Denali Time

We've been going up to Denali National Park in the spring before the busses take tourists into the park for over 20 years.  It's a brief time when you can drive out to Teklanika campground (30 miles in.)  Once the busses begin, the road is closed at Savage River (12 miles in.)

It's a time before things turn green, but there are fewer people around, campgrounds (but they were $55 a night, half that for Senior and other National Park Pass holders) are easy to get, and you can take your time, stopping where you want, as long as you want, taking in the magnificent views, and animals.  

This year there was still more snow than normal - lingering from this record breaking winter.  When we complained that we had seen no caribou at all (normally guaranteed) we were told that they are late arriving this year, probably because of the snow.  

We left Anchorage Thursday morning, with some sunshine in Anchorage, but as we drove north it got cloudy and we had short bouts of rain and wet pavement then dry pavement much of the way.  

There was a surprisingly good view at the Denali view point at mile 135.  You couldn't see Denali, but you could see all the smaller mountains. (these are eight and nine thousand foot peaks.)

People at the viewpoint tend to talk to each other and ask where everyone is from.  When they learned we were from Anchorage they wanted to know which mountain was Denali.  I had to say, "None of them.  It's the one towering above behind the clouds."  Then I checked my camera and found my picture from exactly two years earlier and shared it.  (The bottom photo was with a telephoto lens so there's some distortion between the two, but you get the point.)

As I compare the two images, it's interesting that there was more snow two years ago, because that definitely wasn't the case north of the mountain, in the park.  The mountains you see in the top picture almost look like they are part of Denali in the lower picture.  But they are all separate mountain peaks, about half the height of Denali.  

Gas prices were interesting.  The cheapest in Anchorage is around $5.49.  In Wasilla, there are stations advertising $5.19 and a few on the outskirts with $4.99. (Anchorage has a local tax on gas that raises the price.)  The Talkeetna turnoff station has $4.95 for the lowest grade.  

But in Cantwell, where the old Native run station seems to be closed down, the Vitus station is raking it in. (Yeah, regular was $6.45/gallon.)

We were tired when we got to the campground and made dinner and got into bed.  It wasn't sunny, but it also wasn't as cold as we expected.  

One of the many  awesome aspects of Denali is its vastness.  You can see wild landscape that seems to stretch out forever.  Below are two photos meshed together because one wide angle picture is way too small.  And as one tourist we met says, "The pictures don't come close to capturing it."

Below are some more photos from Friday, a gray day with occasional sprinkles.  

Here's J walking  down from the Teklanika parking lot and viewpoint where the road ends.  You can walk the mile down to the bridge over the Teklanika River.  Though beyond the bridge was closed off due to " a scheduled bear capture operation." (This for research, not to remove the bears.)

This is a view from the bridge.  It's not a black and white photo, but looks lie one.

There are a couple of large ponds (not sure how big it has to be to be called a lake) near the Teklanika campground where we can normally see waterfowl.  One still had a lot of ice and I didn't see any birds.  

But the other one had Northern Shovelers.  Pictures in bird books often show the males with green heads.  These had black heads.  I asked the bird guide on Saturday and she said the green shows iridescent when the sun is right.  

We were stopped at an overview, relaxing when a car stopped and asked if we'd seen any caribou.  They hadn't either, but they said there was a bear about 3 miles down the road.  

And not much later, we saw a driver looking out over his car.  Following his gaze we saw a big blonde bear sleeping on the tundra.  After a while, he raised his head, move a little further away, and crashed again.  

This raven was making a racket.

There were lots of ptarmigan on the road.  They're in the process of transitioning from the white winter plumage to the summer brown.  

When we got back Friday afternoon, there was someone parked in our campsite.  I wouldn't even mention this - he simply didn't see the paper clipped on the site marker, and since the site across the road was nice and was empty, we just pulled in there.  But I'm mentioning it because the vehicle was

 from Storyteller

unlike any I'd ever seen.  It was dark gray, almost black and looked like a combination of a truck and a tank.  It was big.  The license plate said Storyteller and I mentioned he could tell us a story.  No, he said, that's the name of the company that makes the vehicle.  He'd driven this thing up from Birmingham, Alabama and I don't know why I didn't take a picture.  

But I looked up Storyteller when we got home.  It's a company that makes very expensive and fancy campers.  

The picture is from Storyteller.  The sticker price for this model is $799,784 or $5385 per month.

There are different models and this seems to look like the one we saw.    Look for it in Anchorage this week, where the driver was going to meet his wife who flies up to Anchorage regularly for work.  

