here is the "nome" boat in the harbor. thought it was a nice representation. not a huge harbor or a lot of boats there.
watched a decent movie last night, "fishing for salmon in yemen". that meant it was a late night for me. slept in and took my time getting motivated to walk. ended up on the beach here in anchorage with the dogs. needed my beach fix. not as good of beach combing as i had in nome, but walking along any beach is pretty sweet.
this is up on the kougarok road. the tundra. this was the upper nome river valley i think. pretty amazing. loads of flowers. i just pulled over every so often and wandered around out there. never saw any big wildlife like bears or caribou. few squirrels.
in the afternoon after i'd driven the road i walked on the beach closer to town. more people out there, looking for gold, walking.
dead seal on the beach. random. big things like this wash up and are just left for nature to take care of
probably as it should be. that is what brings the polar bears to kaktovik. the natives hunt whale, the leftover bits are left on the beach to be taken back by the sea and scavengers.
thought all these stop signs chilling was kinda funny.
drove out to this rock. house rock. below, you can see that in the distance it really does look more like a house.
spoke to a few brothers, joel and tom today. tom and his family are coming up in august and joel is thinking of joining for a few days anyway. should be good times. had tom look up the hotel in kaktovik. it's worth checking out. if i go i'll be spending over $225/night on it. will have to try and contact my manager tomorrow as the person who does the schedule is on vacay. if i decide to go for this trip i have to decide quick before rooms are totally filled in this fancy hotel.
we have quite a few volcano's in alaska and apparently my nephew is very frightened of volcano's. not sure how a 5 year old in texas becomes afraid of volcano's...? his mom has no idea how he developed this fear. we have had a recent eruption of a volcano. pavlof. it's pretty far away from anchorage. it did throw ash up over 28,000 feet.
was just thinking my brother was looking into a boat trip out in prince willian sound. probably should make that happen at some point. i'm trying to get them to aialik bay for a boat/kayak trip. he must have been impacted by the exxon/valdez oil spill that happened. just occurred to me that this is why he was wanting to go to prince willian sound. we can always add on that 26 glacier cruise. never mind looking at glaciers!! the tunnel to whittier is pretty cool too. apparently, the last of the rescued sea otters from the spill was just euthanized the other week, it was 25 years old.
these are from my midnight stroll on a beach out council road that night.
found lots more sea urchins
and even a $20 while strolling the beaches. the money was spend for breakfast the next morning. nice that my first two meals in nome were free! gail got me the pizza gift certificate. bought pizza with that. ate most of my actual meals at the same place, "airport pizza". thanks gail!! i could only eat half of the pizza, they are filling. when i got back to the hotel there was some kids across the street with thier bikes. they saw the pizza and said "pizza" so i gave them the rest of the pizza. they were quite happy with their treat. one kid said it was his first meal that day.
starting to feel some bug coming on. sore throat and sinus feeling.
had fun playing with the long sun...made for some super long shadows!!
yes, i was alone on the beach and clearly i'm happy being a freak even if nobody else is anywhere around.
silly knows no bounds!
my official happy solstice sign! thought it came out kinda fun!
the local birds made some cool prints in the sand as well.
this lady set her elderly mother at the table at costco. as she left her she brought her purse to her and then told her she was giving her the purse but to not get up and leave it there if she goes anywhere. after she walked away the little elderly gal looked at me and said something about making it to 94 and you'd think if you could survive in this big world til 94, you probably knew by then to not walk away from your purse.
so often people forget that older folks are due respect and dignity. they may even be forgetting stuff for sure, but as hard as it may seem they really don't want to be treated like some 4 year old that needs looking after.
more shadow play. no matter how old we get we can still be playful and silly. chatted with this lady for a few minutes before i headed home. she'd moved to alaska in 1961, lived in argentina for several years before that and was originally from illinois. love talking to people...like i said, everyone has a cool story to tell if you are willing to take the time to ask and then listen.
i guess obesity is officially a disease. addiction and alcoholism are diseases so why not i guess. the only real issue i have with all these being called a disease is that it just gives people an excuse. these are all things that if one puts their mind to it, they can heal their disease. this isn't really the case with what i would call, real illnesses like diabetes and heart disease. i'm cool with the idea of obesity being termed a mental health issue especially for those who are morbidly obese. whatever...it doesn't change what i do for a living.
this is after midnight. as low as it goes i guess.
the drive back to the hotel.
my home for the week in nome.
my collection of beach finds grows.
here is the bus from yesterdays post, but in colour.
back on the road...these are mixed up.
there are hot springs on a road that takes you off this main road. figured it would be a pretty beat up road. apparently the road isn't really a public road either. it's a 7 mile trek of the main path . i opted out.
the rest are flowers from my first stop and wander looking at flowers.
there was a baby sea lion born out at the sea life center...so cute!!
never very good at identifying these tiny flowers, even when i look at the books.
above is a bog star i think, below...alpine azalea.
nelson mandela sounds to be in bad shape. he is 94. he's lived a good life. made the most of a life...we should all be so lucky. most of us don't make the most of our lives. we just get by day to day and don't make any sort of huge impact. it's still okay to live a simple life and make an impact on a smaller scale. i hope he does not suffer and if it is his time, peace to him and his family and friends.
i think these may be bog rosemary...or moss heather. probably the latter.
eating some cherries...tasty and bitesized!! perfect. don't remember us ever eating cherries growing up. we had a pretty basic diet growing up. wish they could make peaches and apricots bite sized. they can get messy and who can eat the whole thing anyway.
so many cute little flowers out there.
there was a note at the trailhead in kincaid. a brown bear was seen just that day..."a small one". not sure how small a bear has to be to be considered small. they can attack when they are small too. didn't see it though, did see one moose with her baby. it looked small. no pictures they were quite a distance away.
yes, cause these are bog rosemary.
the dogs are happy and well walked. we walked a long ways down the beach. rio was pretty slow walking back. blossom is happily covered in mud.
a soak in the tub sounds pretty good right now.
"the goodbye girl" is on . haven't seen that in forever. always a classic.
just took tylenol. will settle in with a book soon which should put me to sleep early. back to work for 3 starting tomorrow night. don't want to be sick all week. hopefully this will just pass.
many more pictures to go, then catch up on whatever fun stuff i find to do between treks out and about. eventually the sun goes away the land freezes and the snow falls. then we rest from all the craziness that living in a land of near 24 hour light brings us for a few months.
summer is exhausting!! but i like it!!
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