The moose are out this week. Tuesday, walking toward Goose Lake we ran into a cow and calf. Two bikers and a runner had already alerted us, as they were looking for alternate routes. We got close enough to see them through the trees and walked back.
Thursday, biking to up Campbell Airstrip Road, I passed a young bull with a nice growing rack. It was the part of the trail that separates from the road. Where I'd been warned by a driver a couple of years ago that they'd seen a bear on the trail. So when I get to this part, I ring my bell a bunch to no one is surprised I'm there. And down below the trail was the moose. On the way back, I looked for him down below and there was nothing there. Then there he was right next to the trail. Turned back and took the road down. Where I was able to get this picture. You can see he's almost on the bike trail.
Then I stopped in the Botanical Garden. They have a great plant sale. Well, they sell plants all summer. There's a good selection of interesting plants - local and not - that do well in Anchorage. The plant sale is right at the front so I think you can buy plants without paying admission. But the whole garden is worth some exploration. And things change in there every week as different flowers start to show.
Here's some Shieldleaf Rogersia at the Garden. These are very large leaves - the sign says China, Korea.
They grow in the shade and my yard has lots of shade so I bought one about three years ago. Bugs have been eating at it each year before it gets real big. But this year it's looking better.
Friday I had a couple of stops to make downtown. First I dropped in at the Alaska Innocence Project. They help prisoners who claim they were wrongly convicted and have evidence to back their cases. They helped get the Fairbanks Four freed several years ago.
Prisoners don't get a lot of sympathy from the public, and innocent people behind bars is one of the biggest injustices in our society. Since
Since it was a beautiful day we met in their conference room on the roof.
That's Francisco on the left and Jory on the right. Here's a short video - under 2 minutes - that I recommend. It talks about why people are wrongly convicted and how many there are.
On the way to their office I found the new protected downtown bike lane. I'd read about it in the Anchorage Daily News, but forgot about it until I came across it. What an improvement. No dodging pedestrians on the sidewalk or cars in the street. I could relax and just ride. But there's not much of it - less than 1/2 mile I'd guess. And then to get to the office I had to go back to the streets. It even has its own street light with red and green bikes.
Next stop was at Tim's to pick up some postcards to mail to voters. This is probably the least painful way for introverts to be actively working to save Democracy. [If you think I'm being alarmist, let's talk. The mainstream media are treating the election as if Trump were a normal candidate. He's not. Mainstream media only look reasonable in comparison with Fox. With the Far Right capture of the Supreme Court, a Trump presidency would be the end of democracy in the US.] In this case the Environmental Voters Project combined with the Citizens Climate Lobby. Tim's in a log cabin downtown, but this one has been modernized a bit. It even has a touchpad to unlock the door.
I have some work to do.
Today was a spectacular day. I picked up a book that was on hold at the library for me. I think I requested it six or more months ago - The Sympathizer by Viet Thang Nguyen. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the first 15 pages pulled me right in. I'm still working on Many Things Under a Rock - a book about octopuses. From the library to the post office to get post card stamps and to mail a letter to my grandson who is away at camp. The post office was closed, but I could mail the letter. Finally I could bike on. As I said, it was a beautiful day - our warmest of the year I'm sure.
I doubt the official temperature, which is measured at the airport, was 77˚F (26˚C), but it was a nice, nice day.
I went up Arctic to the Campbell Creek bike trail near Dimond and then back down the trail past Taku Lake and eventually home. I've gone, as of today, 475 kilometers, this summer. (That means since the trails were clear enough of snow to ride.)
We had salmon on the deck this evening - with loud rumbles of thunder in the background. That's not something we get often in Anchorage - sometimes none in a year or three.
So keeping it fairly light today. Happy Fathers' Day to all of you lucky enough to have this awesome responsibility.
First off, I should say that for the fat tire and studded tire bikers, Anchorage is a year round biking town. For folks like me, biking doesn't really start until most of the snow is off the bike paths. The paths along the main roads have been clear since April 1 at least. Here's Dowling on one of my early April rides.
But as of the past weekend, the trails I've tried - and from reports of others - the bike trails along the greenbelts are now snow and ice free. This was the trail from Goose Lake along Northern Lights and then over the the Alaska Native Medical Center last Friday. The shiny stuff on the trail is melt water from the snow on the edge of the trail.
Goose Lake, last Friday was still covered with ice as have been other small lakes I've been by.
