Belated Happy New Year!

I'm only a week late... I hope everybody is having a great start to the New Year. From watching the weather lately it looks like it’s kind of tough in the Eastern half of the country. We are supposed to get some of the effects of the cold here but at this point it has not arrived yet, I am thankful for that.

I took some extra time off from work to unwind knowing that the start of the new year will be hectic. Thinking that I would be able to relax and do a few things for fun didn’t always work out. I got to replace the automatic garage door opener and help a plumber dig out our water line from the street to the house since the 52 year old galvanized water line decided to rupture a couple days ago. It’s a good thing I remembered how to run a shovel. The plumber’s helpers showed up when we had about 1’ of trench left to dig. I couldn’t have planned that timing any better myself. As of this morning we have running water back in the house. The first thing I did was jump in the shower. I don’t know how those pioneers did without running water. No doubt they were a tougher, smellier group than us!

I did have time to enjoy the birds in our back yard while having the time off. We have 6 bird feeders going in the back. I saw several different birds that I have not seen in the yard before; gold finches, a mountain chickadee and either a sharp-shinned hawk or Coopers hawk. This is in addition to all the doves, robins, sparrows, finches, hairy woodpeckers, juncos, scrub jays, towhees and flickers. I did get a few good photos of some of them. I was surprised at the hawk. We live I the middle of the city and never expected to see a hawk. When I go in the back yard I usually scare the doves and hear them taking off in a frenzy. One time I heard the doves take off even faster like there was something after them, and yes I saw the hawk sitting on the power line above the bird feeders.

I was also successful in finding a nifty kitty toy for Babee. It is a refillable catnip field mouse, by Kong. She’s still playing with it! She usually quits playing with her toys even sooner than kids wear out the batteries on their own toys. Occasionally I have to hunt around the house to find the mouse because Babee seems to lose it but once it makes its appearance she starts playing with it again.

I have been busy with needle felting and have included a couple of photos of my latest bears. They are 4” and 6” tall when standing.

I wish everyone a healthy and happy 2010

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Show time

I did the Albuquerque Doll and Bear show on Saturday. It went quite well, I adopted out two of my mohair teddy bears and two of my needle felted pieces; Hootie the owl, and my very small 2 ½” cat. I’ve included a few photos from the show.

Since this is a doll, accent on doll, and bear show most of the vendors are selling dolls and doll related items. There were only four bear artists, out of the approximate 40 spaces total. All the bear people were put together so we could sit and talk about the doll people :-)

It seems that there still is money around for those people that have such strong urges to add to their collection(s). I spoke with the promoters and they said the attendance was up over 25% over last year’s show. I don’t know if 25% more money was spent but we were busy most of the time with browsers.

We, the bear people, were kind of creeped out by some of the dolls that were there. Some of them looked exactly like newborn babies. If I didn’t seem them unpacked from the boxes and placed in baskets on the display tables I would have bet they were the real thing. We saw several customers walking through the show carrying these ‘infants’ around as though they were real.

I tend to think that bear people are a little closer to normal, unbiased opinion :-)

Since I had a successful show I get to go back and make more bears and needle felted pieces. My next showing will be at the ToonaRoona Holiday Open House on Saturday December 12, from 10AM – 3PM. Go to www.ToonaRoona.com for more information. It’s the place to go if you collect dolls and Mark’s Bears.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Groucho

Meet Groucho, my latest needle felted creation. He’s 3 ½” long from nose to rump and 2” tall at the shoulder. By looking at his face you can see why I named him Groucho. He has a full wire armature so all four legs, his tail and his head can be posed. I was starting with a cat in mind but when he showed up he looked more like a dog.

I’m getting quite a family of animals together for the Doll and Bear show on the 14th. A few bears, cats, a dog an owl and a few other critters.

I also had a wisdom tooth pulled today. I won’t include a photo of the tooth. The painful part was getting the shots to numb the area. I felt the tooth came out fairly easy, at least in my estimation. I did get a bit queasy as my head was being pulled back and forth from one side to the other as he was working on it. It wasn’t the actual extraction that made me queasy, it was thinking about what he was doing. I made sure to keep my eyes closed so I didn’t see tools he was using to remove the tooth. After seeing the tooth I’m surprised it came out so easy.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Owl sighting!

Yes, believe it or not there was an owl sighting in my back yard. He is so tame I could go right up to him and take his photo! :-)

This is my latest needle felted creation. He’s 6 ½” tall with wires in his feet so the claws can be bent around different objects. It worked quite well in my maple tree. Now I plan on going out into the mountains to find a piece of wood to have him cling to for the show next month. I basically copied the idea from “Animal Felt” by Birgitte Krag Hansen a Danish needle felter.

