“Chugach” is the name for the native peoples in this southeast region of Alaska, and it’s the name of a national forest and the state park we’re in right now, amazingly near Anchorage.
Elkutna Lake and Eagle River Close-ups
I’m having a hard time posting photos of views that are not sweeping landscapes, so I’m saving those for my next post and offering nothing but close-ups here.
I’ll take photos of birds when Tracy needs to identify them and doesn’t have his binoculars with him (which is not often!). This one’s a juvenile white-tailed something or other that Tracy wasn’t interested in, but I thought I’d prove that I can indeed take a bird shot!
I didn’t have my camera with me when we saw the flock of Bohemian waxwings, of course.
Wildflowers are all along the roadsides and trail edges and full on in the fields here.
As are bears! The one on the right was pretty danged big, big enough that a friendly local couple also hiking stopped and talked with me while we waited to be sure the bear wasn’t going to turn around and come down the hill at us.
The gentleman is 92 and walks four miles a day. What’s wild is they’ve been married for only three years; they outlived their previous spouses. What kind people to chat with me as we waited for the bear to pass. I’m adding them to my list of wild things in Alaska.
This photo looks the lamest, but it represents the most amazing moment I’ve had up here. Tracy is re-enacting a wolf running across the trail right in front of me. You know when you remember every bit of detail surrounding some big event? And you have to tell the story to everyone about where you were and what was happening? I am sorely tempted to tell the whole story about the split second I saw a wolf, but I will spare you.
It was big. It was fluffy. It was silent, and it was running full-speed down the mountain. Wild things!
Mum told me to tell you that she saw a bear eating the tops off cow parsnip once so if you see some that look like that’s recently happened to them keep an eye out!
Thanks, Jacqui’s mum! I’m often looking at wild green things and wishing she were walking along there, too.
Is cow parsnip the plant with moves that burn your skin?