Seward Kayaking

Doug and I went Kayaking today. Still waters, easy three hour kayak. John of Sun Cove Kayakers was a great guide for us and the three others. J was off walking and in the library.

American Dipper Video

I'm going out on a limb here and calling this an American Dipper. Let me know if I've messed up. It looks like the dipper in the book and it certainly dips regularly. This is a much better bird video than I normally put up because it isn't my video. Doug took it with his fancy Fuji digital camera with good optical zoom.



OK, I realized that I needed to look this bird up to be sure. The bird's eyes kept turning white, so we surmised it had white eyelids. So when I checked online, Wikipedia confirmed it was an American dipper:

The American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus), also known as a Water Ouzel, is a stocky dark grey bird with a head sometimes tinged with brown, and white feathers on the eyelids cause the eyes to flash white as the bird blinks. It is 16.5 cm long and weighs on average 46 g. It has long legs, and bobs its whole body up and down during pauses as it feeds on the bottom of fast-moving, rocky streams. It inhabits the mountainous regions of Central America and western North America from Panama to Alaska.

This species, like other dippers, is equipped with an extra eyelid called a "nictitating membrane" that allows it to see underwater, and scales that close its nostrils when submerged. Dippers also produce more oil than most birds, which may help keep them warmer when seeking food underwater.

I also thought it strange that the English vernacular name is 'American' but the Latin name is 'mexicanus'. But given it's range, American is probably more accurate.

Resurrection Bay Cruise

Blogger seems to be having a problem with uploading photos. Glad I got yesterday's up this morning. Doug and I cruised Resurrection (there's resurrection and insurrection, but I've never heard of or can find through google just plain 'surrection') Bay out of Seward today while J walked and hung out in Seward (she doesn't do well on boats.) Clouds dominate Seward today, but only a short drizzle on the boat. Imagine stunning pictures of green water, green and brown mountains, and grey clouds.

[10pm: The photo uploading problem is over here are the pics.]

The view from the boat coming out of the Seward boat harbor.

Inside the boat

The lunch buffet

Getting close up to the rocks

This company - Major Marine Tours - has an agreement with the National Park Service so there were rangers on board giving information on the area. Here Doug is looking at a jar with plankton that had been scooped up from the water. Part of the tour goes through Kenai Fjords National Park.

I know, the puffin is barely visible, but I thought the water had a nice pattern to it.

This is a kittiwake rookery

On our way back. Although it was cloudy it only rained a few drops and the sea was very calm. We saw puffins (tufted and horned), sea lions, harbor seals, mountain goats, otters (one with an octopus, one with a crab, and one with a baby), bald eagles, and various other birds. We didn't see any whales or dolphins.

To Seward

Doug and I spent Saturday biking the loop from our house around Goose Lake to Kincaid and back, with a detour to the Saturday market downtown. Yesterday we (including J) hiked to Ptarmigan Lake and today we're getting ready to do a Ressurection Bay cruise. J doesn't do boats. Doug's staying a Ballaine's BB in Seward tonight and I'm using their wifi. So here are a couple of pictures of yesterday.

Doug on the trail.

Ptarmigan Lake

Can you spot the American dipper? Middle on the left.

The lake again.

View on the hike back.

Ptarmigan Creek.

Visiting European Education Students at UAA

Yesterday afternoon I had the chance to do a two hour workshop with a group of European education students (one is already a teacher) who are in Anchorage for a month studying education topics, and if I understand it right, with a focus on teaching about diversity. This is the third summer I've worked with one of these groups and they've always had a very interesting mix of students and this year's group is no exception.



There are students from Germany, Spain, France, and England this year.



The German groups have always sent students with diverse ethnicity. This year among the German group were people of Albanian, Greek, and Turkish descent.



The official title of this program which is administered by the American Russian Center at UAA is 2008 Summer Institute for Outstanding European Students in Education. (Actually, the paper I have has two similar titles. The other one is for "European student leaders.")

The participants all speak excellent English and have great senses of humor. They'll be getting classroom teaching and, if the program follows last year's, they'll be making various education related field trips - to ,schools in the Anchorage School District, McLaughlin Youth Center, etc. They are not a shy group and I asked their before posting the pictures.

Wat Alaska Yana Vararam - Log Cabin Buddhist Temple

Ben at Thai Kitchen has been asking me to go with him to meet the Abbot at the Thai Budhist Temple. So today we went. Note the blue sky. It was a very nice summery day. Finally.





Phramaja (a title for monks) Boonnet is one of a few monks who is here in Anchorage at this wat (temple).











