The Lynx Locator
Trip Start
May 05, 2009
1
20
48
Trip End
Sep 20, 2009
Healy,
Alaska,
United States
Sunday, June 28, 2009
We are on our days off and not doing much to speak of. It is cold and cloudy today, and we are expecting intermittent rain showers. Val went into the WAC for church so Dave and I stayed back at camp and fixed supper. We made pot roast, and it was very good. So anyhow after supper and the dishes were done, Val and I went for a walk.
Savage Camp has a center road with two loops coming off of that road to the east and the west. Our site is in the center of the west loop and goes from the center road all the way over to the west loop road. Therefore, as we exit the trailer we make the first decision – to go east or to go west. East it is! My nose hits the ground before we get past the end of the trailer. Val tells people that she goes for a walk, and I go for a sniff
The Lynx
. When we pass the end of the truck another decision must be made – right or left on the center road. Val gives me a little "gee" tug and we head for the entrance to the camp itself, mile 12.8 on the Park Road. From our site to the road called the Park Road which takes you from the entrance of Denali Park and Preserve to Kantishna, a mining community 90 miles away, there are no other campsites. So there is less human activity when we go this way. I am very happy to be on a sniff, and I am wagging my tail and sniffing along – let's see…snowshoe hare, snowshoe hare, the neighbor’s dogs, red squirrel, human, another human… this is so much fun!Pretty soon we pass the big park bulletin board where information about the park, and schedules for the programs the rangers do are posted. It has a nice pitched roof with shake shingles, and a lot of people stop and look at the information. It blew over a while back because the side posts had rotted out. It was lying on the ground for quite awhile, and I would always get a chuckle to see humans bending over to read the stuff on the ground. Then after the crew finally came and set it back up on new posts, no one had a key to open the glass doors and post the new schedule, so we had to tape it on the glass. Nice touch. Anyhow, no one is at the bulletin board as we walk and sniff on by.
Val strolls casually up the hill to the Park Road, and I am just sniffing along when all of a sudden I smell a smell I have never smelled before. I stop and sniff again. This smell is different, and it is a very fresh smell, and if I just head off the road a bit I can follow…darn! Val is pulling me away. “No Val you don’t understand, this is something really fresh, and WILD.” I pull back and Val accommodates me just a little. She says, “No Remington, you can’t go off of the road.” “Are you kidding me? I’m trying to tell you that some kind of wild thing has very recently been in this spot right here. The smell is so wild and so different that my hackles are on end.” Right about this time Val notices that the hair on my back is standing straight up, and she begins to look toward where I am sniffing. “Yikes, she says, it’s a lynx!” I don’t see it, but I can smell it. Val pulls me back down the road toward the trailer. After we get some feet away from the smell I oblige her, and we are soon back. Well that was a short walk. “Dave, Remington found your lynx. I’m going back to see if I can get a picture; wanna come?” To a human a picture is worth a thousand sniffs. So off she goes.
Of course by the time she gets back to the exact spot the lynx is gone. Oh well, tough luck. No wait a minute – it is on the other side of the road. Val was able to try several settings on her camera before Mr. Lynx had enough and moved on. So how do you like this picture of a lynx? It’s way better than the “Where’s Waldo” one from last week.
As you all know by this story, she never would have seen the thing in the first place if it had not been for yours truly.
Your Lynx Locator,
Remington Beagle
Comments
Your lynx is nice, butttt
That is a much better pic of the lynx than the previous one. And I wish I could back up my claim with a picture but the bear was faster than I am. Not unlike your first encounter with the lynx.
This bear sighting took place in the UP, Gwinn to be exact, and he was walking down the road, not far from camp (everything on a lake is called camp in the UP) and it was the biggest black bear I have ever seen, in or out of captivity. Thank heavens there were three others with me so my story is verifiable! I felt like I'd seen a movie star! I'll be telling my story for years to come!
It's great to hear from you. Linda C.