Alaskan Weekend

I posted this on another forum and thought maybe it was a good fit for "Journeys" here on Dgrin. Originally when I posted it I did so just to share what a summer weekend can be like up here. Don't get me wrong, they're not all this way, but what I'm documenting here is not at all unusual. So maybe anyone who's been contemplating a vacation up here can use this to help decide whether it's worth the time/expense.

When you live in Alaska, the most common question people "outside" (Alaskan for the lower 48) ask is "how do you endure the long, cold, dark winters?" The simple answer is that you endure them by looking forward to summer. Banking enough memories during the summer makes you look forward to the next one and helps tide you over till "break up" (Alaskan for spring). Come breakup, life up here goes into overdrive. Biologically, mentally, and spiritually, 20 hours a day of sunlight works wonders. And in the summer, no one wastes opportunities to enjoy the outdoors. I don't know if it the type of personality that makes you come and live in a place like this or if it the established culture that you adopt once here, but one thing I've noticed is that no one takes the wonders of summer for granted here. Myself included.

We live in Fairbanks which is in the interior. The least geographically attractive part of the state, particularly for beach/ocean lovers like my wife and I. So we have a trailerable boat that we keep down in Valdez during the summer (pronounced Valdeez in Alaskan). My work schedule is such that I have every other Friday off and we drive the 720mi. roundtrip so we can spend the weekend on Prince William Sound. It seems like a lot of driving but a road trip in Alaska is an experience all its own as you'll see if you read on.

After work this past Thursday, I got home, finished packing the car, caught a few hours sleep, and then we (wife, self, and two dogs) loaded up and left home at one AM in the summer twighlight. It was a very active morning for wildlife. Within the first couple of hours driving we saw seven moose, at least a dozen porcupine, a couple of red fox, and countless snowshoe hares in various stages of coloration. Not to mention a couple dozen ponds along the route which each have their own resident beavers, ducks of various varieties and/or trumpeter swans. About 130 miles from home, just south of the junction of the Alaska Highway (Alcan), we were treated with a beatiful summer sunrise casting light on the peaks of the Alaska Range. This picture was taken at 3:35AM during a pit stop for the dogs.



As much as we would have liked to just sit and enjoy the scenery, we were on a mission so we kept on trucking. Within the last week the wildflowers have really started blooming and like most places they flourish along the shoulders of the highway. The early bloomers are lupine, river beauties (aka dwarf fireweed), forget me nots, and wild sweet pea. That doesn't lend itself to safe driving for a photographer. A couple more hours along, on the north side of the Chugach Mountains, I just couldn't stand it any more and proclaimed another pit stop for the dogs, coincidentally right by a field of lupine in full bloom. So while my bride walked the dogs I took a couple of quick shots.



We got to Valdez around 8AM, had breakfast, walked the dogs (yet again), and then I had to fix the stove/heater on the boat. We were on the water by noon, just in time for the rain to start... On the way out to our anchorage for the first night, we stopped at Shoup Glacier near Valdez to gather enough ice for the weekend (only tourists buy ice up here). Then we dropped shrimp traps and proceeded to Sawmill Bay about 16 miles south of Valdez where we anchored for the night, ate hamburgers and watched "Lord of the Rings" on the laptop. It rained all Friday night and was still coming down Saturday morning. We checked our shrimp traps (had several dozen of what most people call cold water prawns) and moved to another anchorage several miles away where we have historically seen a lot of bald eagles. The main goal for the weekend was to capture some eagle images (after all, who's going to believe that you live in Alaska if you can't even produce a picture of an eagle or a moose?). It was still raining but there were several black legged kittiwakes feeding right around the boat so I decided to use the time to practice my BIF capture technique.



This proved to be valuable time spent because I tested my Nikkor 80-400 against my old Sigma 100-300 HSM. I validated that the Sigma focuses much faster. It also let me study the behavior of the eagles a bit and I realized that they use the kittiwakes as scouts to find fish. They're not shy about stealing from them either if they are close enough to get there before the kittiwake can scarf down the fish. So bottom line, find kittiwakes feeding and the eagles will show up soon. This only works until salmon season starts when the eagles will just sit on the bank of a salmon stream and gorge themselves without the need to move around and dive on fish in open water. Anyhow, the rain broke about noon Saturday and it turned into a glorious day. We were anchored in a beautiful spot.



Right near the anchorage were a couple of muskeg fields which our dogs love to run around in. Muskeg is basically a layer of moss about a foot deep with all kinds of bog berries, cranberries, wild violets, iris, etc. growing in it. It's kind of like walking on a huge wet sponge. You need a good pair of Alaskan sneakers (rubber boots) and the dogs get soaked to the skin but love every minute of it. This particular place has a fairly healthy bear population and we got woofed at when we started through a thicket between the two fields but never did see him/her. The dogs looked up at me like, "OK boss, you're up". I decided I was "tired" about then and it was time to go back to the boat for a rest. Here I am with the bear dogs in the muskeg. That night for dinner we had fresh cold water shrimp stir fried with pasta in olive oil, garlic, and parmesean cheese.



Sunday dawned just as beautifully as Saturday ended. The target of the day was eagle photography. It proved to be an ongoing learning experience but I managed to come away with just enough images to keep me interested/frustrated enough to try even harder. Click on the following image to go to my Eagle Gallery and/or check out the Wildlife forum where I posted a few images.



So that pretty well wrapped the weekend on the water. We pulled the shrimp pots which had a few dozen more shrimp. On the way back a school of Dahl Porpoise swam along with us for a ways. The dogs always get excited about that (yeah they're real brave with fish). It was mid day so wildlife wasn't quite as active on the way home. We did see a herd of a couple of dozen Dahl Sheep on Rainbow Ridge. They were way off but we had good glasses to look at them with. Then within 60-70 miles of home, there was a cow moose standing right on the edge of the road looking back over her shoulder. I stopped and sure enough, she walked across and two newborn calves stumbled across behind her. Tiny things on wabbly legs. We continued on down the road lamenting not taking any pictures of the little guys and within a couple of miles ran across this guy. If you are an Alaskan it is definately NOT COOL to photograph moose other than in Denali or some exotic locale. But I had been thinking about documenting one of our trips to Valdez so decided to play tourist for once.



So there it is. If a picture is truly worth a thousand words, then this was my dissertation to answer the question, "how do we endure the long, cold, dark winters?"