Phramaja Lertsak is the monk I was there to meet. He got his PhD in India and speaks good English. We talked about a lot of things including the possibility of his lecturing on Buddhism at UAA or APU. He has followers in Thailand who want to build a wat for him, but he told me that he wanted to learn more about the world outside of Thailand first as well as work on his inner learning.







This is the room for meditation and and prayer.








In one part of the wat are large framed pictures that tell the story of the life of Buddha.







At 11 am everyday members of the wat bring food for the monks. Today was the Thai Kitchen's day to bring food as did another community member. Thai monks do not eat after noon, though they can drink water or fruit juice.













There is also a library with books in Thai and in English on Buddhism. They gave me a book on the wat.

The wat has been there since 1996, but is well hidden on D St right near C St. and Fireweed. The booklet says there's morning and evening chanting and meditation at 8am and 8pm that is open to the public.

Denali National Park, Post 3: Denali Road Closings and Openings

We went with Doug to the bus stop at Teklanika in hopes that not all eleven would make it for the hike. When the Discovery Hike bus came, we learned that no one had canceled, but we could hitch a ride on the bus. As we went the driver told us that night rains had been particularly heavy and that there’d been land slides at Polychrome Pass and the crews were working to open the roads. The rivers were fuller and browner than the day before. Buses were delayed and reportedly stacking up.

The Discovery Hike had been moved because the original site had too much water. After Doug got off with the hike group, J and I went on to Toklat, a few miles past the hike drop off point. It was raining and we got into the tent Quonset hut (you can see it in the middle far left of the picture) that served as a book store in this remote spot. The ranger there suggested two hiking options. We took the one across the road from the book store up a drainage from the mountain there. Basically it was a wide rocky area going up the mountain with a very fast, brown creek, rushing full and white down the mountain. We went up about an hour. The rain had stopped.and by the time we got back to the bookstore, it was raining slightly again. We got onto the bus waiting in the parking lot heading back to Riley Creek.



There were a lot of Indians on the bus and I learned from the two men sitting behind us this was one family, mostly from New York and New Jersey, 28 people total, traveling together, half on this bus. The other group - the under 40 group - were off on more rigorous activities. It was not a good day for busing in Denali. The bus windows were pretty muddy because the road was so wet. We had to wait a couple of times for rocks to be cleared from the road. But we did get to see a bear in the gully below. Here's a pond off the road near the Teklanika campground.

Although we had a three day pass, Doug’s sleeping back had gotten wet in all the rain and we decided to head home. We stopped to walk the trail along Savage River.


Here's the van after 18 miles of very wet dirt road at the Savage River trailhead. Then off to Talkeetna for dinner at Cafe Michele, which Doug had found in his Rough Guide: Alaska. I’m afraid we’d been depriving him with our camp food. He politely said it was good, but cooking over a campfire takes a while and using the coals has uneven results. Worst of all for Doug, we’d somehow left the salt at home. Not a problem for us, but a serious one for Doug. So here is Doug's dessert at Michele's. [What's wrong with this Cheesecake picture? Well, by size and color, the cheesecake should be the main focus of this picture. But the line of the plate and the lip of the creamer and both point toward the huge cup of coffee pushing the eye in that direction. So the eye is bouncing between the cup and the cheesecake. At least that's how I see it.]

Now J is driving and I’ve pulled out the laptop for the first time on the trip to get this done as we drive into Wasilla and on to Anchorage. It’s just past midnight and pretty much dark. There’s a little patch of sunset to the north where there’s a break in the clouds.

[I'm posting this Thursday morning after having breakfast on the deck. Sleeping bags and tent parts enjoying drying out in the warm Anchorage sunshine. I still am partly in Denali, especially when picking photos for the blog. These mountains and valleys took hundreds of millions of years to come about. What is happening to Ted Stevens seems much less important in that context.]

Denali National Park, Post 2 : Late Sun, Mountain Views

By the time we got our dishes washed and were getting ready for bed, late night sun turned on the green glow on a mountain top above us. The rain seemed over. We made it through the night with no rain and there even appeared to be some clear sky to the west. J got off the bus at Polychrome Pass - all the colors glowing in sunlight - where she bonded with a caribou that walked right up next to her.



























Doug and I went on. We rounded a bend - I forget which pass - and there were both peaks of Denali in front of us. By the time we’d gotten to Eilson, there were some little clouds passing by, but the Mountain was mostly visible. [on the way in - the best pics are in the Pentax still]











This next picture is when we got back to Eilson from Wonder Lake. No more Mountain.








