Berries and Bears

We went for a mile hike to get berries and got ran off by the musk of a bear. If you can smell them, you’re to close and need to move away from them.

So we decided to go check out our berry spot.
Berry picking spots are top secret here in Alaska. Because once someone knows they share, and then that person shares and so on.
Then it turns into the secret fishing spot that’s not to secret anymore. 😔
Then you have these woman that come out in droves with berry rakes who rape the land of everything! They have no respect for the berries, plants, animals or the land!
So I am sorry but I don’t know if I should share the exact location. It’s in Talkeetna.

So I will jump away from the tell tell indicators, unless they are seasoned Alaskan they shouldn’t know this area.
It was also raining💧
We are heading in on a trail my husband uses for hunting, he found this patch two years ago. It has been very good to us.

Along the way we found a lot of watermelon berries.

Here is a good close up and of the inside of one. You can see all the little seeds.

Up the path and around the corner we found our first sign of bear.

As we are keeping our eyes peeled for animals, we are also keeping an eye out for herbs. This is elderberry, it is poisonous when raw. People cook it down to kill off the poison and use it to treat colds and the flu. I hear it works great. Already eye balling all the berries we have seen.

We found a huge moose print in the trail. I think it’s amazing how large they get💗

Another pile of bear poop. Boy this bear really likes this trail.

We found some raspberries too! Yay!!! This is turning out to be a great scouting mission!

We are getting closer to the spot, a few more twists and turns on the trail and we will be there.
In the mean time I am keeping my self entertained with the little details I see.

This reminds me of a fairy home 🧚‍♀️🧚‍♂️
Something about this stump kept pulling me in. I ended up take like six photos of it. 🤔

Then all of a sudden on the side of the trail we seen some infected/effected plant life. They had some kind of white stuff on them, like it was a frost. We didn’t touch any of it! 🙅‍♀️

Yay! We finally made it to the fork in the road. The berries are right around the corner now!

The hubby was a few steps ahead and came back to show me “there’s no berries”...

So I walk up to our berry patch and see this beautiful sight! 😍

Oh yeah! We don’t waste any time getting to it and picking berries. I found the same patch I always gravitate towards, found my log and started to pick.

We picked for a good half hour. Then we heard a squirrel alarm, he gave it a break, then did it again. I listen to the natives of the land. I told the hubby somethings up. He’s all “it’s because of us, because we are here”. Then two more squirrels alarm. I’m starting get antsy and worried. Well about that time a hawk flew over head and starts to scream the alert too. At this point I am freaking out. Something isn’t right. Because he perched maybe 30 feet away from us and screamed for 5 mins. By now my I told my hubby to go see what the hell is going on. He checked where the bird was perched but he couldn’t see anything. Okay... strange.

The hubby headed back to his spot he was at before the bird, he starts to pick again. About 5-10 mins later he says we need to leave. I smell musk. Those are some scary words right there! Neither of us had our guns. 🤦‍♀️ Stupid I know! But the whole time we are picking we where talking so the animals could hear us. But if you look back at the bear tracks you can see it’s a brown bear, and a young one. So our sounds might have made him curious.
LISTEN to the natives, they will let you know something is wrong! I wish my hubby would have listened a bit closer 😒

Same thing happened with a wolf pack a few years ago. They followed and listened to us sing, but didn’t cross the stream when we left. I heard the alpha scold and snap at the omegas who wanted to “play”. Yeah that was interesting. Hubby went back up that trail and found the wolf tracks on top of our tracks.

Anyways back to the berries and bears...
So we scooted out of there quickly. We picked more watermelon berries on the way down and spread the seeds. We found more blueberry bushes, we picked the berries and spread them too.
Oh and I found this new berry!

I took a picture so I could look it up when we got home.
It’s called a “trailing raspberry” or “five-leaves bramble”. They are suppose to have excellent flavor, and make great jams, jellies and pies.
Yeah I know I was trying to get away from a bear, but I had berries on the brain and seen something new.
✨Oh shiny!✨ If you guys only knew, lol! I get distracted easily sometimes. 😂

On the way out I seen this beautiful dying spruce tree. The spruce bettles have been killing off all the old growth pine in Alaska. They come in waves, almost like a season or a plege of locus. Again ✨Shiny✨ Then reality, ‘oh crap is the bear still behind us.’

On the way down the hill we find pretty rock to add to my garden. We always pick up rocks. We found green ones that look like Alaskan jade, red ones and ones that look like jasper.

Before we reach the car we go to the look out. We don’t stay long because of the locals. But we appreciated the view.

Here’s proof of our berry picking adventure

We got about a half gallon baggie full, not bad for about a half hours worth of picking by hand.
We stopped at the gas station grabbed a munchie and headed home.

I plan on getting as many berries as possible. I want to send some to my grandma. She fell and hurt her back, bulging disc 😣🤕 She just can’t catch a break! I was telling her about berry picking and she said she missed it. So I am going to do my best to hook her up.

THESE ARE ALL MY PHOTOS

• All photos and content are our own. Please do not use any part of this post without our expressed permission. Thanks for not being a dick •