pictures-- soon to have more

these are picture that we took on the drive up to alaska. in this one, if you look closely, you will see that there are melt carverns in the glacier. the ice is around the caves is actually blue but my camera didn't get the color quite right.

what you are seeing is the very edge of a glacier in the Jasper/Banff Park in Canada. at the very bottom of the glacier is a Lodge that most likely costs ones sould to stay in. It was quite cold here because there is a semi-permanent chill wind that blows down and off the glacier right to where Tracy and I were standing.

a duplicate photo i hadn't realized i'd uploaded.

much of the "snow" you see on the mountains, specifically the narrow bit at the very top, is actually glacial ice that has yet to melt or fall off. the bird is what i believe i spoke of in an earlier post as a GRD, or ginormous raven of doom.

here is a closer picture of the GRD. this thing is just a few inches short of knee high, think walmart parking lot ravens, but twice the size. they are about the same size as a hawk. it is hard to see but there is a cigarette butt to the right of the picture. it is my only visual size comparison.
this is the black wolf that came up to the suburban as we were crossing the border back into alaska. it had obviously been fed. the car didn't scare it in the least, neither did we, and it was cowed-- the tail is tucked in if you will note, and was clearly looking for food. this is what happens when people feed whild animals. they begin to act sort of tame, which is dangerous to people who think they are safe to approach, and they lose the ability to hunt and care for themselves, making them dependent on humans. since this was a highway i suspect he was living off people's scraps. i wouldn't be surprised if he either starves during winter or gets hit by a car. *sigh* he was still a fantastic sight and one i will never forget.

here he is from farther away.

 

i will post more photos as soon as i can get them up. ta ta.

plane crashes and blueberries

the best way to open this is to say that everyone is fine and no one got hurt.

now for the fun part-- Tracy and I were in a plane crash! yup a plane crash. i still find it hard to believe.

two days before i was set to come back to bozeman tracy's dad took us to his cabin out in the alaska swamp. the area is not all swamp, it really depends on how high the ground is and how wet it has been. there were a lot of flowers and devil's club (which i think tracy has a personal vendetta against). anyhow her dad has a small prop plane. since the only way to get to the cabin in summer is to either hike several miles through swamp, not fun, ride in four wheelers, which they don't have, or fly small planes, such as the one her dad has and is liscensed to fly, we he flew in. it was a very short flight, 5-10 minutes at the most. we landed safely and had an excellent 24 hours doing hard labor and playing about-- we moved a sidewalk block by block and then put it back, tracy did most of the work so i can't complain.

then we went to the beach and looked at anchorage which is directly across from the swamp. it is a great view. tracy found an old "sparkling pepsi-cola" bottle and i found see glass. we distrubed a moose on the way to the beach which thankfully took off in the opposite direction.then we all packed up and got on the plane to leave.

we took off fine. we were going up and going up, tracy snapped a photo so i could show everyone what the swamp looked like from the air, and then not going up anymore, and then we went on this nice gentle arc downward. tracy's dad said "shit" and the next thing i know we have hit the ground and flipped over. it happened really really fast. there was a quick round of "is everybody okay?" and we got out of the plane.

it took me a few seconds to find my seat belt buckle. i must say in, my defense, that i am not use to unfastening one when i am dangling upside-down from it. i am very glad we were all wearing them.

anyhow, we all remained surprisingly calm and started pulling our bags from the plane, we carried everything but some boxes of nails which everyone agreed were just fine left behind.

then we proceeded to hike the 300 feet or so back to the landing strip, which is right in front of the cabin. we were hiking though swamp so it was like hiking through extreme mud, it kept trying to steal my shoes, and water and spungy plants that were about knee high and had roots and limbs everywhere. i highly recomend that no one goes hiking in the alaska swamps.

tracy did find blueberries in the swampy patch though. that was nice.

then we went back to the cabin, got into dry clothes and contacted neighbors. fortunatly we had eaten with them the night before so we knew they were there and that they had 4-wheelers and a vehicled called an argo. and that they were super cool. they also happened to be leaving that night.

so we contacted them and they took tracy and me with them out of the swamp, which was also an adventure. We ate some more of the swamp blueberries on the way out and then they drove us back to tracy's mom's house.

i made my flight back to bozeman and everything. all in all it was the best situation one could have gotten for a plane crash. not many people were involved, all came out without notable injury, and we were within close reach of a cabin and helpful neighbors.

if we hadn't landed in the swamp things could been much worse. the plants kept us from sinking and having too hard a landing. if we had gone much farther we would have landed in a small lake or trees which would have been much worse. and we also happened to be very close to the worlds largest small plane airport (merril fields) and within about 15 or 20 minutes, before we'd made it out of the swamp, there were several planes swooping close over head, either to check out the crash or to see if we needed help-- probably both.

and there were blueberries. how cool is that!