I guess there is a market for luxury goods for all those in the $50 million and up category.  

The next morning there was sun and we'd found an 8:30am bird walk listed on the Denali Website at Mountain Vista trail, near the Savage River campground.  We turned out to be the only visitors for the walk and our guide, Autumn, was great.  She identified a number of small birds by their calls and some we saw.  And at one point, we saw that Denali was out of the clouds.  

I identified the bird on the right, which is a heftier bird than the picture shows, as a gray jay, but Autumn told me it is now called a Canada Jay.

Below is a white crowned sparrow.  When we mentioned the bear and I showed her a picture, Autumn thought it might have been one of the bears that had been tranquilized.  

The artwork below is what I'm calling 'stained ice' - which was naturally formed on the trail.  

As magnificent as the park was on Friday, the sunshine on Saturday added to its glory. 

Below you can see the landscape with Denali seeming to rise over the horizon.

And a closer look at North America's tallest mountain through the telephoto lens.

And then we turned around and headed to the Alaska Geographic bookstore next to the Visitors Center and then toward home. 

We had lunch at a pullout along the Nenana River, just north of Cantwell.  The 'shoreline' in the middle on the other side of the river is actually large blocks of ice stacked up.  As we ate, ice floated by along the river.  The Denali rivers flow north, into the Nenana, and then the Yukon according to Autumn.

A couple of hours later we got back to the Denali South Viewpoint.  It had clouded up again as we drove south, but we walked back up to the viewpoint, where three young men from Orange County, California told us the mountain had been out.  There had been a cloud obscuring the middle, but the bottom and the top had been visible.  As we chatted, one of them said he thought the mountain was visible again.  I took this picture, but it wasn't until I got home and looked carefully, could I see the white of the mountain showing through the grayer clouds.  

Now we're back home.  It's gray and the weather app says that won't change in the next ten days.  Temps will get up to 50˚F (10˚C) and a little above.  But the plants know summer is coming and the birch leaves are showing green, though they aren't fully open.  

Bohemian Waxwings Harvest Our Mountain Ash Tree Berries

 Grey shadows streaked across our window shade Sunday morning and I knew the waxwings were back.

And when I slowly pulled up the shade, there they were, feasting on the berries.  

What is my favorite Alaska bird?  The Bohemian Waxwings are among the top five.  They come in flocks of 50 or more and swoop down to tree in smaller squads.  Then they fly off and another squad takes over.  

The lighting was tricky with the birds between me and the sun.  There was also a dirty window between me and the birds. 

But they are such elegant birds with their crests, the light grey bodies adorned with yellow bands on their tails and black and red and yellow adornments on their faces.  These aren't my best waxwing pics, but they give you a sense of why I so enjoy their visits.  

Here's a post from 2015 that has better pictures.  

Bohemian Waxwings Visit Our Mt. Ash Tree

What's Keeping Me From Blogging?

So much . . .

Weekly trips to pick up our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) [It's a USDA website so go quick before the regime either takes it down because it's too 'woke' or it crashes from neglect or incompetence.]

They use salt - some Alaska salt - and mix it with things for use in cooking, eating, and making your house smell better, like in the simmer pots.  

I've highlighted soap artist (seriously, what she does is art!)  Kit before.  She showed me a prototype of a soap she's working on that will have a Rorschach test on it.  I asked if there are psychiatrist interpretations included.  Those, she assured me, would cost a lot more.  Learn more at MirthAlaska.com. 

There was a long line at the WIC table.  This market is in the lowest income area of Anchorage and the Grow North Farm here - sponsored by RAIS (Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service), a part of Catholic Social Services - is an urban farm worked by refugees.  

It was gray and threatening, but not raining all that day, but it finally came down on the ride home.  It was so light it really only got my clothes slightly damp.  And my odometer with drops.

I've gone past my 1600 km goal for the summer - one reason I guess I haven't blogged as much.  All that biking along Anchorage's green bike paths has been good for my physical and mental health during this disastrous time in US history.  

The picture below was on an earlier ride on the Campbell Creek south trail.  And I'm delaying today's ride to get this post up.

The mushroom isn't connected to anything else in this post, but of course mushrooms and fungus in general are connected to everything underground.  You can't really tell but this one was five or six inches across.  Growing right next to the compost pile.  

  
                                                                      

Again, a somewhat random picture here.  Walking down the steps after a routine doctor visit at Providence, I was greeted with the lovely sounds of live piano music.  The acoustics in the huge atrium entrance are great and the notes pulled me over to listen to the end and thank the musician.

