A Full-time Life

AMAZING ALASKA QUICK-STOPS/PHOTO OPS

There is hardly anyplace in Alaska that isn't a photo-op.   Even when we were just driving from one place to another, we usually had to stop every few yards to take a picture.  These are a few of those quick stops as we drove between Valdez (where we'd stayed for over a week) and our next (several-night) stop in Mt St Elias National Park.  

 

We got out to stretch our legs along the Gilahena River. 

 

An elegant pair of Trumpeter Swans.  We saw them  just after we left Valdez.  

 

 More scenery as we walked along the lovely Gilahena River.

 

 

 

    LINKING TO:  SCENIC WEEKENDS,  SKYWATCH FRIDAY,  SATURDAY CRITTERS, I'D RATHER B'BIRDING and MOSAIC MONDAY.  

Thank you to the hosts  for making these sharing opportunities possible. Each of them has a beautiful blog of their own in addition to managing these memes.   

 THANK YOU to Gemma for SW; to Yogi, Sylvia and Sandy for SWF;  to Eileen for SC;  to Ani of the Bird D'Pot; and to Judith for MM.    

Your generosity is appreciated!

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

 

 

 

 Life is full of hard choices.

 

Back out in the real world (after choosing to follow the left arrow) we noticed this silly street sculpture -- made even funnier because someone had given it a real dandelion to chew on).  

In Eugene, even the real world is slanted toward the whimsical.   

Linking to SIGNS SIGNS.  Thank you Lesley.

ARCTIC OCEAN GEESE

The town of Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay) Alaska is  the biggest industrial area you've ever seen.  There are no homes, no shopping,  not much of anything except machines and shops and trucks associated with oil drilling here at the start of the Alyeska Pipeline.  

The people who work for the various drilling and trucking companies live in barracks called "Man Camps,"   where they eat, sleep, and, I guess, play if they have any time.   They work for varying lengths of time (three weeks or longer) and when the time they signed up for is over, the company flies them back and forth at no cost to Anchorage or Fairbanks for their equal time off .    There are no parks or outdoor recreation areas or amenities at all.

So,  you wouldn't usually go birding in the industrial area of town.  But Deadhorse sits smack on the edge of the Arctic tundra,  which is the breeding grounds for several species.  We hadn't really thought of that though and so we didn't really give ourselves the time to really GO birding here.  But, without really trying we saw quite a few wonderful ones anyway.

 

There were several families of Greater White Fronted Geese.  This was a first-time sighting for us.

And tons of Snow Geese -- both the blue phase and the white.    We had seen flocks and flocks of the white ones in New Mexico one Fall several years ago.    That might even be where these very ones will end up, since they leave the Arctic sometime in October. 

The blue ones were new to us.    When we took the security bus to the Arctic Ocean, there was a hand-made sign out on the tundra (near the oil rigs) that said "Slow Please.  Snow Goose Flight-Training Area."  It made me  happy to know that the workers cared.  (I wish I could have gotten a picture of the sign.    But the driver had his timing down to the second, so I couldn't even ask.)  (Here is a link to an earlier post about this area.)

 

Another shot of the white-fronted goose family. 

 

 

 

These look like Snow Geese, but their billls look black.  Maybe it's a trick of the light.  Otherwise, I'm not sure what these guys are.   

 

Sharing these Arctic Ocean sightings with  WILD BIRD WEDNESDAY.  Thank you Stewart.

VOLUNTEER PARK WATER TOWER

 

The Tower in Seattle's Volunteer Park was built as a water reservoir in 1906.   We climbed the 180 steps (!) to the observation deck which put us at the highest point on the City's beautiful Capitol Hill.

 
 

Placards on the brick walls tell the history of Volunteer Park.  (We learned that it was named as a tribute to Seattle's volunteers in the Spanish-American War, which was not at all what we'd first assumed.)   Other signs pay tribute to the Olmstead Brothers who designed the Park's Gardens and lawns. (They designed Central Park and the Biltmore Mansion among other places.)  

A walk around the circular deck gave us a 360 degree view of beautiful Seattle.

    

 

From one window we saw the Space Needle and Puget Sound beyond it.  

Of course you could see the whole City from the top of the Space Needle too.  But it would cost you -- at the very least an expensive meal.  The Water Tower is free and not as touristy.  

