Inktrails from Alaska

I Didn't Sign Up For This

Today it's been 21 straight days of rain and gray skies. The yard has given itself over to mushrooms. Where there was once a yellowjacket every three inches there are now mushrooms. The boards on the walkway to my door are now rotting. There is white mold, and some black fungus as well. The grass is always wet, I'm walking the dog in the rain, and I had to move my begonias under cover because they were drowning.

If I had wanted to live in Southeast Alaska, I would have moved to Southeast Alaska!

Bathroom Nightmare

This is my bathroom light fixture. Those are yellowjackets that have been coming into my house ever since I've lived here. In fact, my landlord says they've been doing that the entire time he's owned the house, which is twenty years.

Why, I wonder, has he never once called an exterminator?

I can't take a shower in there. I just can't. There are too many of them, don't you agree? How would YOU like to come out of the shower dripping wet and naked and have yellowjackets flying around the bathroom?

That's my shower curtain. There's a dead on IN the shower because I squirted it with soapy water.

You know, if it were garter snakes I could deal with it. Roaches I have dealt with as well, they come with the landscape in New Mexico, they are part of the wildlife there. I hate them, but they don't make my skin crawl.

Yellowjackets attacked me once. Stevie and Hunter tried to protect me as I ran into the house! It was so amazing to see the dogs attacking the wasps that were attacking me! None of us got stung very bad, but it sure has sensitized me to their threat.

I've shut the bathroom door. My landlord has apparently deluded himself for decades that the yellowjackets aren't in the walls. For some reason he thought they were just coming in from the outside. But I live behind TWO doors, and I have screens on my windows. I've known they were in the walls from day one.
                                                                            
Sigh.

I've closed my bathroom door. The landlord says he's going to come and empty the light fixture and get a body count. I hope they don't all attack him. Unfortunately I know what that feels like. And I don't think his cats will protect him.

Real Time Grizzly Fishing Webcam-- MUST SEE

http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/wildcamgrizzlies/wildcam.html

They have it on and manned by a real person, who focuses on the bears, zooms in and follows them, and does some great work from 6am to 10pm Alaska time. The camera goes OFF in between times, and goes off forever AUGUST 21. So go see those goofy bears now!

This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You or I would have to enter a lottery to be one of the mere 250 people allowed to see these bears at O'Neil Falls. It's so exciting to see these animals in real time, know it is happening right now! You will also see gulls, and may see eagles and wolves.

To orient you: Alaska time is four hours earlier than East Coast time. Three hours earlier than Central. Two hours earlier than Mountain. One hour earlier than Pacific Coast time. The upshot is that it's a great huge chunk of time daily to see these guys. There is also a chance to see wolves and eagles too.

But it ENDS AUGUST 21st! Then they move the camera to Africa. So watch it while you can!

 

Happy Birthday to Me

I made it another year. Yay!

Cordova & Valdez

I've had a rainy summer. You can expect cloudy, misty and rainy weather in Southern Alaska and that's certainly what I got on a recent drip down south. (That was a typo but it fits, so I'm leaving it.)

I was teaching at a music camp. The camp was fun, I loved meeting all the teachers, and I especially loved teaching kids to play in a Celtic band.

Be sure to click on these thumbnails. You can't put Alaska in a 1inch square!

This is probably Mt. Hayes, the second largest mountain in Alaska at 13,940 feet. As you travel down the Richardson Highway you get closer and closer to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, which is the largest National Park and a World Heritage Center. You thought Denali was the largest park, didn't you?

Valdez is the endpoint of the pipeline, and the place where the notorious Exxon tanker of the same name created one of the world's biggest environmental disasters. After driving 370 miles, I was happy to walk around a while before getting on the ferry. I was also glad I got to take the new "fast" ferry. In two hours I was arriving in Cordova. On the slow ferry it would take eight hours! Here is a shot of the Exxon facility in Valdez.

Just a couple shots of the trip to Cordova on the ferry.

Two hours and we were there. I went down on a nicer day to take this picture, I think. Although perhaps the sun came out a little bit. Trust me, if so, it was a quick interlude. It rained for three days straight after I got there.

On a sunny day (of which we had one out of ten) it's gorgeous. This is Eeyak Lake where the camp had a picnic and water fight. At least the kids had a water fight. I stayed far away from kids during that bit of fun!

If you click on the thumbnail, and squint and look very closely you can see two buildings on the far side of the lake. I stayed in the one on the left.

This is the edge of the road next to Prince William Sound where Sofia and I walked quite a bit. There were many sea otters, but none close enough to get a picture. And I never seemed to have my camera when the eagles were around, or there were too many dogs and other animals around to be able to take a decent photo. Trust me though, there were lots of eagles.

On the way back we had a welcoming committee waiting for us on the ferry.

A fishing boat preceded us.

I was extremely glad to get home. I'll trade sunshine for scenery any day!