Tales of Alaska and the Alaska Highway: Animals

It is always fun to see how many different types of animals we see along the way.  Some don't mind being photographed, while others will do almost anything to get away and hide.

Fortunately for us, the first animal we saw was not alive as I'd be really scared if a real beaver that size showed up, but it was just a statue welcoming us to the Canadian town of Beaver Lodge.

Though hard to believe, just seconds after running in front of our car, the black spot in the  upper half of the picture and a bit to the right of center was a black bear who just couldn't wait and pose for us.

 The bison were NOT shy.  They figured they owned the road.  At one point we drove through a herd of maybe 30 of them including babies.

This fellow is no longer alive.  They named him Lincoln the musk ox, so I had to take a picture.  The musk oxen we visited live on a farm near Palmer, Alaska, where they are trying to domesticate them.  While the top hair of the musk ox is coarse and rather rough, the inner hairs are incredibly soft.  Periodically the soft inner hairs are combed out and saved to make wool that is soft and has no lanolin in it.  It is also incredibly warm.  The under hairs are called qiviut.  Until recently, the qiviut was spun and given only to certain native folks who knitted it into various garments for sale to the public.  Recently qiviut yarn has also been used by other local knitters.

Below you see a live musk ox who lives there on the farm.

This moose lives in Talkeetna.

I am not sure if these are called Stone Sheep or Stone's Sheep.  I have heard it both ways.  We drove through small herds of them several times along the way.  They like to stand in the middle of the road and lick it for the minerals that they find there.

Here a caribou decided to run along with us for a ways.  Many people do not know that reindeer and caribou are the same animal.  Reindeer are domesticated and caribou are wild.  

These deer were not in Alaska or Canada, but we saw them on our trip as we passed through Oregon.

They are not really viewable on this white glove, so you have to trust me when I tell you there were easily a dozen of the most ferocious animals in Alaska perched on it...Alaskan Mosquitoes!

As we traveled home from dinner one evening, this moose was just casually eating grass and weeds in the field by the side of the road, unlike the one we saw standing in Kalmbach Lake eating moose moss.

We saw 3 red foxes, too, but they were too shy to pose.