An Early Morning Ray in Alaska

This far north, almost to Anchorage, the sun was coming up about 4:00 am. This was one of the most unusual early morning sunrises I have seen and I have seen a lot. This phenomenon was visible for about ten minutes. But it slowly dimmed and then went away. I am guessing that the ray was visible because of the moisture in the air. Even though there did not appear to be any fog, the clouds were low enough to have this much moisture in the air but only visible with the bright morning sunlight.

the Very Edge of the Glacier

Many of the glaciers in Alaska are retreating. Whether due to normal cycles of hot and cold temperatures or to global warming is a much discussed controversy. This particular glacier used to end in a lake, but it has, for the time being, retreated up the valley leaving piles of fine glacier flower and sand in the form of a complex of glacial moraines. It was interesting to find out that the ice from the glacier was still under the piles of sediment. We got to walk right up to the ice and I will have further photos in this particular series in the future.

Honolulu, View from Diamond Head

I never realized that you could hike to the top of Diamond Head on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. I had always thought of it as a backdrop to standard photos of Honolulu. It turns out to be a very popular hike. So popular that finding parking to make the hike is difficult. The view of the city is very impressive. It seems that many cities in the world have built up with skyscrapers rather than out like Phoenix and Los Angeles. In Phoenix there are very few tall buildings. But here, in Honolulu, where land is at a premium, the best way to utilize the land is go up. You can also see the famous Waikiki Beach, visible as a curved beach at the edge of the ocean. This is the dry side of the island and the grass and trees are not lush and green as in many other places. In fact, on the hike up to the top of the Diamond Head, it looked a lot like the desert around Mesa and Phoenix.

The Sunken Garden at Butchart Gardens, Brentwood Bay, B.C.

Beginning in 1910, Jennie Butchart began the process of transforming a limestone quarry into a fabulously gorgeous Sunken Garden. It is almost impossible to imagine how this process could take place. Almost every plant in this huge section of the Burchart Gardens is unique and beautiful. It would have been better, however, had we not been caught in a steady rain shortly after this photo was taken.

Long Beach, Pacific Rim National Park Reserve

This huge perfectly formed beach is on the West Coast of Vancouver Island in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. It is a "reserve" because the park includes the traditional territories of the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations. Long Beach and other beaches stretch between the towns of Tofino and Ucluelet. This is the furthest most western part of Canada. The beach is surrounded on the land, but a thick rain forest. It is a spectacular place to visit.

Contrast from Alaska

In the middle of all of these beautiful shots of Alaska and Canada, I thought it might be interesting to see where I come from. This is my country. Beautiful in its own way but extremely different than the forests and tundra of the North. I really enjoy seeing the beautiful glaciers and mountains of Alaska but there is a difference when I am in Northern Arizona and Southern Utah, that is home to me and home is always beautiful. I love the rock formations and the clay hills. I am glad I do not have to trade one for the other because there would be no decision at all to make. I would choose the desert over the mountains of Alaska. I now live on the side of a mountain. But it is a mountain in the desert and that makes it my home.

Alaska in my Dreams

When we think about, or dream about, going to some exotic place, we tend to form an idea of what it must be like. I had these ideas about Alaska that included this kind of place. The reality is that Alaska is also cities and glaciers and a pipeline and a lot of other things, but this idea of Alaska still remains as the dominant impression of this vast country.

Up Close to a Glacier

One of the most interesting adventures in visiting Alaska is the opportunity to get up close to a glacier of considerable size. In the next few photos, I will be showing different aspects of glaciers from the photos I took as we explored this living glacier.

Alaskan Mountain Majesty

One of the most impressive things about visiting Alaska is the vast mountain ranges and the spectacular snow covered peaks. Most of these vistas were available only from the few roads or when in a boat on one of the many huge inlets into the interior. This photo was taken from the Chilkoot Inlet, just south of Skagway, Alaska.

Alaskan Seaplane

Seaplanes are ubiquitous in Alaska. The airport in Anchorage has a parallel lake to be used by seaplanes for landing and taking off. I realize that they wouldn't be much use in Arizona, but any map view of Alaska shows that they have over a million lakes and almost as many rivers. With the lack of developed runways, landing on lakes and rivers is routine. The stories of the pilots and the adventures of flying in the wilderness are legendary. While riding on a riverboat, we got a demonstration of this pilot taking off and landing right next to the riverboat. Here is another photo of him on the water.

Above the Tree Line

In Arizona, the tree line is just above 11,000 feet. There are only a handful of peaks that reach that elevation in the entire state. As you go north, the tree line drops until in this photograph, the tree line is about 3,000 feet and it is about the same as the snow line. Further north, out on the tundra, the tree line drops to sea level and no trees can grow. We don't have any mountains in Arizona that look remotely like these in Alaska.