On to my next project.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Merry Christmas

Ha, I thought I’d get it in; I’m not the first, I was up at Lowe’s last week and saw the Christmas decorations already, with people looking! Haven’t even made it to Halloween and the Christmas stuff is up.

I opened with that line because as you can see I finished another bear, this time a polar bear with his Santa hat. I swore to myself I would not go to dressing my bears although putting a hat on him isn’t really dressing him. He’s 4” tall, 5 ½” with the hat.

I felted this cat a few weeks ago, I don’t remember when though. I made sure to look through my other posts to make sure I didn’t post him already and forgot that too! That would be a real senior moment, or two. He’s 2 ½” long, 3 ½” with his tail.

I also got my confirmation package for ‘The Albuquerque Doll and Bear Show’ for Saturday November 14. Each of my newly felted animals will be making their debut at the show. They may also be coming to work for a few weeks to guard my desk from terrorists! ;-)

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

It felt good

I finally got back to needle felting after my trip planning, travelling, blog writing and slide show producing. I don’t remember working so hard after going on a trip before.

I’ve also been surfing the web way too much lately, so I decided to start with a needle felting project and as I got further along creating I really enjoyed it more and more. I had lots of bear photos from my trip so I had good models to work from. I haven’t decided on a name yet. We’ve named all my mohair bears in the past so I guess I will keep up the tradition. He’s 7” long from tail to nose and stands about 4” tall. He’s modeling with the spool of thread for scale.

I have sent a check off for exhibiting in the next doll and bear show here in Albuquerque in November so I think I will be making needle felted animals for a bit to see how they do at the show.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Final day

Today is my last day on Vancouver Island. I had a great time and I’m hoping to return some day to see some of these sights again as well as many others.

I had my final breakfast at Captain Hardy’s restaurant. I ordered 2 pancakes which turned out to be the size of the plate and very thick. Since I knew I would be walking a lot I made sure to finish all of my breakfast.

The flight to Vancouver was uneventful, the plane was full the flight attendant was busy again with passing out snacks, drinks and candy just like on the way up to Port Hardy.

Once I Vancouver I caught a taxi to the Buchan Hotel close to Stanley Park, Vancouver’s version of Central Park in New York. From the outside the hotel looks like an apartment building. It has old wood flooring in the hallways and the rooms are quite small but comfortable. I wasn’t there for the hotel so basic hotel run locally was just fine for me. It turned out the hotel is only a block away from the park. I followed the seawall walk around the perimeter of the park. It was quite busy because it was a Sunday; there were walkers, bikers and skaters moving constantly. All in all I walked about 8 miles to/from and around the park.

That evening I walked a half block to Denman street where I had my choice of restaurants, coffee shops, galleries and almost anything you can think of. After dinner at one of the Greek restaurants I walked several blocks to English Bay and caught the sunset. The park was packed with many people of different nationalities.

Vancouver seems to be a special place. There are over 2.2 million people that live there. I visited only a small part of the city but on the rides to and from the airport the city was very clean. People seem to take pride in their city and clean up after themselves. Even at the parks there was little to no litter.

The next day I made the trip back home to NM. I had a great time on this vacation and I’m starting to think about my next one. My only hope is that Sue will be able to get away with me.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my trip. I really enjoyed writing about it.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Grizzly bear tour

Today I go on my grizzly bear trip. Besides the kayaking trip this is the big day trip I have been looking forward to.

The boat leaves between 6:45 and 7:00 from Telegraph Cove, 45 – 60 minutes from Port Hardy. This means that I get up around 445 to prepare, eat and drive to Telegraph Cove. I’m told there may be bears along the road so I had better drive slowly. How ironic would it be to miss my grizzly tour because of some black bears along the road. Fortunately I had planned ahead by stopping at one of the grocery stores the day before picking up something to eat and drink; there are no shops along the way for a hot chocolate and a muffin, no coffee for me.

I arrived at 6:35 along with 3 others so we took off to pick up some others along the way and would catch up with the rest of the group at the pier where we stage into flat bottom boats to go up the estuary. Once again it was mostly cloudy, no rain but windy later in the afternoon.

We rode for two hours before we arrived at the staging area. There were about 24 of us total so we split up into 2 boats for the trip up the river. The boats have one long bench along the length with a back in the center so we all faced to the sides of the boat as we travelled. We were constantly standing and sitting trying to get a better view of the wildlife, bears in particular. In all there were three boats that rotated through the river because there really isn’t room for all three to go in at once.

There are a couple of rules for those going on this trip; No perfume, aftershave or anything strong smelling. And no food!

We made the first trip in; saw bear and wolf tracks, a half eaten salmon, (I won’t show the photo), lots of bald eagles, mergansers (a type of duck), and deer, but no bears “Not to worry” said Lindsey, “I’ve never been skunked yet”. I immediately asked him how long he had been doing this “Three years”. I felt a little better but still was not convinced.

