Deicing and Enchanting Clouds On Flight South

Our early morning flight was on a plane that had a couple of inches of snow on the wings, not to mention snow on the windows.  

But the deicing machines came and cleared the snow and ice off.  There's a short Smithsonian video about deicing planes at the Anchorage International Airport.  Interesting tidbit in the video is that the Anchorage Airport has never been shut down because of snow.  

And once we were up in the air, we went through a fantasy world of clouds.

The video does a reasonable job of capturing magic of flying through this cloud forest.  

In Seattle the ground was wet, but the sun was out.  We took the train to the ferry and the ferry to Bainbridge, where we still had a magical cloudscape.

Bears, Bison, Glacier, And Sun

My daughter and granddaughter are visiting and Thursday was our day for an adventure.  We headed for Girdwood and checked out Virgin Falls, that I first learned about earlier this summer.   

Soup and sandwich at the Bake Shop, then down to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.  I'm not a zoo fan.  Well, as a kid I was a zoo fanatic.  Between the old LA zoo and the stuffed animal tableaux at the County Museum, I got to know about animals from around the world.  It was only later I became aware of how difficult it can be for the animals.  

The Center, as I understand it, only takes in orphaned, injured, or other found animals.  And for the larger animals, there's way more room than at most zoos.  Wikipedia says there are about 800 acres and these are only Alaska animals.  But the small animals - porcupine particularly - the cages are way too small and they were pacing pathologically.  There were two, in separate cages.  One only had three legs so it probably wouldn't survive on its own.  And the bald eagle was in much too small a cage.  I couldn't look.  These shouldn't be in cages, but I'm guessing it was injured as well.  

But the brown bears have a large area.  I found a 200 acre reference to the wood buffalo habitat, so I'd say the bears probably have roughly the same amount. 

  Nevertheless, Thursday they were up against the fence close to the people watching.  I suspect they find the people as interesting as we find them.  

I got a little carried away with the bear pictures.  

There were musk oxen from Northwest Alaska.  

And wood bison. Turns out, the world was down to about 300 wood bison at the turn of the 20th

Century, all in Canada.  
 

This very wildlife conservation center played a big role in bringing them back to Alaska and building up the herd before they began returning them into the wilds of Alaska.  Wikipedia says that they devoted 200 acres to their habitat.

My granddaughter's picture

There were a number of other animals as well - wolves, caribou, and smaller animals.  Also elk - which we don't see in SouthCentral Alaska, but are in other parts. 

No mountain goats or Dall sheep, 

Then off to the Byron Glacier hike at Portage Lake.

Here's a similar picture from last year.  

Needless to say, there's a lot less ice and snow here than when we were first here back in 1978.  It even seems like a lot less than there was last summer.  

333.33 - I'm 1/3 Of The Way To My 1000 KM Goal

This is what my windshield looked like when I dropped the car off at Speedy Glass yesterday.  The new windshield was ordered March 28 and it only just arrived and was ready to be installed on June 13!  I really couldn't use it - seeing out from the driver's seat was pretty tricky.  And the bullseye was leaning in and I was afraid that a good bump might bring it all crashing in.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, an icicle did this.  

In any case I had my bike with me and headed straight for Chester Creek and the bike trail to the Coastal trail.  My normal bike rides are anywhere from 12-16 km (7.5 miles to 10 miles) but I've decided to push that a bit so I reach my 1000 km (about 600 miles) goal for the summer. 

The Coastal trail loop from my house is about 40 km, a lot more than I want to do on any given day, so I just don't get on it too often.  But yesterday reminded me how beautiful it is.

I rode a little past Neptune - about 13 km - and turned around.  (The sun is downtown at 4th and F. I did more on the background of this project a few years ago.)

When I got back I'd gone just under 25 km (15 miles).  I read my book for a while and soon the car was ready.  

The folks at not-so-Speedy Glass were very nice and apologized for the long wait which they attributed to 'supply-chain problems.'

When I got home and added the mileage onto my 2023 bike log, I had exactly 333.33 km.  Precisely 1/3 of the goal.  Though I expect I'll a little further than the 1000 km by the time there's snow.  

Campbell Creek Yesterday And Last Year - Big Difference

 Weather, from one year to another, in one particular location, doesn't tell us anything about climate change.  For that you need data over many years and many locations.  

But, for whatever reasons - more snow, lower spring temperatures, etc. - Campbell Creek - from the bridge at Lake Otis - was almost completely iced over on April 15, 2021.  

But yesterday (March 30, 2022), I took the bike out for the first time to check out conditions and here's what Campbell Creek looked like.

Whatever the reasons, we are way ahead of last year.  

Cell phones let us quickly retrieve old photos to be able to do a comparative post like this.  

Saturday Trip To Portage

 

Our first stop was Bird Point, to get a little beach time.  The weather was cooperative and I found I nice big flat rock to get a short nap in.

xxx

View from my rock.

Some lichen friends were enjoying the sun too on a nearby rock.

And the trail was full of pink clover and white yarrow.

There's a trail that goes along much of the road going to Portage Glacier. Here's the map.

The trail has different kinds of vegetation along the way.

Where we started, we were on the edge of a lake and there was a hanging glacier up on the rocks.  This used to be a key view point before they put the trail in fairly recently.

Here's a quiet stream with a rock garden above it.  The plant world just needs water to get a foothold, even on this vertical rock wall.

And this part of the trail has spruce trees hanging with moss.

A picnic table along the trail.

  

A faster running creek with mossy edges.

While I am a graffiti fan, this is not a place where human efforts add to the beauty.  

The angle of these grass seeds far outshines the paint on the rock.

Then we drove the little bit more to see what Portage Lake looked like that day.  

When we got to Alaska nearly 50 years ago, the glacier extended well into the lake and there were always house sized icebergs floating in the lake.  But it's been quite a few years since the glacier retreated out of the lake and back up into the mountain.  

But there was a 'tiny' iceberg floating on the other side of the lake.  I say tiny because way over there it doesn't look that big.  And compared to the old icebergs we used to see, it's pretty small.  But you can also gauge it against the snow poles on the road in the background.  They're there to help drivers see the road when the snow gets really deep.  I'm guessing they're about 15 feet high and the iceberg appears to be longer than the poles.  

Any day you get out of the house and leave your screens behind for the natural treats of Alaska is a great day, and it was.