Anchorage Up Close

After we did Martin Buser's sled dog kennel tour, we went back to Anchorage for a day or two.  We hit some of our favorite spots in the downtown tourist area:

The Army-Navy Surplus store that doesn't sell Army or Navy surplus items but does sell Carhartt outerwear, great rain wear and such. 

We also hit Susie's Woolies, the Irish store that sells beautiful wool clothing and always has great Irish music playing.  This year Susie had her little Sheltie dog leashed up outside and sitting in a chair. We had a great time visiting and playing with it before we went in.  Then, just like last year, we talked with Susie about her recommendations for some fun, fast paced Irish music.  We came away with a purchase from her own collection as well as some great band names and resources. 

Across the street we dashed into The Quilted Raven where I fell in love with a wall hanging pattern of salmon jumping and swimming.  I also bought a grizzly bear pattern and a moose pattern.  Now...let's see if I actually get around to making them...seeing how I still have 90 squares to still piece together on my current project (and then buy the border fabric (and sew it on), buy the batting and backing and actually quilt the monstrous thing!!)

In years past I've taken photos of sights in Anchorage - the sod roofed Visitor's Center, the giant hanging baskets of flowers on the downtown lampposts - but this year, my photos ended up being close-ups of just a few sights. 

I have really gotten into what I'm calling "texture photos".  They're not all literally textures, but because they are close-ups of much larger things, they kind of are.  It is the texture found in the small portions of larger things that attracts me.  While some of the below subjects aren't necessarily "texture photos", they are subjects isolated out of the larger scene. The others are more truly what I consider "textures".

Here's a shot that captured my attention.  It's the shingled roof of an outdoor shed, which oddly has moss growing on all the ends.  I loved it.

I think I like the diagonal angle best.

Then, of course...who can resist taking photos of beautiful flowers.  I love the tissue paper-like tubular folds of these petals.  I have no idea the name of this flower but I sure enjoyed looking at them closely.

Then there were these cool conks growing on a birch (I think) tree.  The first time I ever touched a conk, of a different variety, I was so surprised that it felt freezing cold and my fingers left a thawed looking imprint.

The mossy shingles, the flowers, and the conks were all found in the Anchorage Zoo, something that was a nice experience but we don't feel the need to ever do again.

This next series of photos was taken in the quaint downtown area of Anchorage. To be exact, it was on 5th Avenue outside the Glacier Brewhouse, a nice restaurant/brewery that has some of The Fisherman's favorite beers.  The inside of the restaurant has lots of wood and the ceiling is concave with beams running across it.  It's intended to mimmick the inside of a beer barrel and does so nicely.  (Not that I've ever been inside a beer barrel.)

For some reason, I love rusted metal.  I also love old fashioned iron ornamentation.  This great grate was situated around a small tree, one of many, along the sidewalk.

Where in the world does a city buy such cool street ornamentations? 

Why, Urban Accessories, of course.

 

While I was only interested in straight down shots of this "texture", The Fisherman suggested I take one from almost ground level.  I really like how it turned out.  I love what the angled point of view has done to all the many directions happening in this photo.

Well, that about sums up my Anchorage photos, not that you can now say you've seen anything of Anchorage because of them. 

I have more "texture" photos I've taken in recent years.  I've been meaning to dedicate a separate post to them someday.  Some you've already seen along the way, but I'd like to put them together in a collection.  I have enjoyed noticing the detail of larger things.  It seems to be a little bit "my thing" lately.

Alaska 2010 - Buser Kennel

I can't believe we've been home two weeks already!  I'm happy that I've finally gotten settled enough to put my photos in the computer and at least begin working on getting them ready for blog posts.

So here's the first post on my month in Alaska.

I had a cloudy flight into Anchorage.  Not the usual spectacular views of ocean and snow capped mountain ranges with glacier lakes.  I couldn't see the ground at all until we were only a couple hundred feet above it.  The Fisherman was there to greet me and it was so good to see him!  I got in around 9pm on Saturday night, August 28th.

The first thing we did the next day was visit the sled dog kennel of Iditarod champion, Martin Buser. 

His kennel is in Big Lake, about 50 miles north of Anchorage. His summer tour season was one week away from closing down and we were the only ones who showed up for a tour that Sunday, thus we got ourselves a private tour! His handler, Magnus (from Sweden, I believe) met us in the "dog yard" and started the tour for us. He led us to the Trophy Room where some of Martin's many trophies were on display. Next we went into The Garage and watched a movie about sled dogs, the Iditarod, and Martin's life and achievements. He is a Swiss immigrant who moved to Alaska when sled dog racing became his passion. He is now a citizen of the U.S. and I think probably holds the record for the longest naturalization swearing-in ceremony. It was begun at the opening of the Iditarod race in 2002 and ended just under 9 days later when Martin crossed "under the burled arch" to win the race and break the Iditarod record for the fastest time.

I love the name of this dog (below), Drop Zone. He was so named because someone just dropped him off as a young dog a couple years ago.  Martin raised him and he's now part of the kennel along with about 70 others.