On our second trip in we went down one of the side channels of the river. As we went further up the channel it kept closing in with lots of grasses all around. Lindsey jumped out and started pulling us through the channel and I had this vision of the African Queen going through my head. I mentioned this to one of the other passengers and she had to agree, but we weren’t laughing about it. I’m happy to report we did make it back out without losing anyone. As we were going back to the main channel we had the option of either breaking for lunch or going back up the river for another look. We all agreed we can eat anytime so let’s go look some more. Well there was nothing to be seen this time either…… But on the way out we saw something moving along the shore just below the trees. It was a bear. Not only a bear, it was a grizzly mom with her cub! A silent cheer went up from all of us. We were told not to make any noise when bears were present because the sound may cause them to go back from where they came. At first we were rather far from them, but we were able to get closer and Lindsey jumped out of the boat in waist deep water to pull us a bit closer and hold us there. I think we ended up being less than 200’ from them.

They were interested in eating; they ate the grasses along the shore and used their paws to rake the crabapples off the trees. Their paws were huge! We were all just clicking away with our still and video cameras. Once in a while I put down my camera to look through my binoculars. The view through the binoculars was tremendous; it put them up close and personal. After they ate for a while they sat down and played with the cub jumping up on to mom and batting her and mom taking it and occasionally batting back. They wandered down the shore a little more and found more to eat, looked around and walked back into the woods. I think they were out there for over 30 minutes from the time we first saw them before they disappeared back into the woods. It was really moving seeing the mom and her cub.

From there we went back to the staging area for lunch. We were all talking about the sighting amongst ourselves; there were a lot of smiles that afternoon! We were advised to start heading back because of the gale force winds coming our way and we were going right into them. This turned out to be an E-ticket ride. The waves were pounding the boat the entire time we were going back; our two hour trip in the morning turned out to be closer to a three hour trip on the way back. I was starting to get worried about my arrival because I had a 700 PM meeting with the kayak guides in Port Hardy. This meeting is to find out what to do, what to pack, where to pack our personal stuff and how to pack our personal stuff. We arrived at the port at 5:15 I shot a photo or two and drove like mad to Port Hardy. On my way to make the 7:00 meeting I had to; get gas for the rental car, return the rental car and find a taxi to get back to town. I arrived at the hotel at 6:45, enough time to clean up and change my clothes.

After our meeting where we all introduced ourselves and learned the packing routine several of us met at one of the bars for dinner. After dinner we returned to our rooms to pack, repack and repack again then to bed. Tomorrow we kayak.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Port Hardy/San Josef Bay

I didn’t have anything planned for this day. While on yesterday’s orca trip I spoke with a few people to see what they were doing. No real leads there. I had decided to walk the estuary trail in Port Hardy, it’s not very long but the possibilities abound of seeing all sorts of wildlife.

I got up early and took off on the Quatse River trail. The variety of birds is amazing, all sorts of sea birds, land birds and raptors. I saw several juvenile bald eagles just sunning themselves and watching the area for food no doubt. Once you get to the edge of town the trees show up like a wall. If you go off the trail the moss becomes a thick blanket on the ground. There’s no way you can go by the wives’ tale that moss grows on the north side of the tree, they are covered with moss all the way around.

I stopped at the local visitor’s center for an idea or two for the day and was directed to Cape Scott Provincial Park, San Josef Bay in particular. It was a 70km drive, ~45 miles, on gravel roads put in place for/by the loggers. Even though it was Saturday there were still a few full logging trucks you wanted to stay away from. It took 1 ½ hours to do the 45 miles as you only averaged 30 mph. That’s where metric is good, I was doing 50 km/hr so I didn’t feel like I was going so slowly.

All along the way was a patchwork of forest. Every few miles there were signs saying when the area was logged and reforested. Only once or twice on this drive did I see a recently logged area. I couldn’t believe the devastation! I have never been in a war zone, I’ve only seen them in news clips. This looked like a war zone; tree stumps ripped out of the ground, limbs scattered in every direction with just small shrubs and grasses still growing. It hurt to look at it. It made me think of the car wreck on the side of the road, you don’t want to look but you look anyhow. Fortunately from looking at the other areas that had been previously harvested the logging companies realize that they have to ‘reforest’ to keep forests for future harvests.

Once I got to the end of the road, which got narrower as I was going along, I had another 1.5 mile hike to San Josef Bay. It was through more of the forest. The smells of the forest and mosses are very rich. Once on the beach I smelled the sea. The beach stretched for over a mile. Since it’s a hike to get there and the beach is so huge it seems empty. I saw 3 – 4 campers on the edge of the beach tucked along the forest. There were also a couple dozen day tourists like me just taking in the scene. From here the next piece of land you could see is across the Pacific Ocean about 4,000 miles away.

