Steve and Judy's Travels!

Birch Hill, a nordic ski center.  That made for nice summertime walking trails.  One section was set up as a frisbee golf course.

Efficient.  I don’t think those two uses will conflict.

The hole for disc golf is defined by a chainstar.  Hit the chains with the frisbee and they suck all the momentum out of it and it falls into the tray.

I’ve never played frisbee golf so I thought it would be interesting to take a look.  We ended up walking every hole through the forest and I started playing them in my head.  Most were par 3.  There were four par 4s.  I could see the setup and throws that needed to be made.  I left too long a putt for one and bogeyed the hole.  One I birdied.  Overall, par.  I’d have to say I played one fine round of golf for my first try ever.  Next time I’ll have to try it with a disc!

Brown Creeper.

They can be hard to pick out against the bark.

They fly down to the base of a tree then quietly work their way up until it’s time to fly down to the base of the next tree.  It’s easier when they silhouette against the sky behind.

We asked about recycling.  We’re told it has just begun in Anchorage.  We can expect it to hit Fairbanks in a couple years.  Did we cross a time warp?

We have here an unfamiliar tree.  It’s a key species for the boreal forest; the black spruce.  It’s distinctive and not like anything we see in Colorado.  Normal spruces are pyramidal; shaped like Christmas trees.  The black spruce, by contrast, is very tall and thin.

From a distance, stands of black spruce do look considerably darker than other evergreen forests.

We bought a lot of warm clothes in Colorado to bring to the Yukon and Alaska.  It’s been T-shirt weather since we got here.  I’m getting weather alerts on my phone; excessive heat; highs in the mid-seventies to mid-eighties.  No rain in sight!

We got our Sandpipers fix again.  We crossed paths with fellow wanderers Lou and Alma, and Frank and Sandra.  We got to hang out together for a couple evenings and were even joined by Don and Vanessa from North Pole (some of us from Sandpipers also live in Alaska) for an extended happy hour.  They’ve all gone on their way now as we continue ours.

See the bright spot in the sky?

That’s the midday sun.  That’s as high as it gets.  The sun doesn’t come up, pass straight overhead, and then set.  It just gets up in the sky and goes around in circles!  (It’s not really that dark here in the middle of the day.  That’s just what I had to do with the lighting to keep the entire sky from washing out.)

We were out for a walk and this mew gull was acting like we should get our butts kicked and she was the one to do it.

A little looking around revealed the cause of her concern.

Two little baby gulls in the water!

We get to see gulls all winter in South Texas.  We don’t get to see them on their breeding grounds with babies!

See this thing on the forest floor?

It’s called a midden.  It’s a pile of stuff; rubble from a squirrel sitting on his favorite branch, tearing open cones for the seeds that are hidden there.  It looks like this has been a favorite place for quite a while!

Listen up.  I have a question.

Has anyone here been eating dirt?

And a black-capped chickadee.

Back to work.

I don’t work full-time, so usually I balance work with whatever else we’re doing, like birding or traveling.  Heading to Canada and realizing how much we would be out of touch, we declared those two weeks to be vacation and put an autoreply on the work email.  Well, fun’s over.  The two weeks are up, we’re back in the states, and back to reality.  Except for the walk in the boreal forest preserve…

It’s a harsh environment.

And versatile.

Sandhill cranes.

While we were driving across Yukon and Alaska along the Alaska Highway we noticed cable laying equipment working alongside the road.  Don’t know what that’s for.  Fiber optics?  Telecommunications?  I thought that was all done by satellites and towers now.  Laying cables seems so low-tech.  What do you suppose it could be for?

Here’s how our Canada map is doing.

We’ve been to a lot of the provinces now.  The right side still needs some work though.

And here’s our Yukon county map.

That’s it.  One county!  The first bird we reported in Yukon Territory filled in the entire thing!

Here is how we’re doing in Alaska so far.

Still got a ways to go there/here.