Getting Into Alaska With The Kids

We've spent way too much time in Anchorage.  I do like our backyard.  Sitting out on the deck surrounded by lots of trees in the warm weather was nice.  And traffic out of town around the 4th of July is always awful.  But I was getting antsy and wanted to take the kids down to Portage.

First stop, 30 minutes out, was Bird Point.  It was supposed to be a short stop, but the kids enjoyed running around, playing statue on various pedestals on the overlook walk.  Then under the bridge

and back.  Over the fence, across the tracks to check out the beach.  But the five year old started saying she was hungry (we'd been feeding them since we stopped).  But most of the way back she said she lost her gloves - it was almost raining and very windy, maybe 60˚F - so the 4 year old I went back to look.  But we didn't find them.  His cheek found a big rock though when he missed a step in the rocky part.  He had a good reason to cry and he did.  We got back to the parking lot and they deduced, by looking at the pictures D had taken, the last place Z had her gloves.  So she and I went back and found them.

Then to Portage.   At the lakeside parking lot the rain was coming down hard, horizontally.  The

wind was slamming car doors.  BUT, there were icebergs too.  I'd thought those didn't happen often since the glacier retreated out of the water and up the mountain years ago.  And they weren't the giant ones that used to float around, but they were icebergs.






But it was so rainy and windy that no one wanted to stand around outside very long.  The visitor center was a big hit with the kids.  Lots of buttons to push (raven calls, sandhill crane cackles, wolf howls), a kayak to climb into and lots of things that caught their attention.  And we saw part of the movie.











A stop at Black Bear Campground, which was totally empty, and lushly beautiful.  I'm sure the rain had something to do with both conditions.








Soup at the Bake Shop or ice cream at the cone shop at Alyeska?  The kids won that vote.

A potty break at McHugh Creek, so we walked up to the bridge.

Finally a  brief stop at a Potter Marsh pullout.  You can get a sense of the wind by the ripples in the water and the leaning grasses.  But this was nothing compared to Portage.

A fun day of sightseeing, lots of eating and laughing, running around, and seeing new things for the kids.

Take A Break From Fires, Shooters, Hearings - A Couple Potter Marsh Pics

Why Don't Ducks' Feet Freeze? And Other Spring Thoughts

The bike trails are now pretty much snow and ice free.  There's sun.  No time to blog, time to be out.

Goose Lake still has ice.

This grebe is riding the waves at a windy Potter Marsh Friday afternoon.

A gull on the final approach to its nest.

Potter Marsh from the boardwalk.

Waiting for the new green to push up through to the sun.

This morning I had ride by Goose Lake again and there were two mallards sleeping on the ice.  If you're wondering, like I was, why their feet don't freeze, Ask a Naturalist explains why:

"It’s all about heat exchange, and the smaller the temperature difference between two objects, the more slowly heat will be exchanged. Ducks, as well as many other birds, have a counter-current heat exchange system between the arteries and veins in their legs. Warm arterial blood flowing to the feet passes close to cold venous blood returning from the feet. The arterial blood warms up the venous blood, dropping in temperature as it does so. This means that the blood that flows through the feet is relatively cool. This keeps the feet supplied with just enough blood to provide tissues with food and oxygen, and just warm enough to avoid frostbite. But by limiting the temperature difference between the feet and the ice, heat loss is greatly reduced. Scientists who measured it calculated that Mallards lost only about 5% of their body heat through their feet at 0o C (32o F)."

Keeping My Head Low

Like these two swans at Potter Marsh yesterday, I'm keeping my head low, getting ready to head south.  With a long to do list here, don't have time to blog on things important (it takes too long).  Yesterday, I escaped to Potter Marsh to sit and read My Name Is Red for my book club that meets tomorrow night.  REALLY good book and I'm sure I'll do some posts on it later, but now I just have to finish it and other loose ends before we go back to take another stab at cleaning out my mom's house and then getting some grandpa time in Seattle on the way home.