A Hanging Glacier

This is a classic example of a hanging glacier. A hanging glacier is one that is perched on the top or on the side of a mountain and does not reach to the bottom of the cliff or slope. It can be very precarious to stay below such a feature because there is always the possibility of movement in the ice that can trigger a large ice fall. This is another example of the fabulous Alaskan glaciers along the coast in the fjords. These are very complex structures and evolve over time. If this glacier were to expand, it would likely splint into two separate arms coming down the mountain on the left and right in this photo. The distances and sizes in these photos are misleading and it is hard to get any perspective, but this glacier is probably a couple of miles across.

Tidewater Glacier

Fed by mountain snows, a tidewater glacier descends down its self-made canyon until it reaches the ocean. Historically, many glaciers extended miles into ocean, but many glaciers are retreating. This Alaskan glacier is calving with the rise and fall of the tides. This far north, the tides change as much as 25 feet every six hours. The steep part of the glacier is called an ice fall and results in the jumbled and chaotic nature of the ice near the waterline. The dark bands in the ice are rocks and dirt scoured by the glacier in its relentless move to the ocean like a huge frozen slow-motion river.

Butchart Gardens Boat Landing

One of the many gems of Vancouver Island is the Butchart Gardens, just north of Victoria on Brentwood Bay. This masterpiece of horticulture is one of the biggest attractions in Western Canada. This is the second time I have been at the Gardens and it was much more beautiful this second time than it was the first. This remarkable photo was taken between rain storms. After getting soaked earlier in the day, we dried off eating lunch and then finished our tour.

Canadian Bald Eagle

I am not sure that eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) recognize international boundaries, this one happened to live on the shore of the Pacific Ocean on Vancouver Island just outside of the Pacific Rim National Park near Ucluelet. We saw dozens of eagles in Canada and Alaska. They appear to be about as common as the Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) in Arizona. Seeing them and taking photos are two different things. Fortunately, like vultures, they seem to sit around a lot so photos are possible. This one was quite a distance away and I took several photos of the same bird.

An amazing flower

I found this flower growing in Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, B. C. I have been searching online using most of the tricks I know and have yet to identify it. It must be really rare not to have a number of photos online. Perhaps you can help me identify it. Please include the scientific name. Thanks for your comments.

A Wild Rose in the Rain

There are two things I will always remember about British Columbia and Alaska; the rain and the wild roses. When I was very little, we had a rose bush with roses like these at the front of our lot. It wasn't a pruned, civilized rose, it was a huge rambling mass of rose bush and flowers. When I saw the roses at the edges of the forests, they looked just the way I remembered them from my childhood. I decided long ago, that was the way I liked the whole world, sort of wild and unpruned. The rain was another story. Being from the desert, I don't seem to ever get tired of rain, but trying to take photographs in the rain is a real challenge. Fortunately, even though the camera was getting wet, I remembered to point the lens downward until I got the photo. You learn to take photos quickly when it is raining.

Driftwood on Vancouver Island South Shore

It is amazing the size of the logs thrown up on the shore of the ocean surrounding Vancouver Island. Here, just below the city of Victoria, there is a steep shoreline with an equally short beach of small rounded stones. These photos were a challenge because it was raining the entire time I was trying to take photos and I had to keep cleaning the camera lens and drying off the camera. The rocks on the shore were amazing and had we not had a weight limit for flying home, I am sure we would have come home with a suitcase full of rocks.

Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay

This photo was taken on the Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay Ferry between Vancouver, B. C. and Vancouver Island. We soon learned that rainfall levels on Vancouver Island can exceed 130 inches a year in some locations. We were about to find out what that meant when we arrived on the Island. However, years of living in Panama had inured us to rainfall and we plugged along gamely and endured the rain. Actually, being from the desert it was quite a treat to have rain fall out of the sky like it was something that happened every day.

Braided River in Denali National Park, Alaska

This is the Savage River in Denali National Park, Alaska. It is a typical example of the a "braided river" where the river channel migrates back and forth depending on the amount of water and gradient. This is also a typical glacier-fed river with a high concentration of glacial silt. The distant mountains are part of the Denali National Park and are the Alaskan Range. Because of the clouds, you cannot see the higher peaks, such as Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. The land on either side is tundra, permanently frozen ground down only a few feet.

Alaskan Reindeer

Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) are also known as reindeer. Some people make the distinction based on whether or not the animal is domesticated with reindeer being the domesticated variety. However, they are essentially the same animal with two different names. Caribou are fairly common in Alaska and we saw several both free ranging and domesticated, during our recent trip to Denali National Park. For more information see the Wikipedia article on Caribou. The Native American population relied on the caribou for many of life's necessities. All parts of the animal were used for food, clothing, or other uses. This caribou's antlers are in the velvet stage and will soon lose its covering and become hard bone.