No frogs were harmed...

in the making of this post. But yeah, those are real, dead, dried frogs. We found them that way.

Page from @dillemma's meticulously kept journal for our recent Alaska trip

The morning of July 25th we woke up in Haines, Alaska without a set agenda. My brother and his family wanted to go on an adventure and we settled on taking the kids to check out the great frog migration :) My father had reported the previous day upon return from a game of golf that the tadpoles in the ponds along the back side of the course had just about finished maturing into frogs and were massing against the shores getting ready to trek up and out into the forest.

Photo by Ron Horn - courtesy of the Valley of the Eagles website

The Valley of the Eagles golf course is not your typical golf course by any means, a 9 hole course with artificial turf greens situated along tidelands of the Chilkat River estuary which flood on high tides in the winter, spring and fall. Pausing a round because of a bear wandering up onto the course from the bank of the river where it was fishing for salmon, or because a family of moose decided the fairway looked like a marvelous way to get where they were going, is commonplace.

This course sits on brand new land which literally raised up out of the water over the past few decades... the entire Chilkat Valley is experiencing glacial rebound, the very ground itself raising nearly an inch a year relative to sea level as it slowly uncompresses in response to the rapid deglaciation of the region in the last few hundred years.

The owners, Stan and Kathy, are family friends (actually Stan was the town doctor for many years and is the very man who delivered me into this world!). We confidently approached the pro shop to ask for permission to walk up the back path and check out the frogs. Not only was permission granted, Kathy ran into the garage to get out nets for the kids to use if they wanted to catch a few frogs :)

They're everywhere man!

Frogs! They are everywhere!

This was less of a frog hunt, and more of a try-not-to-step-on-the-frogs kind of deal. When we crossed the bridge over the stream we found the great frog migration well underway. Everywhere you stopped to look and focus you realized that the ground was hopping, swarming with tiny frogs making the arduous trek in the hot sun across the dirt and gravel path to the cool forest beyond where they would live their adult frog lives.

Not everyone made it obviously, and we started noticing dried frogs frozen in dramatic poses which appealed to the macabre artist in @dillemma. Hence the journal entry at the beginning of the post.

The kids quickly caught a bunch of frogs to look at in a container before we released them again. You can see some of these were caught with a net from the pond and were still 'tweeners, mostly adult frogs but with a tail still.

There was a break in the groups playing the course so @thingtwo and Cousin Delilah had a meeting of the minds on the Hole 7 green :)

My mother "nana" Nancy overseeing operations

Just another day in paradise :)