There are a number of sea stacks along the beach. They are the remnants of the erosion of the beach. The sand and soft rock eroded from the pounding surf and these stacks remained. There is all kinds of life on the stacks; from grasses and shrubs to full grown trees. In the low spots on the stacks are tidal pools with anemones and other sea life. When I was there at a low point in the tide these pools were about 8’ above the surf.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

The start of my trip/orcas

I posted this trip in an unusual order at first thinking I would only write about the kayaking. As I got into writing I decided to include all my trip. Read on...

This was the first real day of my trip. Yesterday I travelled from NM to Port Hardy, British Columbia through Denver and Vancouver. It’s been a while since I’ve travelled by air. United is down to a giving out a cup of something to drink. On the flight to Port Hardy from Vancouver they passed out snacks, juice and an after snack candy. This was on a small plane on a 1 hour flight.

After checking in at the hotel I walked along the waterfront and Main Street. Port Hardy is a town of about 5,000 mostly working class people, fishing, mining, logging and a bit of tourism. Any time one goes to a destination like this in the states it seems there are dozens of tourist shops selling all the usual tourist stuff, not here, there’s a shop or two otherwise the usual hardware, grocery, sporting goods stores and gas stations. Not even a McDonald’s, certainly not missed by me!

I quickly noticed the difference between the tourists and the locals. Since it was only about 65 outside the tourists were wearing the coats or sweaters and the locals were wearing T-shirts and shorts. I was one of the fleece jacket tourists. While walking along the shore line I started hearing bald eagles calling in the distance, the first time I’ve heard that in a long time. Berries seem to be growing everywhere; black, red and thimble, which is a very small version of a red raspberry. I tried one and quickly decided I prefer my blackberries. There is the scent of pine everywhere; if the pine scent isn’t there the smell of the ocean has taken its place.

I planned on a couple days of day tours then my kayaking trip, then an afternoon in Vancouver as the start of my trip back home, with the following day travelling the rest of the way.

I started with an orca trip with Mackay Whale Watching out of Port McNeill, about a 30 minute drive South of Port Hardy. My usual ‘don’t want to be there late’ personality showed up again, I got there 45 minutes early. I saw a lot of the town in about 30 minutes. Living in the big city spoils a person with all kinds of places to go to to waste time and money. Looking back on it now I realize that I was still wound up from my usual; getting up, going to work …. You know the routine. I did manage to slow down within the next day but it did take time.

Mackay’s has been around for a long time, they were one of the first companies to have orca tours. They have helped with guiding the legislation on how tourists are to behave around orcas. They are very knowledgeable about orcas and the local sea life in general.

The boat was full of tourists from many different places; the US, Canada, England, Holland and Germany. I was amazed at all the European tourists coming to this remote part of the world. You have to really want to come here because there is no direct way to get here.

The day started out nice and clear but it quickly turned cloudy and stayed that way for a good portion of the day. All along the way we saw and heard bald eagles. After an hour or so of travelling we had our first sighting, a pod of three to four orcas along the shore. They were quite far away but we all kept snapping photos with the hope they would get closer but you shoot anyway because this may be the only sighting. Nature does not operate on a clock!

Almost everybody in the area, especially locals, call in any orca sightings on the radio so if there are any orcas they probably have been seen and it has been passed along on the radio. It certainly increases the chances of finding some considering the size of the area they cover.

After following the first pod for 10 minutes or so Bill took off across the Johnstone Strait to find some other orcas. Within a few minutes more orcas appeared, much closer this time. Everybody jumped up and started photographing again. Bill identified one of the orcas as Springer who had somehow gotten lost on the south end of Vancouver Island. The northern orcas and southern orcas do not associate with each other so having Springer accepted back into its north pod is significant.

The orcas were swimming up and down the channel just feeding. It was a lot of fun to see them up close; you could see the different markings which are used to identify them. After seeing several pods over the next hour or two we stopped for a lunch of soup and a roll followed by a dessert. When Nicole brought up the dessert we were too busy photographing the sea lions on the shore to stop for dessert.

On our way back to drop some of the other tourists at a remote hotel we saw a black bear wandering along the shore. She looked over at us then just proceeded to walk along the shore not paying us any mind.

The trip was great, I highly recommend it. My only disappointment is that I did not get the ultimate orca photo. It is hard work aiming your camera with a long lens to get that close-up photo on a moving boat when you are not certain when and where your orca will make its next appearance. I will have to try again.

After the orca tour was over I continued on to Telegraph Cove another 20 minutes south of Port McNeill. I toured around the tourist shops and visited Tide Rip tours where I had made reservations to go on a Grizzly bear tour. They have been seeing bears consistently so our chances are good to see a bear or two. I can’t wait.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark