Visiting Alaska While We're Home

One of the most common axioms in Alaska is that Anchorage is just 20 minutes from Alaska.  And while we've been going back and forth so much lately, I have to remember that while we're back home in Anchorage, to make sure we go see a bit of Alaska each time.  So Sunday, with blue sky and sunshine and relatively warm weather (20s), we headed to McHugh Creek.

Note that it was January 31 and the water of Turnagain arm was . . . water.  Not ice.

And the trail was ice and snow free as we started off.

I checked the rock map.  Wish I could read the story it's telling us.

Further up the trail, there were patches of ice.  It's ironic.  All the snow is gone, except on the trail where people's footsteps packed the snow down and it became ice.  The very reason I work hard to keep our sloping driveway snow free - so it doesn't become an ice slope.

There was also ice over the creeks the path crosses.


All these pictures are much sharper if you click on them.

Two ravens began a raucous alert.

And above we saw the reason, flying over.

It looked more like early fall as the setting sun put an orange glow on the hillside.

So good to get out and walk in the woods.

Clouds And Shadows And A Glory

One would think that pictures from the plane in an out of Anchorage would get old.   But even though I've lived here for almost 40 years now and I'm still amazed by how the mountain views change as the light and shadows change.  So I shouldn't be surprised by a seeing Cook Inlet differently as we flew into Anchorage Monday.

The battery on the bigger camera died as we got over Turnagain Arm, so these are from my little Powershot.    Below is the road into Girdwood and the mudflats.

As we flew in and out of the clouds, our shadow came and went, sometimes circled by a rainbow.  This actually has a name - a glory. - ( I needed to check on it before posting.)  According to Wikipedia:

"A glory is an optical phenomenon that resembles an iconic saint's halo about the shadow of the observer's head, caused by light of the Sun or (more rarely) the Moon interacting with the tiny water droplets that make up mist or clouds. The glory consists of one or more concentric, successively dimmer rings, each of which is red on the outside and bluish towards the centre. The effect is believed to happen due to classical wave tunneling, when light nearby a droplet tunnels through air inside the droplet and, in the case of a glory, is emitted backwards due to resonance effects.^[1]"

"The scientific explanation is still the subject of debates and research. In 1947, the Dutch astronomer Hendrik van de Hulst suggested that surface waves are involved. He speculated that the colored rings of the glory are caused by two-ray interference between "short" and "long" path surface waves—which are generated by light rays entering the droplets at diametrically opposite points (both rays suffer one internal reflection).^[3] A new theory by Brazilian physicist Herch Moysés Nussenzveig, however, suggests that the light energy beamed back by a glory originates mostly from classical wave tunneling, which is when light rays that missed a droplet can still transfer energy into it.^[1]"

After flying over south Anchorage, we veered west for a slow loop back to the runway.  Lots of cloud shadows on the water.

And then as we closed in on the runway, the light changed again. 

LA - Anchorage 3: Coming Home Around Midnight

About 15 minutes out of Anchorage, we're flying over the water, mountains, and glaciers of Prince William Sound.  It's almost midnight, the sun's been down about 20 minutes. 

Now we're over Cook Inlet.  Two different waters side by side.

The summer green on the mudflats at the edge of the runway.

This series of pictures is of the waters flowing at the end of Turnagain Arm.  You can see the much smaller line of  the Seward Highway as it makes its long slow turn around the end of the Arm.  It starts on the right just below the middle and goes across to the left and then curves back to the right.  It's clearer in some of the images than others.

Each Photoshop tool allows you to see something different in the image.  The letters didn't come out so well, but for those with an interest, these are the tools I used:
A.   Posterize filter
B.   Image adjustments - invert
C.   Image adjustments - equalize  - very close to the original
D.   Fresco filter
E.   Image - curves


I am working on other posts, just haven't gotten all the information quite right yet.  

McHugh Creek

Here are a few pictures from Sunday's hike on the Johnson Pass trail from McHugh Creek.  The cottonwoods - and everything else - are still naked.  Below you can see them in different states.

Devil's club was budding. 

A couple of weeks ago, we came by and only the lower parking lot (right)  was open, but Sunday, the gate to the upper parking areas was open. 








And the creek was still flowing mostly under the ice. 

It Always Looks Different: Turnagain Arm

Thirty eight years later, Turnagain Arm still is awesome (in the original sense of the word.)

Driving south from Anchorage is never just a drive.  It's a beautiful adventure.

So, let's start with the typical post card picture of Turnagain Arm and then will look at some variations that I took today.  None of these were altered except for some cropping.

Now, let's look just at the wet stuff.  Every time you look, it's different.

And  back to another typical post card view.

Studying My Canon Rebel Instruction Manual Flying Over Magnificent Alaskan Views

I have no excuse. If it's clear and daylight as we return to Anchorage, I simply can't stop staring out the window and snapping pictures.

 

We flew up Turnagain Arm right past Girdwood. 

And here's a look back down Turnagain Arm as we came into the airport. 

When we left LA, there were lots of small puffy clouds and I took a lot of pictures.  And they all turned out white.  I'd had it on manual for when we flew in ten days ago at night and the ISO was 3200.  So all my pictures were just white. 

That stirred me to do more reading in the manual for my Canon Rebel.  I still think there are way too many things to remember, but I did go through some of the settings and the options for those settings.  As we got out of the clouds - at the northern end of Vancouver Island - and then started to see the coastal mountain ranges, I took a series of pictures using the mountain setting and then trying out different Ambiance settings.  It's sort of like using different filters.

 If you click on the strip below and magnify it, you'll be able to see the labels better.

Why I Live Here: Sunday Hike At Bird Ridge On Drizzly Sunday Afternoon

The clouds were low and the windshield wipers were on, and Turnagain Arm is still spectacular. 

Driving south, the mudflats are on the right and the rocky slopes are on the left. 

I knew the Bird Ridge trail went up, but I'd forgotten just how steeply.   We took our time and enjoyed the wet and green vegetation and the views when there was an opening through the trees.

 

very green and shiny devil's club leaves and red berries

The trail

Even though it was wet, it wasn't muddy or slippery. 

The ability to slip out of town and get out into this relatively wild and absolutely magnificent space in half an hour is one of the things that ties me to Anchorage.  Even though we've been here over 35 years, it never gets old, never ceases to amaze.

Garden Tour, Lavatera, Spenard, and Corn

Sunday was the Anchorage Garden Club's Annual City Garden Tour.  This is always a delightful affair, a chance to discover hidden neighborhoods, and  wander through people's gardens, ask questions, and dream about the possibilities of your own garden. 


[NOTE:  Click to enlarge and sharpen any photo.]



The first garden we saw was in the heart of Spenard.  I have to give the Garden Club credit.  Snootier clubs would have never chosen this garden.  But it was the quintessential Spenard garden - flowers and junk.  A plastic flamingo and a bald eagle on top of a metal flag pole.   Of course, junk is a subjective term.  But how many garden clubs do you think would include a garden that had this next to the driveway?

But this is so Spenard.















Since four of the five gardens (seemed a low number this year) were close to Turnagain Road, we biked over there in the beautiful, warm sunshine.

This was the back yard of one of the Turnagain gardens.  They had bright pink flowers that looked something like hibiscus and I learned they were lavatera.

Here's more detail from malvaceae.info:

"Lavatera is a genus within the family Malvaceae, which also includes, inter alia, Althaea, Abutilon, Gossypium, Hibiscus, Malva and Sidalcea, and is particularly close to Malva. The 20-25 species of Lavatera have a broadly Mediterranean distribution, stretching to southwest Britain, the Canary Is., Abyssinia, Central Asia and Kashmir, with outlying species in Australia (Lavatera plebeia), California (Lavatera assurgentiflora, Lavatera insularis, Lavatera lindsayi, Lavatera occidentalis and Lavatera venosa), and eastern Siberia.

Lavateras are annual, biennial or short-lived perennial herbs and sub-shrubs. The flowers are pink to purple, or white, or yellow in some forms of Lavatera triloba. The stems and foliage are typically downy or hairy. The fruits consist of a divided capsule containing a ring of nutlets."

 

This window box of flowers nearby was probably my favorite spot on the tour.  It just worked beautifully.  

The last house was near the Coastal trail, which we got off at Arctic to find some dinner.  

 



These corn plants were growing in the two inch crack between the asphalt and the building.  Corn is usually iffy in Anchorage, but this is an exceptionally warm summer and this south facing wall is probably five or ten degrees warmer yet.  There were a few big ears getting close to ripe.   This wasn't part of the garden tour, but it should have been.

There was one more garden on the tour, but it was in South Anchorage and we started late.