I still can't imagine the folks that designed these bike paths on the roads that bulge into the street at the corners. The biker has to move left into traffic. What were they thinking? OK, you can have space marked off from the cars, but only most of the way. Then we push you into the roadway. I'm guessing this wasn't a biker. Or even worse, an engineer who hates being forced to add bike lines, so he (a she wouldn't have done this) does the trail part way and then gets revenge at the corners. (Any engineers reading this - I'm just being playful, like the person who designed this.)
On Bainbridge Island, where they have a similar design, they have curb cuts so bikes go on the sidewalk instead of the street.
But this is a fairly recent improvement for the bike lanes on Bainbridge Island.
Saturday I explored the Campbell Creek trail going south. It was mostly clear, but there were still a few stretches with ice/snow. So coming back I decided to explore along Old Seward Highway. I didn't realize how grimy some of the streets between Old and New Seward are. This was 66th I believe. There was a fire in the old barrel in the middle.
And not all the paths along main streets are great. This is one of the worst. 36th Avenue west of the Old Seward Highway on the south side of the street. The big gravel lot north of New Sagaya feeds rocks and gravel onto the sidewalk. There are big holes in the sidewalk. This is just east of the little mall that has ACS and the Pita Pit. The sidewalk has disappeared under rock and broken asphalt.
And here's a picture in Spenard. I can't quite believe this was the first moose I've seen since we got back into Anchorage early March. It paid no attention to me. I was biking back from the Providence branch in the old REI space. No one had bothered to tell me that my doctor had recently moved from their to Building S over on the main Providence campus. But, I got to see the moose.
"'Caribou calves can outrun bears in 10 days,' he said. 'It takes moose calves about five weeks until they can outrun a bear. They’re vulnerable for a lot longer.'” (from University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.)
The quote above is originally from 1998, but more current articles confirm the odds for calf moose are not good.
I got this quick glimpse of a moose and two calves on a trail leading off from the bike trail this morning. Then I started thinking that this mom has recently given birth to two large babies all alone somewhere in the woods! With no help from Dad, Mom, Sis, or anyone else. It's pretty amazing.
And nature is pretty stark too.
It's the last day of May and I've got 224 km ridden. That's a bit on the low side, but given the long winter, including the April snow, I think I can get on pace for another 1000 km this summer on the Anchorage bike trails.
On the only day with any rain at all, we went downtown and walked the solar system from the sun to Mars, via the other planets on the way. The next ones were too far away to walk.
There was a lot of time at the playground at Elderberry Park (where the Mars sign is), then off to watch people at Fish Creek, but folks said there fish weren't biting. We went to the Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service farm in Mountain View to pick up some veggies and a Burmese soup.
We hiked up the Wolverine Peak trail to just above tree line. We saw a moose in the distance.
They all enjoyed watching the power of the water in Campbell Creek from the bridge on that trail.
Then we met old friends who were headed for a three day backpacking trip and walked part of the way along Powerline Pass near Glen Alps.
We went to the botanical garden where I gave S my old camera and she took some great pictures. (I'll put five stars under her pictures. Two stars for the pictures her brother took.)
*****
*****
Then on up the road to the Campbell Airstrip bridge where they rode their bikes. They also dropped sticks into the water from one side of the bridge then raced over to see it come out the other side and down the creek til they couldn't see it any more.
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We made wishes before blowing the dandelion seeds.
Then yesterday, on their last full day here we headed south. A short stop at McHugh Creek.
*****
Then to the Wild Animal Park. I'd been there once, a long time ago, with a group. Then it was all drive through. Now you can walk or drive, but walking lets you see things you can't see driving.
*****
And finally to Byron Glacier. We've watched it shrink and shrink over the years. But yesterday was a great day to visit. It was shorts and t shirt weather and you could walk up the remaining ice. There's a skeletal remains of snow and ice still on the mountain above. This won't be here much longer, but the kids loved climbing up through the snow.
That's some of the highlights. There was a lot of biking too which they seem to truly love. It was a good week sharing Alaska with the little ones (and their parents too.) Sadly took them to the airport today.
Back around Fall 1981, the University of Alaska Anchorage swimming pool had a challenge - swim the Bering Sea over the semester. In the pool. 50 miles. I've never been as fit as I was that semester. Each swim was not just a swim, but a leg across the Bering Sea. That was a lot of incentive to get in the pool three or four times a week.
