moose are only going to cross right there, right where that one particular sign is.  However, tonight, three of them decided that they would, indeed, cross right there at that sign.  I slowed, they slowed, I went faster, they went faster…we paced each other for a few hundred miles and I decided these were moose punks and they enjoyed playing chicken with cars.  Yes indeed…they were all snickering their little moosie snickers and giving signals to each other in moosie sign language.  Finally the gang leader decided that the car coming up behind me looked like more fun and off they trotted.

On and on I drove until I was virtually at the base of the mountains and there was Rosa’s house.  My initial thought was why on earth a woman that did not like to drive, let alone in the snow, would live this far out.  My second thought was how late we were going to be for our reservation time.  Have you ever tried to hurry two women that haven’t seen each other in a long time when one wants to show off the recent improvements to her home?  I think it may have been the look of panic on my face or, perhaps, the ever so slightly even evil mention of the increasing snow volume but we were finally loaded up and headed to the lodge.

We arrived at Settler’s Bay Lodge and the empty parking lot had me a bit concerned.  Had we taken that long to get there?  Turned out that the place was open, just empty…not a good sign.  We are seated, order our drinks and begin chatting and passing gifts and cards to the birthday girl.  I have to say that Settler’s Bay makes a wicked George Washington Appletini but that is where the positive feedback stops.  We all tried to laugh off the atrocious service, the undercooked and overcooked food and the king crab ‘’special”.  What made it special was that they were trying to get rid of their left over crab!  The baked potato was good but we did have to ask for butter and then hope there was enough residual heat in the potato to melt the frozen, as in rock hard, butter!

All in all we made the best of it and everyone enjoyed the evening, and hugged their goodbyes before setting off for the marathon road trip home.  Back I drove, sans moose gang, and finally made it back to sis’s house just shy of midnight.

One might think that the end to this entry would be a nice bit about crawling into bed and drifting off to sleep….did I mention that sis has birds…birds that escaped and are currently at large?

Stay tuned for the great bird round up.

 

Shoveling takes on a whole new meaning

I am in Alaska, still.  I have been here going on a month now and I am very, nay, absolutely ready to go home to Oregon where I will never have to shovel more than the odd bit of potting soil.

My sister fell, broke some ribs and didn’t bother to let me know until the day she was to be released home, how rude!  So I hop on the night flight to Anchorage, rent a car and head North.

The scene that I walked into was right out of a movie, a movie like Animal House after the food fight scene.  The dogs (2 rather large ones) and 20 plus birds had been fending for themselves for 5 days thanks to the person that had promised to take care of them never bothering to show up (does Karma mean anything to you Chet?) The upstairs was a sea of feathers, bird seed, bird poo and the remains of an overstuffed cushion that had been the object of a tug of war session between the dogs.  Did I mention they were enormous?  I still can not believe that three, count em’, three kitchen sized garbage bags filled, no, packed with fluff actually came out of one cushion!

The garage was filled with…well…shall we say, doggy debris?  The smell was horrendous and since the laundry room was in the garage I could not just close the door and hope for a localized tornado to remove the carnage.  Out came the snow shovel.  I shoveled and shoveled, surfacing for air periodically and shoveled some more.  I shoveled a path to the wood stove (remember, this IS Alaska and it IS still quite cold here) and I shoveled a path to the wood pile.  I shoveled a hole to shovel the debris into.  I then shoveled the semi frozen dirt back into said hole.  I shoveled the remains of a 25 pound bag of sugar that had been in the path of a small river, complete with snags from the wood pile, of the liquid doggy debris.  Have you any idea what happens to sugar that acts as a dam?  Stronger than concrete thats what!  Out came the ice chipper which turned out to be a huge mistake and I really can’t talk about it yet…perhaps with a bit more therapy.

Days pass and I have the place mucked out, disinfected and smelling like the great outdoors, aka pine trees.  I now venture out to replenish supplies and I begin with a 35 pound bag of dog food.  Now, mind you, I had to do some serious talking to myself to actually be the means to filling those critters up again!!!  Reason and the RSPCA prevailed and I bought the bag of food and tossed it in the back of the truck.  After a stop at the pharmacy to replenish sis’ assortment of pain pills I come out to find about a million ravens all over the truck.  They were busy shredding that bag of food and gorging themselves while simultaneously calling for every raven from every neighboring continent to come and join in the feast.

I run at the truck waving my arms and shouting “shoo, shoo”.  These are, after all, Alaska ravens so they just give me ’the look’ making sure I am well aware of the impressive size of their beaks and continue stuffing themselves.

I, too, am from Alaska and realize (after the laughter of everyone in the parking lot) that I am not in the least bit intimidating to any form of Alaskan wild life so I just get in the truck and drive.  After I hit 50 I lost all but one die hard raven who then gave up after I pulled the brake and hit the gas ploy!  Is it wrong to feel superior to one gigantic raven?

Arriving back at my sister’s house I can not get the gosh darned (yeah, I did use other words) tail gate down on the truck so I left it intending to come back later and get the shredded bag out and inside the now shoveled clean garage.

  I forgot.

Overnight it snowed.  You know, those big fat fluffy wet flakes of snow….wet being the key word.  I woke to a gorgeous site of falling flakes and was really enjoying the peaceful morning until I remembered that bag of dog food in the back of the truck.

Down I go….in my jammies, a pair of snow boots and a coat (standard Alaskan attire I assure you) to find that a 35 pound bag of dog food expands to at least double it’s size when wet.  I still can’t get the dang tail gate down and is there one stinking raven anywhere?  Even a chick a dee?  No.

Now, where did I leave that shovel?