Alaska - Anchorage and Seward

I have finally gotten far enough with my photographs that I can start tackling the blog in sections.  I just can't tell you how overwhelming 16 days in Alaska is.  Huge state.  Huge vacation.

Just getting to Alaska was Julie's 50th state. It may be a very long time until I reach that goal.  I have 47, missing only Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma.   Honestly, I might be happy just leaving it that way.

We flew into Anchorage late one evening, spent the night, and then drove down toward Seward.  It isn't on this map, but it would be about the "P" in Kenai Peninsula. On our way, we were surprised to see a sign for the Alyeska Ski Resort. We had heard of it, but pictured it being up in some massive mountains.  The base was surprisingly close to sea level.

As you will see in these first few photos, there was a recurring theme: rain.  We knew that we were making a trade-off going in late August.  You are into the beginning of the rainy season but you have less bugs and fewer tourists.  What we didn't know was that we would spend good parts of the first 8 days in clouds, drizzle or plain old rain.  You just roll the dice and get whatever weather Mother Nature serves up.

Wet weather does make for pretty flowers though.  I was frequently surprised at how many flowers we saw in Alaska.

Heading to Seward, we also stopped at the Portage Glacier Visitors Center.  The clouds were hindering the views of the glacier, but we did stumble on the celebration of Smokey the Bear's 70th birthday.

Once we got to Seward, we found our little house we rented on VRBO.  I have mentioned this service before:  Vacation Rentals By Owners.  We have used this over and over again to find great places at reasonable prices. Once we settled in, we headed to the grocery store, which also housed the liquor store.  Talk about making you feel at home!  One of the first things we see is a whiskey made right here in Park City.

Seward is a funky little boating town with a population of about 3,000.  The harbor is deep enough that they can bring in huge cruise ships, which seems to double or even triple the population of town for a day.  We quickly started to find examples of "Almost anything goes in Alaska.  Do what you want."  Interesting yard art.

This guy decided that an easy way to make money was to drag a young reindeer around on a leash, let people take pictures of him, and then ask for donations.  It was a form of pan handling that both Julie and I abhor. Reindeer (better know as Caribou when you aren't reading Santa stories) belong out on the tundra, not locked up in some pen.

Our first adventure was supposed to be sea kayaking, but the waves were running too high so we switched and did our planned Exit Glacier hike instead. We hiked about 2-3 steep miles to get to the glacier and then booted up with crampons and helmets before wandering out onto the ice.

Between the hiking and the surprisingly pleasant weather, I was in a t-shirt on the way up.  When we got to the glacier, we discovered the katabatic winds.   These cold winds from the Harding Ice Field were flowing down the ice fall.  Suddenly I was wearing a fleece and fairly heavy rain gear.

Doesn't Julie look ready for anything?

This was our first day with glacial ice and we were stunned by the colors, shapes, textures, and massive size.  Little did we know that we would see ones that were much bigger and more impressive as the trip progressed.

In August the glaciers are retreating pretty aggressively.  It was stunning to see how much the glaciers have disappeared in the past few decades.  If you don't believe the climate is changing very rapidly, take a quick trip to Alaska.  The evidence is everywhere you look.

The next morning we got up to do our sea kayaking trip.  Once again, the waves were just too rough for us to go out in anything other than the local harbor, which is well protected.  Hard to imagine looking at this shot way up in Resurrection Bay.

The challenge is that we wanted to go down around the point, into the next bay, and up to the Aialik Glacier. Once you got out to the Gulf of Alaska, the waves were running around 10 feet.  The 25 foot water taxi that was supposed to take us kayaking didn't stand a chance.  We still wanted to see the glacier so we found a site seeing tour that was heading that way. We went on the Spirit of Adventure, an 85 foot catamaran. You can't get much more stable than that.  Can you?

The first clue that even a 85 footer might live up to its Adventure name was when the captain (a female by the way) said that if you had ever considered taking any type of seasick medication then this might be a great day to start.  Neither Julie nor I had been sick before but we decided to heed the warning and we popped some Bonine.

Sure enough, 10 foot waves are BIG and can toss around a decent sized ship with ease.  Here's a photo of Julie standing next to the doors that burst open when a wave caught the side of the ship.  That basically allowed a big wave of very cold salt water to pound inside where it didn't belong.  Both of us got drenched.  Thankfully my camera was in a backpack a bit further towards the bow.