So last summer I decided I should have a mental trip in mind for my biking. I chose Santiago Chile to Concepción - a distance of about 650 kilometers, depending on which route you take. So, as I rode last summer, I was in Anchorage, but also in Chile. I looked at maps and pictures of the places I was passing. Just like swimming the Bering Sea, riding from Santiago to Concepción was the inspiration I needed to get on the bike, even on days I was feeling lazy. And once out, I never regretted it.
So I've started already this summer and thought about going from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. I wasn't exactly sure how far that was, but it seemed in the ballpark. I looked on line to see if it was doable. Not only is it doable, but there are a number of companies that will take you on the actual trip and so I picked Exo Travel because their trip was 745 km and the itinerary included a stop in Kamphaengphet - a town I lived in for two years teaching English. I've also spent six months in Chiang Mai over two years and about a year in the Bangkok area.
I've added up the miles from Exo Travel's itinerary and marked the distance from Chiang Mai for each daily destination. The 165 km from Kamphaengphet to Nakhon Sawan would be way too much for me to do in one day. I think about that trip on the main road back in the late 1960s. It was a red dirt road. Very dusty. Lots of rice paddies and some interesting hills jutting up oddly out of the earth. Of course, it's paved now - they were working on that back when I was first there.
So, as of today, I've ridden about 102km. (That doesn't count three or four early, shorter rides on the old mountain bike before the ice was totally gone.)
So let's look at today. Before riding I swept the cottonwood catkins off the deck. I have to do that twice a day right now.
The catkins are VERY sticky. If I don't sweep they stick to the deck, except for the ones that stick to my shoes. Very messy period every year. But they do smell very sweet.
The tulips opened today. At least two of them did.
There was a moose browsing by the trail as I went past the UAA student housing. I'm always amazed at how such huge creatures can be so well hidden out in plain sight.
Then up the trail toward Stuckagain Heights and Campbell Airstrip.
Here's the north fork of Campbell Creek as it crosses under the Stuckagain Heights road.
So given my bike rides so far since April including today, I've covered 102 kms, so I'm about 20 kms out of Lampang. This is an old northern town that still has horse drawn carriages you can use to get around town. There are no moose, but the elephant sanctuary is nearby.
Here's are some links to posts I did at the elephant sanctuary in Lampang.
The doorbell rang about 10am this morning. A man in a fluorescent vest was outside. I'd gotten a red tag on my car a couple of weeks ago saying it would be towed if I didn't move it. I have moved it since then, but my first thought was that this was the tow truck.
But no, he was from Alaska Fish and Game. Could he have my permission to go into my backyard and dart the moose. I didn't even know there was a moose in my back yard. I said sure and went to look out a back window.
Sure enough. In fact there were two resting in the yard. (That brown lump in the upper left is the second moose.
He shot the dart at the closest moose which went up the hill and scampered over the fence. (I'd noticed the other day when I went to the compost heap that there was only about a foot and a half of fence above the snow these days.) Then he was aiming at the second one who'd gotten on its feet by this time.
They found the dart for the first moose in the snow. The assistant is holding the dart in the red circle.
The ADFG agent gave me this card. It's the weekend they're getting DNA samples as part of a moose population census. Maybe a neighbor called. I don't know.
“We could drive around all we wanted, but we would never find that moose in the back of somebody’s house without without the public calling in,” Saalfeld said.
When someone calls in a moose sighting this weekend, it will trigger a series of events. Biologists receive the alert — they average around 1,000 moose tips each weekend. Then, one of seven two-person teams will head to the location of the report.
From there, they fire what’s known as a “biopsy gun,” which lightly strikes the moose with a dart, Saalfeld said.
The dart is designed to pop out quickly, only retaining a bit of tissue that scientists can use to determine that moose’s unique DNA and record it as part of the Anchorage moose population.
“Most of the moose don’t even feel it, or if they feel it, it’s very light,” Saalfeld said. “And they actually typically lay down or sit on top of it, and we have to wait sometimes a pretty good amount of time before we can actually go in and recover that dart because the moose is standing right on top of it for so long.”
The moose in our yard didn't take it that casually. They got out of there as soon as they felt the dart. Or maybe it was seeing a guy with a gun. Now I feel a little guilty giving permission to dart them in our yard. The moose looked like they'd found a comfortable place to rest and then they got shot with a dart. I doubt they'll be back in our yard for a while.
trail past Taku Lake and eventually home. I've gone, as of today, 475 kilometers, this summer. (That means since the trails were clear enough of snow to ride.)