We felt like locals because I think everybody else up there was. There was even a small group of four-year-old girls celebrating a Princess birthday in the magic tower!  And of course their mothers (also in costume) were even having more fun.  

We were lucky to have a very knowledgeable local guide in our brother-in-law, otherwise we'd never have known about this great spot.

   

  

The window fences are quite an elegant way to keep people safe.   And of course looking through them is the actual way our eyes saw the views.  Sometimes I shot what we saw.

And sometimes I poked the camera lens through the big spaces above the window fences and just shot away.   

 

Below a couple of views of Emerald City green:

 

 

 

 There is a lot to see in beautiful Volunteer Park and I hope we can go back on our next visit to Seattle.  (The Arboretum where we saw the beautiful orchids and the stinky corpse plant (HERE) is also in this park.)

 Sharing these views of beautiful Seattle with OUR WORLD TUESDAY and GOOD FENCES.

 Thanks to Lady Fi, Arija, Sandy, Sylvia, Gattina, and Jenn for hosting OWT and to Theresa for GF.

 

 Seattle Park's  page about the tower is HERE.  

 

MATANUSKA VALLEY GARDENS

 

 Back in July we visited the Garden at the Palmer Museum.  Palmer is in Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna Valley (South-central part of the state).  This area was settled by homesteaders and farmers and the farming community is still productive.

 

I was surprised to learn how well  things grow in this State that we outsiders tend to think of  as the 'great frozen North'.   

 Summer is a short season up there, but the long daylight hours and rich glacial soil (especially in this Valley) contribute to remarkable growth.    Record-setting vegetables are grown here.    Everything in the cabbage family, winter squash, and most root vegetables do especially well and the museum grounds had several demonstration vegetable plots.

But I mostly took pictures of the beautiful showy flowers. 

 

 

 Big cabbages may win blue ribbons for Matanuska Valley farmers, but  the big beautiful showy peonies won my heart.

   

 

  The gardens were bursting with color.

 

 

 

 

LINKING TO:  TODAY'S FLOWERS  (thank you to Denise) and to I HEART MACRO (thank you to Laura).

BETWEEN SHOWERS

 

Mid-morning Monday, right outside our window:      

 

 
 

It was an amazing day at the Lake.  We were home  doing household chores around the RV and what great luck it was that we picked this day for it.

The day started out with a golden sunrise, but quickly  turned gray and rainy.... and then, before I even had time to feel bad about the gray, we got that rainbow!     

A few more hours of rain (and time to get some work done) and then by late afternoon, when I was ready for a walk,  the sky had brightened again.   

 

 This was the perfect rainy day!

(Morning sun on the sides, evening shadows and reflections in the middle.)

 The birds were very active in between showers, working over the neighborhood feeders and the blackberry bushes.

 They like to stock up for a rainy day  (or hour). 

 

 

 

 This little blacktail deer bounded across the road right in front of me (on my walk).   And then looked back, I guess  to see whether I was still there.  (The grass is so dry -- easy to see that the rain is needed!)

 

(The ponds are filling in more every day.  And I even caught a little bit of the sunset, which we don't usually see here.)

Sharing this amazing day at the Lake with SKYWATCH FRIDAY,  SATURDAY CRITTERS,  THE BIRD D'POT, and MOSAIC MONDAY.

 

Thank you to the hosts of all of these wonderful memes.

 

 

CHECKING OUT A NEW LIBRARY

 

 

Could there possibly be a better name for a used book store?

 

Eugene Public Library

 

Or a better name for the coffee shop in the lobby of a library?

 

 

We're fans of libraries.  This one is all new since the time we lived in this area.  I love what they've done to the place!

 

 

LINKING to SIGNS SIGNS.  Thank you Lesley.

WE DID IT ... BACKWARDS

The Alaska Highway (formerly known as the AlCan) was built during WWII to connect the United States to its (then) territory of Alaska through Canada.   It opened to the public in 1948, when much of the route was still rough and unpaved.  Quite a few  tourists who braved it bought the bumper sticker that  said "We survived the Alcan." 

 

 Now paved over its entire length, it's fairly smooth driving.    Not the worst road we've ever driven by far.  Not even the worst one in Alaska.  But we honored the history of those who went before by taking the obligatory picture of  the start of the highway -- at Dawson Creek BC.    (Only, for us, Dawson Creek was the end rather than the beginning of the road.)

      

 

Like just about everywhere in Alaska, the drive-by scenery along the Highway was stupendous.   

 

 

But also like everywhere else in the State, there are only two seasons:  Winter and Road Construction.  One time, we followed this pilot car for over 15 miles.   Road crews keep very busy repairing frost heaves and other weather damage.

 

 

 

 

Of course, the scenery was even better when we could get out of the car to explore and we felt fortunate to be able to do that.

 

 From the Alaska Milepost guidebook:

"The Alaska Highway begins (or ends) at Mile 0 in Dawson Creek, BC. The first 613 miles/987 km of the Alaska Highway are in British Columbia, where it is designated BC Highway 97 North.  

The highway travels in a northwesterly direction to the Yukon  border near Watson Lake, YT (Historical Mile 635). From there it continues as Yukon Highway 1, crossing 577 miles/929 km of Yukon to Port Alcan on the Alaska border.

The Alaska Highway crosses into Alaska at Historical Mile 1221.8, where it becomes Alaska Route 2. From this international border, it is 200 miles/322 km to Delta Junction, AK (Historical Mile 1422), the official end of the Alaska Highway. " 

 

We drove all of it.  Not in one fell swoop  --   parts of it at a time with side jaunts here and there.     We stayed overnight in Delta Junction (the end/beginning of the Highway) on August 2 and we got the other end at Dawson Creek on the 5th of September.  Even covering all those miles, that gave us  some time to explore.

 

 

So we  survived the Alcan Highway -- even though we did it backwards.  (There might be a metaphor for our life in there somewhere!)

 

 

LINKING with the wonderful sharing opportunity provided by the host team of OUR WORLD on TUESDAY.  Thank you Lady Fi, Sylvia, Sandy, Gattina, Arija, and Jenn.

SCENE AT THE SHORE

 Scenes from the RV Park where we are spending this beautiful month.

 

 

 

Last year we went to Florida much earlier and really missed the whole Fall season. It's good to be celebrating a beautiful Autumn at the Lake this year.

 

 

But these pictures mark the beginning of the annual draw-down of Fern Ridge Lake.   The dock area (above) is already empty as people must pull their boats by the first of October.  

 

The pond areas near the RV Park are starting to get shallower.   We will still have water in front of our picture window, but the edges of the Lake will soon be grassy wetlands instead of deep water.

 

 

 

Linking to Gemma's SCENIC WEEKENDS and to Judith's MOSAIC MONDAY.    Thank you for these lovely sharing opportunities.

DECORATED FENCES in Seldovia

Scroll down for the bird!

Seldovia was the picturesque Kenai Peninsula island village where we spent several hours in the middle of a day cruise  (HERE if you missed it).    The town was full of photo opportunities (which is sort of the definition of picturesque, isn't it))!    And I knew as soon as I took the ones in this post where I'd eventually link them! 

 

 

 This was one of several sweet pocket parks that border the wooden sidewalks.   Besides the wonderful adornments to the wooden fence, there are forget-me-nots (Alaska's State Flower) and those big leaves are rhubarb, which  thrives in the State.  We saw it often, usually used, like it is here, as a decorative plant.  

 

 More views of the boots on the fence.  We were there early in June.  Probably by later in the summer,  flowers were blooming in each one.

 Below is another Seldovia wooden fence with a living decoration sitting on it: 

 We watched the bird as it splashed in a puddle and then flew up to the fence to fluff out its feathers.  At the time, I was sure it was a young magpie, but when I downloaded the pictures I wasn't sure any more, because it looks like its eyes are blue.   I don't know what else it could be though.   Any help as always is welcome!  

 

For comparison, here's an adult black-billed magpie, not on a fence but also in Seldovia.  

(This picture reminds me that we saw more dandelions in Alaska than I've ever seen in my life.  

We found it rather refreshing that people seemed to enjoy the bright yellow without getting all shook up because they were weeds.) 

Spring and Summer are pretty short seasons up there so I'm sure they are happy for the color! 

Linking this post to GOOD FENCES, with thanks to Theresa of the Run-A-Round Ranch and to (Saturday's)  THE BIRD D'POT with thanks to Anni  who would Rather Be Birding.

GREBES REFLECTED UNDER AUTUMN SKIES

 

We're starting to see a little bit of Fall color at the Lake .... and lots of lovely evening light.   

 

 

And some rather amazing reflections.

   

 

 

Even fairly deep in the reeds, the sunlight casts a perfect mirror image of a solitary pie-billed grebe.