Sure enough, quite a few people did get sick but the good news is that once we got around the point and into the next bay, the waves were calm and surprisingly, there were no other boats there with us.  Go figure!

The reason that we were motivated to get over in Aialik Bay was to see tidal glaciers. These are glaciers that terminate in water.

It was a bit hard to photograph from a distance, but we did get to see some good-sized blocks of ice calve off and splash into the water.

Although we were able to hike on parts of the Exit Glacier, most areas on the glaciers would be impossible to get around on.  With the never ending compression and decompression, the ice is badly fractured.  Most of these chunks are as tall as a 4 story building.

Another reason to go on the boat ride was to see the sea animals.  One of the highlights of the trip was this humpback whale.  While I only captured crappy back and butt shots like this one, he did breach pretty close to the boat, coming most of the way out of the water.  It was spectacular to see but too fast to get a camera up, aimed and focused. 

Julie and I love the river otters and sea otters.  They are just too cute, floating around in little groups, snacking and enjoying the sunshine.

These were the only mountain goats we saw on the trip.  It's a mom and her young one.

We also saw thousands of nesting sea birds, including puffins, gulls, and kittiwakes. Seals and sea lions found a lot of the same rocky outcrops a nice place to stay. Watching them climb to the top must be interesting.

The next morning we had to check out of our house and head back to Anchorage. Along the way we stopped in to visit the Alaska SeaLife Center. This place was part aquarium, part rehab for injured animals and part research. They had fish, mammals and birds, like this Puffin.

In Anchorage, the wet weather continued.  Our planned hike to the top of a mountain with great views wasn't going to be much more than a view through a cloud.  Instead we did a long hike on their Coastal Trail.  It felt a bit like Park City when people kept coming by on roller skis, training for cross country skiing.  While a lot of the places in Alaska don't get as much snow as we do, the very short winter days and sun closer to the horizon prevent a lot of solar melting.  That helps if you are trying to keep your cross country skiing tracks in good shape.

Finally the sun broke out in the afternoon.  It was only a short reprieve but it gave me a really cool photo of a building.  Anchorage is by far the largest population center in Alaska and looks a lot like many other cities with a few hundred thousand residents.

From here we start on the organized group part of our trip....

Back from Alaska

I know it has been a long time since I have posted anything out here.  We spent 16 days in Alaska where I took several bajillion photographs.  I am now sorting through them, although a bit slowly.  At some point I will get things posted out here.  Quite possibly the best trip we have ever taken!

In a completed unrelated photo, I was with Jasper at City Park today and ran across this.

They must have had a baseball or softball tournament and someone got the idea of leaving ball caps along the fence.  There were hundreds of them. Anyone in Park City needing hats, I know where you can get some cheap.

The Steigs come to town

John and Pattie Steigerwald, two of our best friends from Raleigh, came out to visit for a long weekend. We seemed to be dealing with on and off thunderstorms the entire time but we managed to get in two rounds of golf, a visit to the Kimball Arts Festival, a Utah Symphony concert, and a wonderful outdoor lunch at Royal Street, my first of the year.

A visit from Laura

Our niece Laura is on her summer break from Gonzaga, up in Spokane, WA.  She was on a road trip with her boyfriend and two other friends down to Price, UT.  On their drive heading back to Gonzaga, they were kind enough to stop by and say "howdy".

We had breakfast together at Squatters before they started off again for another 10 hours of driving.  It was great to get to see Laura. It has been too long.

Jasper still has the speed

Julie and I took Jasper to City Park for some exercise.  At almost 11 years old, the dog can still fly!

Teaching a photography class

Every once in a while, I teach a photography class over at the Kimball Arts Center.  This time, it was two afternoons with six teenagers.  The first day we were walking around Park City.  The second, we hopped in the Pilot and went to some more remote locations around town.

I mostly kept my camera in my bag and focused on their efforts, but every once in a while I would snap a quick shot.  This is just some quick examples of the things you can shoot.

Two blocks from the center, there is a stream that normally runs pretty dry in the summer.  This year, because of some pipe construction, there is more water running.  It's a great place to learn about long shutter speeds versus quick ones.

Down the creek is Park City's famous shoe tree.  Lots of opportunities to find different angles and play with depth of field.

One of the reasons I like working with kids is they are always finding creative things to shoot.  This student turned out to be the daughter of two people I got to know through CrossFit. That's life in a small town.

The skateboard park is normally a good place to learn how to predict where action will happen, but you never know whether anyone will be doing bigger tricks.  This was a fairly hot summer day to be out in the sun and the boarders were pretty lethargic, even when lured by six photographers.

There are a number of places around town with funky art to shoot.

Then we hit the city park playground. We were trying to find creative angles to get shots.  The star burst next to her head is from a reflection off a car windshield a long ways off.  It's pretty distracting, but I liked it anyway.

Another student, Zach, in the playground.  I shot him from the side a number of times, but that was looking pretty boring.  Then I managed to get this one where it almost looks like he is standing on the fence, looking over the bar.

Park City's Old Town has so many interesting subjects, even just walking along the street.

Day 1 was very hot and everyone was melting by the end.  For Day 2, we traveled by car between stops and kept it a little shorter. We even made a quick Slurpee stop at the 7-11.

Up at Guardsman's Pass, the flowers were blooming big time!

Sadly, we lost two of the kids for the second day.  One had come up from Salt Lake City and they weren't sure they could get her back to Park City again the next day.  Never heard from the other girl, Emily.  Sad to have lost her, but these four were great!

Teenagers are  fun to work with because they are creative, motivated, and suck up information like a sponge.  I really enjoyed it.

Running a 5k

As many of you may know, I am not supposed to be running at all because I basically have bone-on-bone in my right knee.  Running can earn me a knee replacement surgery.  Just the same, I get the urge to run the occasional race.  To avoid all the wear and tear, I do absolutely no training.  I rely on some combination of a natural inclination to run and brute stupid will.

One race I do every year is the July 4th 5k.  This year there were a little over 1000 runners, and more women than men.  My goal was to grind out a sub 8:00 minute mile pace, and I made it with about 20 seconds to spare.  I was 7th out of 50 in my age/gender and I would have crushed it if I was allowed in the age 70-99 category.  Now the humbling part.

Living in this uber athletic town, I am used to being beaten by 15 year old high school track stars.  In this race, one beat me by about 6:30.  Nice run! Two things did bother me.  The first was getting beaten by a 6 year old boy.  I was standing next to him at the starting line and he came up to about my hip. At the 2.5 mile mark, he was ahead of me.  This pissed me off so I started cranking up the pace.  Right then, a 12 year old girl passed him.  That pissed him off and he accelerated dramatically.  Are you kidding?  There was no way I could catch him.  I slowed down and he beat me by 40 seconds.

In a different category was the 10 year old girl who smoked me by over 5 minutes.  Grace Ping ran a 19:15.  Essentially, she was out of my vision after the first 400 yards or so.  I read up on her.  She ran a race back at the end of April, doing a 5k on a track in 18:02!  For those of you struggling with the math, that's 5:48 miles.  Yes, she shattered the world record for 10 year old girls.

So, while I was OK with my ability to run a decent race without no training runs for nine months, I still feel somehow robbed of any joy or pride. Getting your ass kicked by a 10 year old girl and a 6 year old boy is pretty humbling.  Normally I would crank up my running and start dpoing some intervals for speed.  With a bum knee, I just go for a bike ride.

Why I turned off iMessage on my iPhone

Years ago, Apple enhanced its iPhone text messaging with something called iMessage.  Whenever you were texting between two iPhone's, you went through the data network and Apple servers instead of through the cellular network to the carriers' servers.  Back when you were paying per text or had a small number of free texts, this was a great thing.  Going through Apple was free and iMessage was smart enough to use normal texting to get to non-iPhones.

Over the past several years, most carrier plan either include unlimited texting or some very large number of free texts per month. This means the financial benefit no longer exists.

Now the bad stuff....  Apple has a bug in their iMessage system.  If you are using it with your iPhone (which is the default) and then change phones to to Android, Apple doesn't clear their server's knowledge of you.  So when iPhone people try to get in touch with you by text, Apple stills tries (and fails) to reach you by iMessage.  It should know that you are no longer using iMessage and tell the phone to reach you by normal texting.

Julie switched phones lately and this was a royal pain in the butt.  When you call Apple service, they try a few things and get you to try some things, none of which does much. It's a bug in their design and they have known about it for quite a while.

I am still an iPhone user and will be for at least another year.  However, I went into my settings and turned iMessage off.  I have no intention of ever turning it on again.  I suggest everyone with iPhones do the same.