Our power, phone/internet went out during the windstorm a week ago Friday.  This downed cottonwood was the culprit.  Chugach Electric had the power back on the next morning when we woke up.  Alaska Communications took until Tuesday or Wednesday to come out and then they didn't have the equipment to fix it right, so while the phone line and internet are back on, the wire is lying on the ground and about two feet off the ground in some places I have to walk.  In what world is that acceptable?  Alaska Communications is so terrible!  The techs I have to call now and then and those who come out to the house are generally very good.  It's just the management that has promised me fiber every summer since 2023 and not delivered that pisses me off.  And the website that has the circle of death spinning hopelessly when I try to pay online, and then they charge me a %25 late fee because I couldn't pay online.  With no grace period.  None.  Visa emails me three days before to remind me to pay my bill.  ACS emails three days after it's due to say, "We screwed you again."  I'm ready to cut that cord forever.  

Got that off my chest.  

Our neighbor did hook us up to his power with a series of extension cords to power the refrigerator since we didn't know how long it was going to take to get the power back.  We decided to go to Queen of Sheba for dinner that night.  Here's David, the owner and chef, chatting with us after our meal.  

Ethiopian food is truly special and delicious.  Anchorage folks, go eat there and keep them in business.  The prices are reasonable for this day and age.  

It's between Northern Lights and Benson - on Dawson.  

So, probably this should have been three or four blog post spread over the week.  

But I'm not done.  I've been reading several books at once, but I'll just highlight Caraval.  This was a recommendation from my 12 year old granddaughter.  When I told her I was number 25 on the waiting list at Loussac Library, she said, "I told you that you'll never get it."

But I got an email saying it was mine to pick up.  I understand why people read it.  Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger of sorts.  And I think the author has synesthesia, because every feeling is associated with a color, some vibrating.  Lots more descriptions of odors than you normally see too.  And I don't think Nancy Drew ever had chills from the touch of a young man's bare chest leaning against her. 

I'd say this teen fiction is the gateway drug to adult romance fiction.  

Moving along - I'm still overwhelmed with the barrage of outrageous statements and actions spewing from the White House.  Here are a few images that I've saved as I try to find new ways to ask my junior US Senator how long he thinks he can wade in this filth before he is sucked under completely.  He gleefully points at what he sees as 'wins' for Alaska, while the president tramples the constitution by kidnapping people off the streets, invading US cities with our military, ignoring judge's orders, bombing boaters in international waters, gerrymandering Texas to squeeze out Democratic house seats, and on and on and on.  I didn't even mention Epstein.  And Dan Sullivan turns a blind eye to all of that in exchange for some oil drilling permits.  

My previous post was on the normalization of the word normalization.  Nothing could illustrate that point better than this post by His Travesty.   

What previous president could have done something like this and not been impeached?  Some say it's just 'a humorous bit' but I did a paper on government humor once.  What I learned was that government humor that is self deprecating is fine, but government humor that punches down is NOT fine.  

And then his Vice Travesty defends another military operation off the coast of Venezuela:

Has anyone seen any evidence that these are cartel members (just like we haven't seen any evidence that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a member of Tren de Aragua gang)?

I copied this one for Labor Day.  We're back to the time when business owners could call on the government to bring in troops to break up labor unions.  And when I say 'break up' I mean that literally.  But they stood in solidarity until they won their rights which have benefited most of us.  (You know, 40 day weeks, paid overtime, health benefits, the right to grieve bad treatment, etc.)  We have to be as brave and persistent now to prevent what's happening today.  

I don't believe ignorance is greater now than it was.  But the propaganda forces of the fascists have powerfully taken advantage of that ignorance, and the latent fears of white America.  They've taken all the damage to the working classes done by exporting jobs and increasing the income gap and blamed it on Black people and immigrants.  

 I remember when the first polio vaccines became available and we got poked at school.  My small pox vaccine scar no longer really shows, but I was inoculated.  

Public health programs have saved more lives than medical treatment of individuals.   As I look for good links to explain the importance of public health to society, I see that some of the most important public health initiatives - clean water and sewage systems - are so taken for granted that they aren't even mentioned.  But we haven't always had clean water and sewage systems.  And parts of the world still don't have them.  

President Nixon famously had an enemies list.  But no president has ever, so blatantly used the powers of the federal government to go after his perceived enemies.  The president is publicly telling the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute people who oppose him.  And as a blogger, I found this cartoon a bit close to home.  

