Turnagain Arm

Spent the early part of the day meandering south from Anchorage to the town of Girdwood. The short drive is along the shore of Turnagain Arm, which is famous for its tidal bore. The bore today wasn't noticeable.

Potter's Marsh area


While not a beautiful photo, I liked all of the layers here: blue sky, grayish clouds, distant snowy mountains, mud flats at low tide, train tracks, gravel track base, & wildflowers. 

This is an old rotary snow plow train & an outfit car. The display of various weights of train tracks explained their different uses. 


Beluga Point

Above the overlook in the mountains were a mountain goat & a Dall sheep. 




Bird Point


campsite at Girdwood

Spent last night in the parking lot of a Bass Pro Shop in Anchorage with more than 3 dozen other RVs, which is far & away the most I've ever seen in a Walmart/Cracker Barrel/Bass Pro Shop/etc. While fine for a quick overnight, it makes me appreciate this campsite. 

This site is open for solar collection & StarLink reception, but also nestled in the thick forest - very quiet & private. All of these different wildflowers are all here in my campsite. 




Won't be going to fireworks tonight as it will never get dark here in the "Land of the Midnight Sun", so they won't show up very well anyway. 

*   *   *   *   *

Wildlife sightings

today: Dall sheep - 1        mountain goats - 1

trip total so far: 

    black bears - 4          deer - 2                grizzlies - 1            moose - 6

    stone sheep - 8        elk - 1                   caribou - 15            bison - 42    

    Dall sheep - 11        porcupines -1         mountain goats - 1


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The ALCAN & Cassiar

Image
Most of today's drive was on the section of the ALCAN east of Whitehorse, which I'd driven on the way out, so no scenery pics.  There are still some gas pumps in Canada that don't take credit cards. It amazes me that you pump first & then go in to pay.  The Stewart-Cassiar Highway is even more desolate than the ALCAN, so everyone turning south onto the Cassiar stops at the same gas station to fill up. While pumping gas there, a heavy duty truck camper pulled up next to me. Even more than the rig, the map on the side caught my eye. This guy has been on the road for 15 years & been to all of the places on this map - amazing! I got so distracted by the map that I forgot to take a pic of the rig. He bought the truck in Australia with another camper on it. That camper fell apart in South America, so he took the truck to the Netherlands where they built him a custom expedition-style rig. He's now back "home" in northwestern Canada for a while. A short distan...
Read more

boat tour to wildlife & glaciers

Image
I can now die a happy woman! The boat trip was fantastic in every way. (Major Marine 8.5 hour tour on Orca Song from Seward to the Northwestern Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park) We saw SO MUCH wildlife, including several rare sightings & behaviors.  Here is the first of 3 sea otters we saw.  This is the sea cave & rocks where we got very close to see sea stars & jelly fish - many, many of each.  A dozen Dall's porpoises swam & played near our boat for a while. They swam so fast that they were hard to photograph, but we saw each one many times. This group of Stellar's sea lions is typical of what one sees in Alaska, that is no babies, just a group of adults hauled up on shore.   Though humpback whales are often seen in this area, they are mostly seen alone or perhaps a mom & baby. Not only did we see a whole pod, we saw them engage in what is called bubble net feeding. Many pods around the world do not engage in this type of feeding. There are...
Read more

Alaska!

Image
Top-of-the-World Highway This road runs from Dawson City in the Yukon into Alaska. The 110-mile drive today was a dirt road with the exception of a 9-mile long paved stretch in the middle - seems odd to have a short paved stretch in the middle of a long dirt highway.  arrived in Alaska! I've wanted to come to Alaska since I was 14. My day trip to Skagway last week was to a small corner of Alaska, but that corner isn't connected to this main part of the state, so this feels like my official arrival.                                         Chicken, Alaska Apparently, the original residents here wanted to name the town after a chicken-like bird called a ptarmigan. However, they couldn't agree on how to spell that, so they compromised on "Chicken". It became a small town when the Pedro Dredge (now a National Historic Site) was set up here to dig for gold. Besides a few crazy tourists who...
Read more