walking and driving....

 these mountain goats are often seen along the mountains above Turnigan Arm, especially near Windy Point.  my little canon can zoom in pretty close so i check it out every so often.  not that the quality will be such that i could totally blow it up, but this guy does have a cute face, right?

 another indecisive day for walking.  ended up in Kincaid headed for the beach.  got to the little beach access trails but they were all total ice slicks down hill. would not have been too brilliant for me to attempt this even on a good day,  i often think how great it would be if they would put in an access staircase thingee.

 the cliffs would be subject to less erosion and it would just make it more accessible.  i know budgets are tight.  of course, all this talk of tight budgets really just annoys me because as they say that you can so readily spot so many incidences of outrageous over spending that never seems to be accounted for.   lavish legislative offices are currently being built in Anchorage.  i mean taj mahal lavish it seems at great expense....yet i get rebuffed for the small budget required to watch over walrus in a sanctuary.  i can assure you the biology techs that have stayed out there year after year have not lived lavishly while out there.

 our WARIS petition is over 8000 signatures now.  will just keep increasing those numbers or trying to and do my best to make walrus a household topic of discussion.  they need to be on par with polar bears when discussions about warming happen.

 i love me some polar bears too, don't get me wrong, but the walrus just have never gotten the attention they deserve.  it's their time...or at least that is my intention.  i am the crazy walrus lady i guess.  if it works, so be it.  there are worse things and i'm sure i've been called worse things.

 you can get an idea of the zoom of that little camera below...see the little white spots at the top of those mountains...those are the goats!!

 these are with the wide angle lens.  i switched it out.  we walked down to the beach cut off and then walked back up the hill.  nice day out so i opted to go for a drive as well.

 i lazed about too much on the drive and the wildlife conservation center had closed or was closing.  oh well...another day. i'm due to renew my membership i think anyway.

 so we just drove out Portage Valley and then back.

 figure i should take it a bit easy post procedure but as long as i don't do anything strenuous i'm okay.

 these compression hose are the worse...so hot!!  friday i can at least sleep without them finally.  then just wear them during my waking hours for two weeks.  will wear them for work for sure for a while...should probably just always wear them at work i suppose. i have been doing the knee high for work since before the first procedure.  i've never been a panty hose/stocking sort of girl.

 not much of a girly girl.  probably was more of one in my twenties and thirties...Alaska takes the girly girl out of you for the most part i think.  i will probably have to learn a few girl skills again if i have meetings with this WARIS stuff.  looking a bit more professional can't hurt i suppose.

 Portage Valley was super pretty today.  they had just gotten a few inches of snow and it was so fresh and beautiful.

 i always love this one spot for looking over the portage river/creek.

 i still get confused as to when things are creeks or rivers or streams.  rivers here are so huge, creeks are what i would have thought was a river in California and streams...well it can be baffling

 it's the same with bogs, tarns, ponds and lakes.  at how many cubic feet does one thing become another?  no idea.

 these are back to Kincaid.  cloudy in Anchorage.  once again there is talk about a wee bit of snow.  not enough to change the decision to move the restart of the Iditarod to Fairbanks.  i'll have to look and see what i can find as far as dog friendly places to stay.  may be tough to find dog sitter at this late date and a drive with the girls is always fun.

 the public use cabins look booked up already for that weekend. i'll look again before i crash. if it works out i'll head up.  i've been wanting to hit Fairbanks in the winter.  just hope it's not too cold that week and that we get some northern lights.

 more of my favorite Kincaid tree.  no way for me to pass it and not stop and take a photo of it. i could do a coffee table book with just pics of this one tree probably.

 would have loved to walk the beach but the path down was so icy it would have been idiotic for me this week and with Rio Catalina.

 she still seems to be drinking and peeing more than her usual.  will need to schedule her for lab work i think.

 she cracked me up today.  i opened the front door to load the dogs in the car and next thing i know she's headed out the driveway and towards the bog...she never does that.  i had to chase her down.  that dog can move faster than you would think.  nut case...haha.

 Blossom got to chase her tennis ball.  these multiuse trails are usually leash only...but i tell you there was nobody out there today.  looks like the main ski trails were set up for races.  maybe high school stuff for later in the day. the trail i was on was like a ghost town.  no moose either. did see one as i drove out, but it was off in the brush so i wasn't going to get any decent photo ops.

 the root system is just so cool, right?

 looked cool in sepia today.

 the Yukon Quest is running, sounded like Sass was in the lead.  many of the usual quest runners. not sure how the trail is going out that way. one of these days i should probably go check that one out.  it's a dog sled race, in case you've never heard of it.

 can't believe how much ice is out there.  in January i was driving down there dumbstruck by how little ice there was...didn't take too much cold weather for it to build up.

 as far as the eyes can see.  so cool to watch it all.  took a short video of it as the tide was going out.  it's impressively fast.

 love clouds...they just make it all so much more pretty

 these are in Portage Valley.

 the light was just shining on all that fresh snow.

 dark tree trunks stood out

 just reading todays paper...Sass is out front.  the trail has been fast but cold, which is pretty common for the Yukon Quest.  they start in Whitehorse, YT and are coming in to the halfway point of Dawson City, YT.  it ends in Fairbanks this year but i think they switch that up each year.  Last year Sass was out after he fell asleep on his runners and crashed into the the ice.  he got a concussion and had to scratch.  Moore beat him that year and this year he is in second place again...barring any concussions, Sass may be able to win this year.

 there is long distance and then there is sprint mushing...that season is in full swing as well.  lots of that happens on the Tozier Track here in Anchorage.  those races run through some of the trail areas i tend to walk.  just have to keep track of race schedules and stay away from the dog sled dedicated trails....this state gets kind of nuts in the winter...trails are dedicated to certain activities and people will get pretty annoyed with those who do not abide by the rules...this gets tougher and tougher with this new entitled generation.

 more pretty tree's

 little blurb in commentary from the north slope mayor.  she is clearly for oil development.  no major spills up there but perhaps she hasn't wandered the streets of Deadhorse.  rainbow colored water everywhere.  this promise of cleaning it all up after the oil is extracted looks like a lost dream to me from what i saw.  would help me believe more if they tried to keep it clean as they went rather than making empty promises for some future where it will revert to it's natural state.  a great deal of damage is being done.  i'm not against using our resources but don't just say you will protect the environment, do it.

 it was sad to walk around town.  also i had my dogs on leashes and i feared letting them sniff anything lest they get poisoned by attempting to take a sip of the polluted runoff that was all over that town.

 they make you pay $50 bucks to the local native corporation i believe for a tour.  first you watch the isn't the oil industry great video and then they take you to a beach so you can walk in the arctic waters...sadly, they couldn't even bother to clean up the one beach they charge tourists to go to...really?

 will post more pics from this day on another day.  obviously i took a lot of pictures.

 Portage Lake....also covered with ice.  i will wait to walk back to the glacier until others braver than i do it and survive. not sure that ice is stable or thick enough this year.  not a trek i would do alone anyway.  got to pick the right conditions

 glacier peeking out from the mountains

 three nights of work coming up again.  my days off went fast. probably partly because Monday was a lost day.

 a few of an old rail bridge i think.  big closed doors.  so really not sure of the story.

 looked cool though.

thankful for:  1.  another procedure behind me.  2.  having options 3.  having gotten a decent education in safe conditions.