Eagle River, a short hike my daughter and I took. It's not far north of Anchorage. The river looks like this thanks to beaver activity, they dammed it here and there.
This is a river on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage. The color reminds me of some place.....
Yeah loops, I was there for 3 weeks in August. I have family there, and hookah was there the middle week so many friends also [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif[/img]
Thanks all for stopping in, I'll post as I am able.
These are spirit houses in Eklutna. The cemetery is on the grounds of an old Russian Orthodox church but the spirit houses are an Athabascan thing, they are to keep the person's spirit from wandering, and objects that were meaningful to the person are also placed inside. Many Athabascans converted to the Russian Orthodox religion when the Russians came to Alaska. I know it was part and parcel of an unchosen occupation that resulted in the deaths of many of the indigenous people of Alaska, but many Alaskans remain in the church long after the Russians have gone, taking what they like and leaving the rest, in a way. Interesting mix of cultures and religious beliefs in Alaska.
This is Lake Eklutna, maybe 10 miles from the houses above. We kayaked on it, biked around it, walked around with my dad's dogs several times as it was close to where i stayed most of the time. This day was oddly sunny and the grasses along the lake were a really vibrant green and the mountains were a dark green with weird shadows from the clouds.
We went a few days later after a warm spell and this glacier-fed lake had risen to cover all the grass you see here. I guess that's why it's so green...underwater, out of water, under water...
They do get to some cool places. Hoping to join them on the Big Island of Hawaii in February [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif[/img]
It seems like wherever there is a lake or river that is not in a national park (and a HUGE amount of Alaska is in a national or state park), there are houses on it, with docks. At many of those docks, there are float planes parked...Alaska has the highest ratio of people to airplanes of any state, I read, as so much of the state is without roads. Many people live in "the bush" for one reason or another, "the bush" being any area not accessible by road by Alaskan definition. Here's one of those "not in the bush" lakes, Mirror Lake. The planes are likely used to ferry hunters and tourists to the bush, or perhaps to deliver mail, groceries and everything else bush people need. Most pilots outfit their planes with floats or bush wheels in summer, to land on beaches or rivers or lakes or fields, and skis in winter.
Here is one of the national park lakes - Portage Lake, fed by Portage Glacier. In 1986 an elaborate visitor's center was built on this lake with exhibits and films and a great view of the glacier. Well the glacier has retreated so fast that it is no longer visible from the visitor's center, you have to take a $30 boat ride to get near it. There are other smaller glaciers in view here, though, and we found the visitor center to be worth the visit just the same.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ohliz</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Eagle River, a short hike my daughter and I took. It's not far north of Anchorage. The river looks like this thanks to beaver activity, they dammed it here and there.
This is a river on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage. The color reminds me of some place.....
Yeah loops, I was there for 3 weeks in August. I have family there, and hookah was there the middle week so many friends also [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif[/img]
Thanks all for stopping in, I'll post as I am able. </div></div>
Oh LIZ!!!! [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70371-jump.gif[/img] What FUN FUN pics.
BTW - I grew up in a town called Eagle River - but it is in Ontario!
This is a rather different sunset. In Homer after the last hookah show (of 5) I hooked up with some of the very kind Alaska folks who were doing the tour, and we went from one friend's house out in the country, where we had stayed, into town for a late breakfast, piling into an old school bus another friend drives and lives in. These people were awesome, cut from the same cloth as I am, I'd say, but with an Alaska twist. When we got to town our friend spotted a friend of his on his boat. It was decided that we could, for a kickdown of boat gas money, take a ride for a couple of hours on this boat, there were 8 or 9 of us.
We ran around "the spit" - a sand spit that juts out into the bay in Homer where docks and shops and campgrounds and whatnot are located) and shopped for food and beer and fishing licenses (at some point this became a halibut fishing trip) and boarded the boat. The captain was very cool, and we had a great if slightly swelly ride, some people saw a whale (I missed it...this would be a recurring theme of my Alaska experience re: wildlife) and arrived an hour or so later at a good spot to fish. Almost immediately someone pulled up a 55 pound halibut. After that there were more, in the 15-20 pound range.
Our "2 hour tour" became an 8 hour odyssey as no one wanted to go in with fish biting like that (well maybe the one girl who spent the majority of the trip throwing up over the side...but she made it OK). The license limit is two per day and everyone that got a license limited out. The boat pulled into the dock around 2AM, about 3 hours after we passed these volcanoes while the sun was setting behind them. A volcano not too far away was spitting ash the day or so after this but everyone seemed pretty relaxed about it...I guess it's like earthquakes in California or tornadoes in Ohio.
I can't work right now, problems with my host and email so I'll keep at this while I can.
This is Denali, "The Great One" or "Big One" in Athabascan is called Mount McKinley by most of the US. Alaskans prefer the native term. Whatever you call it, it's the tallest mountain in North America. It's so huge it makes its own weather and even on a clear day, is often hidden in its own clouds. It's part of the Alaska Range which makes a sort of "U" shape around the lower part of southcentral Alaska, making that area rather rainy and the area to the north of the mountains tundra - northern desert. The tail end of it are the volcanoes in the sunset I posted before. This water is the Knik Arm again, but at low tide.
Denali is the larger one on the right.
Denali is as far north into Alaska as hookah went, the first show was near the entrance to the national park and we worked our way down from there. This photo was taken on the drive up, within an hour of the venue, I'd say.
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