And we’d seen caribou, moose, bear, and sheep. Nothing real close to the road, but close enough to see well through the binoculars. As we got closer to Wonder Lake, the Mountain, in her modesty, added more and more clouds to cover up. By the time we got back to Eilson it was as though there was no mountain there. We’d added beaver, fox, common goldeneye, and white fronted goose to our sightings. And nearing Igloo campground we watched as a nearby golden eagle repeatedly dove after snowshoe hares that scattered below.We also saw a grizzly digging after ground squirrels. One ran off without the bear seeing. The bear's head is in the hole he'd just dug.

By the time we got dinner dishes washed, it was starting to drizzle. During the night the rain was a steady rhythm. Doug knocked on the camper about 7:15 am when the rain had stopped. Whoops, my alarm hadn’t gone off.

Denali National Park, Post 1: Aramark and the Park Service

It's 1:45am on Thursday. We've been home long enough to get most stuff out of the van. I was in the back seat from Talkeetna to Anchorage and after a nap I pulled out the computer and began notes for the Denali trip.

I'm not sure how much of this I'll get written in the end. Probably just short notes in passing.

• There was the big rain last night at Denali that caused a number of rock slides and slowdown of the buses, but things were cleared up pretty quickly.
  
• There's the finicky weather and the luck of the draw as we drove up in rain on Monday afternoon, had some beautiful clear views of the Mountain yesterday when our Wonder Lake bus ride was scheduled, and then it rained again last night and was cloudy and rainy much of our time in the park. Enough so that we came home early because Doug's sleeping back was wet and the forecast was for more rain.
  
• And then there's the sense I felt here and there of the lack of communication and coordination between Aramark and the Park Service.
  
• And finally, the bus drivers are frustrated and hopeful that Aramark will settle in their favor and they won't have to go out on strike. It's got to happen while the tourists are still here if will have any impact.

But before posting I looked at my email where I get copies of the comments that people posted on the blog. So, Steve Heimel, it was your comment that alerted me to the fact that while I was doing important things at Denali, and consumed by weather and mountains, animals and bus schedules, cooking over coals, and doing lots of catching up with Doug, you all had such mundane things as political indictments. It all seems so boring in comparison. So, here's the first post.

Note: The photos in the next posts will be from my Canon. I grabbed my old Pentax for the trip because I wasn't sure where my battery charger was and my battery was low. It turned up in the car. A major reason why I've become addicted to the digital camera: I still have pictures to take on the roll in my camera, but the digital pics are already on the computer and ready to go. BTW, there are outlets at Eilson where one can stick a battery charger between buses.



We got out of the house before 9am Monday. It was cloudy and cool. The view from mile 135 was of clouds obscuring even the foot hills. You could see the river. Within an hour it was raining hard. Aramark employee at the WAC (Wilderness Access Center) gave us a handwritten note to put on our dashboard to show we had reservations at Teklanika (and so could drive to the campground) and a printed paper to put up at the campground.

Reservations for Discovery Hikes had to be made at the Visitors’ Center (Park Service, not contract Aramark employees.) There was only one place left on the Wednesday hike (Tuesday we were scheduled on the Wonder Lake bus) so we signed up Doug. We were given a paper that confirmed the booking and were told we had to go back to the WAC to pay. What? After some questioning back and forth, the young man serving us asked someone else, who quickly ascertained that we already had TEK passes and didn’t need to do anything more.

If you camp at Teklanika Campground (mile 30 of the road in the park) you have to reserve for three nights. You can get a one day bus pass for the park with a reservation for a specific bus on your first full day. After that you can use the pass on a space available basis anywhere after mile 30. They call this special bus pass a Tek pass. When we made the reservation, I understood the person to say it was good for the next two days. But when we got there our campground host said, no, only for the second day. Since we left on the second day, we didn't test it. The drivers really didn't ask to see the passes inside the park.

At mile 12 at the end of the paved road at Savage River. you get to the stop where you can’t go any further in a car unless you have a campground reservation at Teklanika. The ranger there looked at the handwritten note in our windshield and asked if we had a green card. No, that was what they gave us. Do you have the campground paper? That we had, so the ranger took the windshiled note into the little booth and soon came back with a green printed card to put into our windshield with our dates. The Aramark employees at the WAC were supposed to give us the green card.

This was our first sign of conflict between the contractors - Aramark and Doyon - and the Park Service employees. When we left today, a day early, I told the campground hosts we were leaving early so they could notify the reservations people that there would be an extra campground available at Teklanika. When we got to the ranger at Savage River where you exit the permit needed area, the ranger there said we should stop at the WAC and let them know. I said I told the campground hosts. The answer: Yes, but they are Park Service and reservations is Aramark. I'm supposed to go the short road to the WAC, park the car, walk to the building, wait in line because the Park Service and the private contractor can't communicate? Some people want to help out by notifying Park people that they are leaving early, but when they have to give up precious vacation time to do, I suspect most people won't.