Tag: Wildlife

  • Creepy Crawlers … Evolution or Creation?

    I have a love/hate relationship with insects. Childhood summers frequently found me chasing orange Monarchs, yellow Swallowtails, and a variety of other brightly colored butterflies through fields with my net … and … smearing calamine lotion on painful bee stings and spider bites.   Not sure why God made mosquitoes and bald-faced hornets, but I’m…

  • Heat Wave

    Our area averages 34 days/year with temperatures of 90 degrees or more. Today was the 28th day this year with 90+ temps . . . this ain’t Alaska! You know it’s HOT when you’re awakened by splashing outside the bedroom at night and see Smoky cooling off in the creek. I was gonna’ throw him…

  • Father’s Day Visitors

    Hope this Father’s Day was an extraspecial one for y’all. We were blessed with a visit from a local single Mom with her two younguns’ 😊 Be Blessed, and . . . Keep Looking Up ^ … His Best is Yet to Come!

  • Flight

    Since childhood flight has always fascinated me. Dreams of dueling it with the Red Barron in my biplane later morphed into Top Gun in my F/A-18 Super Hornet zooming through the skies blasting enemy pilots. My pilot dreams met reality in the USMC troubleshooting electronics aboard lumbering helicopters, and being awarded hearing aids for my…

  • Sanctuary

    As a child each summer was spent with my mother, siblings and grandparents at their cabin in Promised Land, PA . . . and indeed it was . . . my childhood sanctuary.  From sunup to sundown I delighted roaming its forests and streams . . . and a virtual little John Muir was born…

  • Great Smoky Mountains Road Trip

    Blazing sunshine has pushed temps to near 80, a welcome respite from what has been an unusually cold winter here the Great Smoky Mountains. Energized, my permanent senior sidekick and I decided the day was custom made for a leisurely road trip. It quickly became obvious there were a million+ other individuals who had the…

  • Feral Family Gathering

    One of the joys of living in the ‘wilds’ up on the mountain – down in the ‘holler’ – by the ‘crick’ in the Great Smokies is enjoying the impromptu, ‘Stop By Anytime’ visits from the interesting menagerie of our friendly feral neighbors. “All creatures great and small, the Lord God made them all.“ We…

  • Single Moms with Kids

    In the Last Frontier all the Alces families consists of single moms and kids while all the dads are off somewhere in a rut . . . Smile ☺️ and . . . Keep Looking Up^ . . . His Best is Yet to Come!

  • Farewell Road Trip

    Prior to jumping on a jet headed to the Greatland we and took a Great Smoky Mountain road trip to bid adieu to some locals, who graciously obliged us to pose for a few photos. Lord willing, I’ll send along some of pics of their brother Grizz and  and uncle Bullwinkle relatives after arriving. All…

  • ‘Lions’ and Lying

    The game cam recently captured this large local bobcat strolling along the path by our stream-side ‘Quiet Bench’. A persistent rumor exists that mountain lions still roam the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Mischievously curious (one of my ‘Needs Improvement’ character traits), I envisioned an opportunity for prime rumor enhancement. Stretching the truth just a…