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.

Denali's Big, But Don't Forget The Tiny

Denali National Park is known for its huge vistas, where a moose becomes a tiny spot.  But I like to focus on those tiny spots.

Here's a whole world on a tree stump.

And here, bigger than life-sized, is the leg and foot of a yellow rumped warbler.





Rocks and mosses.

There weren't too many flowers open yet, but there were some mountain aven.
















And this frigid coltsfoot.

When you get this close to a white crowned sparrow, you can start to see individual features that would allow you to distinguish one bird from another.

Spectacular orange lichen on the rocks.  I'm going with Xanthoria Elegans on this one.  You can check out a lot of different lichens here.  From Wikipedia:

This species grows on rock, both calcareous and siliceous, occasionally overgrowing moss or litter or rock. It is often found on exposed to somewhat sheltered sites, often near bird or small-mammal droppings.^[4] It has also adapted successfully to growth on man-made and natural growing surfaces from the sea-water spray zone to the boreal forest and in the grasslands of the continental interior.^[10][11][12] It can thrive in areas having less than 6 centimetres (2.4 in) annual precipitation and can survive submerged in streams for much of the growing season.^[5]
Xanthoria elegans has an extremely broad circumpolar and alpine distribution, and is found on all continents except Australia.^[13] It is widespread in Antarctic regions.^[14]
The lichen is used as a model system to study the potential to resist extreme environments of outer space. Out of various lichens tested, it showed the ability to recover from space-simulating situations, including exposure to 16 hours of vacuum at 10⁻³ Pa and UV radiation at wavelengths less than 160 nm or greater than 400 nm.^[15] X. elegans has survived an 18 month exposure to solar UV radiation, cosmic rays, vacuum and varying temperatures in an experiment performed by the ESA outside of the ISS.^[16]