 

 

 

I focused on these swirls and was lucky to catch this one just as it emerged.

 

 

 

Cloud  reflections.    Every evening is different along the edge of the Lake.

 

 

 

 

We actually see more Western Grebes than we do the pie billed.   Unlike the pie-billed, they often swim in groups out in the open part of the Lake, so we see them right out our window almost every morning.  But they have a very bad habit of diving the minute I snap the camera.   

 

LINKING to WILD BIRD WEDNESDAY (thank you Stewart) and to SKYWATCH FRIDAY (thanks to Yogi, Sylvia, and Sandy).

A MUSHROOMING POPULATION

 

 

Nature has reclaimed the abandoned town of Dyea Alaska,  once a major port for Klondike goldrush travel.   Mushrooms and other fungi thrive where storekeepers once sold supplies to stampeders.

 

 

The area is now owned by the National Park Service; some historical artifacts and ruins can be seen on a self-guided walk.  Even better, the reclaimed forest was a quiet and beautiful place for a long nature walk -- a perfect day trip to escape from the touristy city of Skagway, where we were staying.

 

 

 At the time of the goldrush, this area was a grassland and the forest is not yet mature ... the process known as plant succession is underway here.  As it matures, spruce, hemlock, and cottonwood trees will  give way to the shade-tolerant western hemlock.

At its present stage, the forest-floor provides the perfect home for mushrooms and fungi.  So many varieties that we lost count.   (But I think we got pictures of most of them.)

 

 

 Magical mushroom, I'm sure.

 

 

Fungi on parade.

 

 

 Broken but still beautiful.

 

Linking this post to Laura's I HEART MACRO; to Judith's MOSAIC MONDAY; and to Michelle's NATURE NOTES.  

Thank you to each of these lovely ladies for giving us these opportunities to share and learn.

THREE SHOTS OF MORNING

 

 Three shots of  an October morning here at the Lake.   An hour after sunrise and it is already a perfect day -- nothing else needed  (well, except maybe three shots of black coffee).  

 

 We have been lucky with summer-like days  since we returned to the lower 48.    

(In fact, the weather feels more like summer than our actual summer in Alaska did.)

 

 

 

 I often run outside first thing in the morning to catch these scenic sky moments.   They don't last long.    The neighbors here in the RV Park are probably thinking 'oh that crazy pajama-lady photographer is back!'.

 

 

 

 

Sharing with SKYWATCH FRIDAY and SCENIC WEEKENDS. 

 

Thanks to Yogi, Sandy, and Sylvia for SWF and to Gemma for Scenic Weekends.     

 

 

 

 

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?

 

Anybody else old enough to remember penny scales?  

 

 

While Bill registered us for a night's stay at Tolsona Wilderness Campground (on Alaska's Glen Highway),  I was busy taking pictures.   This was a private campground.  There were antiques, including this wonderful scale,  and well-used but now abandoned farm machinery everywhere we looked --  sadly just rusting away in the weather.  

 

 

It was a big place with nice walks along the river  -- it even had a flower bed (an old old visual joke that still makes me smile).

 

 

When the owner noticed our interest, she told us the whole place was for sale and the antiques went with it.    But all we wanted to own was the pictures.

 

 

Linking to Lesley's SIGNS SIGNS (as always one of my favorite places) and to next week's  RUBBISH TUESDAY (a new meme for me; Roan says it is a place to post your pictures of old and deteriorating items, of which I always seem to have a lot)

 

Thank you to Lesley and to Roan.

 

 

A TASTE OF RUSSIA

I made this post back in June while we were on the Kenai Peninsula, then didn't have a chance to post it in a timely fashion because we ran out of good Internet.   We loved this experience and the memory is part of Our World! 

 

 

 

The Alaska Territory was purchased from Russia in 1867.  There is a lot to remind residents and travelers of the State's Russian heritage.  Especially while on the Peninsula, we often saw old-style Russian Orthodox churches, with their distinctive blue onion domes.     This one was open for tours.  

But our most interesting Russian-related experience was the night we spent in the Old-Believer's village of Nikolaevsk, up a mountain road a few miles North of Homer.     We reserved our RV  space for the night along with a Russian dinner at the cafe  -- we really didn't have a choice about dinner.  When Bill inquired about a vacancy for the night, Nina (the owner and chef)  said "yes, we have an RV space.  What time do you wish dinner?"  