All this post death stuff has been affecting my stress level.  I'd decided to check on my blood pressure again and my home monitor was giving high readings.  Went to the doctor today and was reassured on two levels:  1.  my home monitor gave higher readings than their office monitor  and 2.  blood pressure levels for over 65 tend to be higher.  (Looking this up just now - something I was hoping to avoid in this post) showed less about the target blood pressure range and more about lack of good data and a range of opinions from the doctors.  I'm just not going to worry.  They said I was healthy otherwise.  But not so healthy that I got away without a flu shot and a pneumonia shot. 

So yesterday I sat in the car at a Potter Marsh pullout, watched swans and read my book as the wind now and then buffeted the van.   The swans were clearly loading up for their flight south - with their head below water much more than not.

And I walked the empty boardwalk.

Hanging out in the van with the book and the swans and a little walk on the boardwalk as it started to rain was what I needed.  Got well into this incredible tale that takes place in late 16th Century Istanbul and is loosely based on real a real workshop of court miniaturists.  Lots to think about that's relevant to the theme of this blog - how do you know what you know - as they examine the difference between reality and how that reality is represented on the page, and as they tread a fine line between honoring Allah with their work and slipping into creating forbidden idols.  And there's a murder to be solved and a love story as well.  And the author Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

Hairy Woodpecker and Friends At Still Icy Potter Marsh

One more post from last Sunday's outing.  [The other two were Always Looks Different:  Turnagain Arm and McHugh Creek]  We stopped at Potter Marsh on the way home [as we did two weeks before.] 

The only birds we saw this time - and this is not a complaint - were a pair of hairy woodpeckers and a flock of bohemian waxwings. 

The woodpeckers were fun.  Maybe it's my early introduction to Woody as a kid.  Surely the red patch helps, and the tapping noise.  And one of my favorite posts, which still gets hits from weird folks like me, is Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Brain Damage? 









The waxwings too, but they're more common, and we'd recently had a very close view as they came to feast on the Mt. Ash berries in the tree in front of our house.  Here their spectacular colors aren't visible.

This time without such an obvious single food outlet as the Mt. Ash, they were scattered in pairs and small groups around the marsh. 

Here's a typical view of the marsh, though the summer tourists don't get to see it with the ice.

The boardwalk has signs prohibiting, among other things, dogs.  And as we got back to our car, we saw this one waiting patiently in the car for it's servants. 

Potter Marsh And Beyond - Gettin' Out

For one reason or another, we haven't gotten out much this winter.  Partly because we've been traveling so much and other poor excuses.  Yesterday I took advantage of the ice free pavement and sidewalks to take a bike ride.  Today we drove down to McHugh Creek and back via Potter Marsh.

Clouds covered the sun as we meandered south of town.

  Above we're looking south from Potter Marsh. 

The base of the Alaska range.

Bubbles in the ice.

 The McHugh Creek lower parking lot was full, with cars waiting for people to leave.  The upper level was gated off.  You'd think we'd be smart enough to figure out a way to keep the area open when people want to use it.  

Take A Nature Break - A Trip To Potter Marsh

Even though the path is a man made boardwalk and the highway and shooting range noises interfere, going out to see the seasonal changes at Potter Marsh is always a soothing event.  This time my three month old grandson and his parents were along, and while he slept through it all, it was good to take him out there.


So if you need a relaxing nature break, enjoy the post.  Clicking on any picture will give you a MUCH sharper version. 

The ducks I could identify were all mallards.  Mallards are really beautiful, but I tend to dismiss them because they're so common.  I just enjoyed the patterns of and the reflections in the water.

 

Most of the summer birds were gone.  The bald eagles (it's in the old cottonwood, look for the white head) nest back there and spend the winter in the area.  The Arctic Terns were gone.  We did see some trumpeter swans, but they were camera shy yesterday.