I tell myself I'm just a tiny voice out in the wilderness and they have much bigger targets than me.  But I also notice that Google says my recent posts have way more hits that I usually get.  Stat Counter has always shown far fewer hits than Google, but they also track individual visitors.  I can't tell if I really have more hits or whether there are more bots.  In times past when there were lots more hits, it looked like someone scraping my blog for content, and more recently for AI.  But when that happens you can see a single user going to thirty or more different pages per day.  So many hits on a single page is different.  

In any case, I want people to stay strong and be engaged in fighting this regime to preserve our democracy (not to mention our health and economy and general well being.)  Do what you can.  And take breaks to laugh, enjoy nature, good friends.   Find like minded people.  And know your rights.  

And a teaser for a post I hope to put up this week.  

From Animalspot.net

Rachel Epstein Book on John Haines - May the Owl Call Again

 Someone left a link to this book in a comment on a totally unrelated post - at least I didn't see any connection.  

But Rachel worked in the University of Alaska Anchorage bookstore for many years and put together many (100?  200?) forums in the bookstore.  Usually there was an author (or two) speaking, but sometimes it was on a topic of current interest.  

They were small intimate affairs where the audience had lots of opportunity to interact with the speakers.  

These soirees were exactly what should be happening on a University campus.  

I'm sure this is a noteworthy book so I'm delighted to let people know about it.  

From the Amazon page.

"Alaskan poet John Haines has been gone for more than a decade now, but his singular voice stays with me—the deep quiet of it and its enchantment, the spareness of his lines—Li Po transposed to the far north. Much else is here to muse on and admire—his charming letters to Rachel Epstein, photos of his homestead in Richardson, transcripts of talks given, memoirs of a vanished Alaska, selected essays, notes on the imagination’s relationship with the natural world, even recollections of his service on a destroyer in the Pacific toward the end of WW II. May the Owl Call Again is a moving and memorable collection, and at its heart is Haines’ haunting poetry.

—Marc Hudson, poet, translator, and an emeritus professor at Wabash College.

His most recent book of poems is East Of Sorrow.

May the Owl Call Again bears witness to the last years of Haines' life—his thoughts, humor, melancholy, a profound awareness of Alaska’s rhythms, and his struggles with engagement in a broken world. But, above all, it is a meditation on friendship and the solace of intimacy that can be found in the handwritten page. It’s a testament to care, the aches of connection and solitude, and the consolation of finding kinship with another. I found myself reading it all at once and walking away with a profound sense of gratitude for Epstein sharing this Haines with all of us. 

—Freya Rohn, poet and founder of Ariadne Archive"

For Anchorage folks I'd recommend calling Writers' Block bookstore ((907) 929-2665) to order it if it's not in.  Buy Alaskan authors writing about Alaskan people from local Alaskan bookstores.  

New Year's Day Birds

We dropped the family off at the airport Monday.  It was a beautiful sunny day with blue skies and t-shirt temperatures. The sky was clear and you could see snow up on Mt. Baldy. We like walking along Ballona Creek, but thought since we were coming from the airport we could start at the ocean end.  

There's a bike trail along the creek that goes at least to Culver City and connects with the beach trail south to nearly Palos Verdes.  North, it goes through Marina Del Rey and then connects with Venice and Santa Monica trails.  I've marked in red our walk from the beach to Lincoln and back.  

We saw the hummingbird hovering first.  It's iridescent ruby throat flashing brilliantly.  It flew off and then quickly returned an lighted on this high bush.  I'm still fighting my auto-focus on my Canon Rebel.  I've read instructions, but the auto-focus has trouble figuring out exactly where I want to focus.  For most things it's not an issue, but for birds far away or tiny birds relatively close, it's frustrating.  I'm open to links that could help.  I left the image small because you can see how out-of-focus the bird is when I cropped it bigger.  

And I couldn't get the iridescent flash, though you can see the emerald wing suggesting it.  

The egret is much bigger and easier to get in focus.

I was fascinated by the egret's toes as it started walking.  It didn't respond to my request that it get a less difficult background.  You have to look carefully.  I counted four toes.  

I originally thought these might be sanderlings, but the legs seemed the wrong color.  Maybe a type of sandpiper.  I couldn't tell for sure.  

The water here is where the marina opens to the Pacific, not the Ballona Creek side of the trail.  You can check here.

I'm guessing this is a white pelican, but you can check yourself. 

You may have read about large waves this weekend in Southern California.  The waves didn't seem huge, but they crashed pretty much straight down.  The bike trail on he beach was covered with sand and the high tide lines were way, way up on the beach.