 

 

Nina's Restaurant and the Nikolaevsk Church

 

   So she cooked a typical Russian meal for the two of us as we watched  -- there was only one other table of people (who were tourists from Russia), so for a brief time we felt like we'd had a short visit in another country.    (I didn't get a picture of the first course, a borscht soup, which was our favorite part of the meal -- too busy slurping!).  The tea is fireweed tea -- made from that wildflower that grows everywhere here in Alaska.  (That's probably not typical Russian tea.)

 

 

 

 That is, of course, Nina Fefelov in the collage above -- and after dinner was cooked, she was gracious about answering questions (although she was a little bit hard to understand).  Nina was an electrical engineer in Russia before she met her husband and emigrated to Alaska, where her father-in-law was the priest for the church.     She currently teaches Russian in the parochial grade school in the village as well as running her businesses.

 

 

   

 It was a rather primitive RV Park -- really just a place to park in a vacant lot next to the cafe  (there was an electric hookup).  But there was this beautiful view and we had a completely different and unexpected experience.  We were glad we found this place!

 

 

Linking to OUR WORLD on TUESDAY.  (Thank you to Lady Fi, Arija, Gattina, Sandy, Sylvia, and Jenn.)

 

 

 

MIXED BOUQUET (flashback to last spring)

 Note:  I wrote this post in late May just before we left for our Alaska trip, but was not able to post it.  These flowers are   too pretty to forget, so here's a flashback to late Spring in our daughter and son-in-law's yard.  

 We had a short time to visit with our kids in May -- much earlier than we usually arrive back in the Pacific Northwest.  It was a wonderful time for flowers.  Some late Spring blooms were at their peak (like the pink rhododendron and the iris that I posted earlier.)  And  a few  summer  flowers were already showing their colors as well.

This whole bouquet of pictures was "gathered"  on the first May day we spent with  our daughter and son-in-law in their yard.

  

 Peonies ready to burst into bloom, shy forget-me-nots, rosebuds, orange poppies, red  and lavender rhododendrons, columbine,  and California poppies .  

The California poppies were abundant not only in their yard, but all over the area. We never used to see them here when we lived in Oregon -- like a lot of  people from the next state south, I guess they decided to migrate to Oregon (maybe they too were tired of all the traffic and smog.)  

 On a camping trip to California many years ago, we looked and looked for this flower and never even saw a one.   I can't remember if we were too early or too late or if it was just a bad year for them.  

They may be more common now, but they were still a welcome sight.

 

 

POSTING TO:  TODAY'S FLOWERS  (thank you Denise),  MOSAIC MONDAY (thank you to Judith), and (next Tuesday) to NF BLO-MA (thank you).

 

 

MEW GULLS and ARCTIC TERN

(As promised, still blogging about our Alaska summer trip, even though it ended in early September.) 

 

 

Above -- this handsome bird (I'm pretty sure an Arctic Tern), posed beautifully along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail in Anchorage.    

 

And here's another tern sleeping right through Mother Mew Gull's lesson for the day.  (Doesn't she just look as if she's giving those kids a lecture?)

 

 

If  this brood is any kind of example of how healthy they are, the species is definitely not in 'danger of being endangered.'

We've seen an awful lot of Gulls in our lifetime, but realized here that we'd never before seen Gull babies.  

 

 

 

They weren't happy at all when mom flew off.  Lots and lots of plaintive baby gull noises.  (Come on kids, I'm sure she's just going out to get some lunch for you!)

 

LINKING to SATURDAY CRITTERS (thank you to Eileen) and to WILD BIRD WEDNESDAY (thanks to Stewart).

WHIMSICAL ALASKA

 

We found this bit of  whimsy along a road somewhere in Alaska:  

 

Someone had found a funny place for their unneeded land-line phone.  There were several handwritten signs carefully enclosed in plastic.  (I think more than one person had added signs from time to time.)  

And, as long as we're looking at whimsical signs from Alaska:

 

 

 

We enjoyed a good meal at this BrewPub while staying in Soldanta.  Too bad, so sad, we couldn't wait until tomorrow, so we had to pay for our beer.

 

LINKED TO LESLEY'S SIGNS SIGNS  and THERESA'S GOOD FENCES.   Thanks for hosting these  memes --  great places to indulge in a bit of whimsy from anyplace in the world.