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posted: September 4th, 2022 |
We did not have a great number of adventures this month, but we considered it a good month. This page starts with the 17th with a drive across the Denali Highway from west to east. Most photos from this adventure were taken on the 18th, as you will notice. It began to rain quite heavily on the 18th and rather than stopping for the night in the heavy rain, we just drove on through to home. After that there are some shots of our flower garden, Gettinger's Field and a Belted Kingfisher on the Chatanika River. Click on any thumbnail to begin.
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| Begin August 17th |
On August 17th we drove from our home, down the George Parks Highway to Cantwell, Alaska, turned east on the Denali Highway, and continued to the BLM's Brushkana Creek Campground. These three scenic photos were all taken on the Denali Highway as we approached the campground. Note that the photos are mislabeled as "East End of Denali Highway", but it's actually the west end of the highway.
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Here are three more scenic photos from the western end of the Denali Highway.
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 Aug17th_001_ DenaliHWYRC |
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In this row we present one more very beautiful scenic photo and then two photos showing autumn colors in some Cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus) leaves.
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| End August 17th, Begin August 18th |
Now it's August 18th and we are continuing to drive east on this beautiful morning. The first shot here is a scenery shot. The center photo shows Crowberry (Empetrum nigrum) plants and berries, while the third photo shows not only Crowberry, but also Bearberry (Arctostaphylos alpina).
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Here is one more shot of Crowberry (Empetrum nigrum) and then the rain began and we had a pretty bright partial rainbow.
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Here is an additional rainbow shot and then another shot of bright red Bearberry leaves. In third position is another nice scenic shot.
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The first shot in this row shows some fireweed seed pods along with a partial rainbow - lots of red. The second and third shots were taken through a rain or snow cloud and they show that we had some snow on the high peaks during the night. This is generally referred to as termination dust, as it indicates the termination of summer.
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Here is another shot of beautiful Bearberry leaves. The center shot shows that we are about on the dividing line between poor weather and nice weather. Unfortunately the rain cloud was traveling faster than we were and it was not long after this that we were in the fairly heavy rain for the remainder of the day. The third shot shows more termination dust on the peaks.
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Here are three more great scenery shots.
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The first shot in this row is kind of the final scenery shot, after this it was raining too hard to even want to get out of the pickup for photos. The second and third shots were taken from inside our dry pickup truck while looking down into a large lake. What do we have here? It's a family of Trumpeter Swans (Cygnus buccinator) - mom, dad and two young ones - so very cool to see.
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Here are three additional shots of the family of Trumpeter Swans (Cygnus buccinator).
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Here is the final shot of the Trumpeter Swan family in first position. The center shot shows an overview of where they went ashore and were resting. Then we began to hear a Common Loon (Gavia immer) calling. It apparently liked the heavy rain that was falling and so did its mate, as they both started singing together. If you've ever heard a loon call, then you know how eerie it sounds. Well, this pair sang, called, talked, whatever you want to call it, for several moments and we felt very special to have been able to hear it happen.
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 Aug18th_253_DenaliHWY_ CygnusBuccinatorRC |
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The first photo in this row shows the pair of Common Loons which was singing for us. It kind of gives you an idea of the scale of things here. In the center shot, greatly zoomed, you can see that the beak of one of them is open as it sings for us. As we continued along, we came upon this place. What a surprise! We bought a jar of jam. It was closer to blueberry water than it was to jam, delicious but disappointing as far as using it on toast.
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After another hour or so we came upon another pond where we saw loons floating around. We stopped and Kazuya was able to get some shots through the open truck window. As he zoomed in he noticed that these were not Common Loons, but something else in the loon family. We had one of our bird books with us and quickly identified them as a Red-throated Loon (Gavia stellata) and its young - a new bird for our life list. WOW! It's disappointing that the weather was so poor, but anyway...
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 Aug18th_302_DenaliHWY_ GaviaStellataRC |
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We had planned to camp along this highway one more night, but with the fairly heavy rain we decided to just push on and come all the way home. These two photos were taken along the Richardson Highway, after we left the Denali Highway and headed north. This is called Rainbow Ridge.
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| End August 18th, Begin August 23rd - 31st |
Here are three shots of Kazuya's Flower Garden here at our home. WOW! We have had beautiful flower arrangements in the house for quite some time now. We are so very fortunate.
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On the 29th we took a walk up the road to Gettinger's Field. Here are two shots from that day. In the second shot you'll notice that our autumn colors are quite drab this year. This is due to the fact that even today (September 4th) we have not had our first frost, so there is no good reason for the leaves to be brilliant yellow. They know that it's time to die and fall because of the photoperiod, but they have no reason to become brilliant.
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On August 31st we took a drive up the Elliott Highway to search for some brilliant autumn colors, but we still could not find any. We stopped at the Whitefish Campground on our way home to cook and eat our lunch and Kazuya heard a Kingfisher, so we went down to the river bank and kept our eyes open and, lo and behold, before long we had seen two or three Belted Kingfishers (Megaceryle alcyon). It is a big area, so they never came very close to us and these two shots are the best we managed to get. We felt that we were most fortunate to have seen these birds.
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| End August 23rd - 31st, End August 2022's Photos, Begin Our Publications Links |
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| End Our Publications Links, End Page 1 of 1, August 2022 |
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