Oakley Rodeo

A couple of nights ago, Julie Greg, Miriam and I went to the Oakley Rodeo.  Oakley is a small town about 15 miles from Park City. The rodeo is pretty big and draws competitors from all around the west.  As a photography choice, it's a tough one.  The event starts at 8:00pm, so the sun is almost down.  Add some pretty mediocre lighting and fast action and you have something that is quite the pisser to photograph well.

You can't start a rodeo without a lot of  American songs and flags.  If you look in the background, you can see a lot of people with their hands over their hearts.  This was a very patriotic group of spectators.  They put their hands over their hearts for the pledge, the Star Spangled Banner, and any country western song that mentioned loving America.  I'm not making this up.

Then we had all the rodeo queens and their attendants. Just like in the beauty pageants, you have to master that perfect little wave.  The challenge is doing it at a good clip on the back of a big horse.

On to the competitions.  First we have bareback riding.  At this point I didn't have a lot of perspective, but in hindsight, these guys had almost as tough a ride as the bull riders.  These were some angry horses and you had next to nothing to control yourself with.

This guy actually managed to stay on for the complete ride.  Lots of his fellow riders did not do as well.

The next event should be called something like "High Speed Cow Tackling".  The cow comes ripping out of the gate.  The horse takes off after the cow and quickly catches up.  Then the cowboy jumps off said horse and tries to wrestle the cow to the ground.  It is all for best time.

Did I mention that I pull for the animals to win all the contests?  Everyone else is pulling for the cowboys, so I think it's only fair.  As best I can tell, this cowboy jumped off his horse, grabbing the cow on the way down, at which point the cow promptly pinned him to the ground. Cow 1 - Cowboy 0.

The next event I refuse to show in its entirety.  A cowboy ropes a running calf and jumps down.  The horse, who is apparently the smartest in the bunch, immediately pulls backwards so the rope stays tight. The calf suddenly gets yanked to the ground by his neck. The cowboy jumps on the poor little calf  and ties his feet.  Not only does this suck for picking on a calf instead of a cow, or better yet a bull, but the little guy gets yanked so hard by the neck you can feel it in the stands. Might as well rope lambs. I would call this event "Not Tough Enough To Do Real Cowboy Events".

Back to the broncos, but this time with saddles.  I'm no cowboy, but this seemed a hell of a lot easier than the bareback version.  These guys stayed on most of the rides and seemed to have time to go for style.

Here was one of the best poses.

The horses were still doing their best to get that guy off their back.

And sometimes it worked.

And if it did work, you needed to get out of the way very quickly.  In the bareback riding, one guy got thrown off the back and before he could hit the ground, the horse kicked him in the head.  That does not make for a good evening.

The next event required quite a bit of coordination.  The cow bolts.  Two horsemen give chase.  One ropes the cow's head and pulls him around.  The second cowboy ropes the moving back feet of the cow.  I haven't quite figured out the physics of that one.

Done correctly, it looks like this.

Then the ladies took center court for barrel racing.  It is a sprint for time, navigating several barrels. I was not able to figure out how the horses kept traction making such tight turns at high speed. The ladies were amazing to stay up on a horse cranking dirt at a 45%  angle.

Some excellent horsemanship.

The final event is often referred to as "the longest eight seconds in sports".  Quite simple:  Get on bull. Stay on bull. Good luck.

I don't know the different riding techniques, but I am guessing this isn't one of the correct ones.

Yep.  Guessed right.

How would you like to hit the ground on your back, look up, and see all that angry bull completely  up in the air.  Notice the rodeo clown heading over to try and distract the bull.

Look how high that bulls rear end is.  Getting throw forward towards the horns and in the bull's sight is probably the worst alternative.

This guy was getting some of the same style that the bronco riders did.

And the bull did not find that amusing.

Rodeo can be a bit hard to watch because they are giving the animals a rough night.  Then again, the animals were beating the crap out of the cowboys as revenge.

Note to self: next time you go, sit down at the southeast end, near where the bulls come out.  Five or six rows up on an aisle would be perfect.  Better photos there.

Boys and their toys

After Hurricane Fran, I would have loved to have had use of one of these for a few weeks. 30 minutes to clear the 100+ trees down on our property and the following days to have made a fortune at other people's houses. It's even a stump grinder.