Photography-Life in Alaska-Random Thoughts
Photography highlighting Alaska, the most beautiful place on earth.
A Steller's Jay paid a visit this morning. We haven't seen them around for most of the summer, so it must mean the seasons are changing and fall is definitely in the air. They'll be migrating through in the coming weeks. Some will stay all winter, others will head further south.
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We headed up to Denali National Park and Preserve on Thursday, August 24th for our last trip to the park this season. We spent four days mountain biking the Park Road, using the shuttle buses to take the bikes to the top of a pass, and then using gravity to coast to the bottom :) We call this the Denali Downhill. After setting up camp at Teklanika campground inside the park, we managed to get the bikes on a shuttle bus around 3 pm and head up to Sable Pass. It turned out that a section of Igloo Canyon and the walk-in campground at Igloo Creek were closed to both hikers and bikers because of a couple of problem juvenile delinquent bears who had decided to explore a tent at Igloo a couple of weeks earlier. No one was inside at the time, but this was unusual behavior, plus these bears had been interacting a bit too much with the shuttle buses on the road, so the Rangers decided to do some aversion therapy with them. They've set up a tent with an electric fence around it to shock them if they do it again, and they've also been following these bears along the Park Road shooting them with bean bag slugs if they get too curious with buses, etc. All this leads to the fact that we saw nine bears within a mile in Igloo Canyon in our first half hour! It's gonna be another fun trip, so come along for the ride. Click on the images for full-screen and then cursor over for captions!
We finally had our first visible aurora from Bear Valley early this morning, starting around midnight. I stayed up until 3 am, but it never quite turned into an intense display. Still, it was great to see her again, and we had the added bonus of a gorgeous Milky Way. Click images for full-screen.
I swear, it feels like it's been raining every day for the entire month of August. We missed the Eclipse yesterday here in Anchorage, but this afternoon the clouds finally departed and we were reminded once again why we love it here. And just possibly, the first aurora of the season tonight if it stays clear! Click for full-screen.
A gangly young cow moose in the backyard this afternoon trimming the bushes for me.
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