At the end of the movie, Martin Buser himself came in and we shook hands and introduced ourselves.  What a treat it was to get a private tour and be able to have easy conversation with him.  He has been one of my favorite mushers because of his happy personality, good attitude, his tender way with his dogs and the great care he gives them.


We walked outside where Martin (in the orange shirt) and Magnus hooked up a small team of dogs for a demonstration around the property. 

The following are terrible photos, blurry because I didn't have my shutter speed set fast enough to stop the action of the dogs.  But I wanted to include them to show how excited the dogs get when they're getting ready to go.  This guy (gal?) was bearing down, lunging into the harness, so excited waiting for the command to go. 

And all of them were barking their heads off with excitement.

It was a chaotic, loud, crazy cacophony of barking howling dogs!  It went on, and on, and on.  It was so loud and wild, and went on for so long that all I could do was laugh.

 

This was just before he gave the command to "Hike!"  When he did, all the noise abruptly stopped and the dogs leaned into their harnesses and got down to the business they so eagerly awaited.

Here they are coming in for a stop after a short loop around the property.  It was about 55 degrees outside - a heatwave in sled dog terms - so the dogs aren't trained in earnest during the summer.  They are kept fit, but not trained.  

Among many things Martin Buser is known for as a musher, he is the musher who has made dog-sized "hamster wheels" for his dogs to run in.  They get in on their own and run just because they love it.


Here's me, being a groupie, with the four-time champ himself.

After the demonstration, we went over to another area where a tent was set up, a fire pit, a table with gear on it, and several sleds around it.  There were log benches setup in rows, amphitheater style, for the usual crowds that show up for these tours. There was a dog running around wild, enjoying her moments of freedom, running through the grass all around the tent and table.  Martin called her and she jumped right up on the table.  She came bolting up so fast that she slid right off into him, taking with her the blanket that served as a table cloth.  Her second try was more controlled as she landed right where she needed to be. She stood there patiently serving as a model for Martin to show us all the protective gear the dogs wear in various weather conditions. They have wrist warmers to keep their muscles warm, dog booties to protect their feet from ice and snow buildup. They have tee shirts and jackets to wear when it gets cold (like, really cold), special waist bands for the boys' private parts, and "donuts" of fur to protect that little flap of skin on the dogs' hind legs (where the legs connect to the torso).


We were so fortunate to be the only ones there.  We just stood right at the table, up close, and never sat down for the "show" like we would have had to if we were among dozens of others.


Next came the puppies.  Magnus let loose three six-week old puppies and their mama.  They ran circles of excitement all around us and were so cute.


And then.... THEN...Martin said, "If you don't have to leave right away, I'll let the big dogs loose and you can go with Magnus on their free run."  Let me think..... Uhh....YEAH!  I was so excited.


By "big dogs" I think he meant the older dogs.  Not the pups, the yearlings or the young ones.  By "big dogs" I think he meant his veteran athletes.


Here's Magnus, just getting started.  There are about 25 dogs ahead of him, all saying, "Woooooo! Yahoooooo!  Wheee!  WooHooooo!", as they run wildly back and forth along the trail.

Everybody had to pee on everything.  Everybody had to charge up the trail and back again, over and over.   They plunged into the woods on either side of the trail and popped out further up ahead.  They got into tussles with each other occasionally.  Mostly they just went nuts with their freedom, with all the scents and all the sights.


Always, they came back to Magnus as their anchor point.  This white one especially, who was being treated for a skin infection, stayed close to Magnus, always looking for loves from him whenever he stopped on the trail.

I'll be watching Magnus next March when he makes his rookie run in the 2011 Iditarod. He'll be running Martin's "B Team" or "Puppy Team" so he won't actually be racing competitively.  It's more of a training experience for the young dogs. I suppose it's a training experience for the rookie musher, too.

The dogs were running so wildly back and forth, with such excitement and speed, that Magnus cut off alder branches for The Fisherman and me.  He said the dogs can get so focused on a point past us as they're running along the path that they might actually run into us, not even seeing us.  He gave us the leafy branches to shake in front of us if it looked like a dog was going to barrel into us.  It would catch their attention, enabling them to actually see us there in their way.  We never had to use them, though I did get halfway barrelled into from behind once.  Sort of clipped by a speeding bullet running with glee up the path.

There was one open spot on the walk route.  We didn't linger there long because of a neighbor's float plane parked on the shore of the lake...the dogs were called away from the area of the plane so as not to damage it.

I love these shots of me, taken by The Fisherman.  Me, walking with a bunch of dogs, in the woods.  What could be better? 

Well...maybe it could be better if the dogs were my own.

And not so wild and rambunctious...

Still, it was pretty fun and pretty cool.

A really special experience for this dog lover.

While we were with Magnus and the dogs, Martin stayed back in the dog yard to hook up the dogs as they raced their way back home. They came back to the yard at will and Martin was there to greet them and secure them to their familiar spots.

In the end, there were two brothers missing.  Martin was not concerned, stating that they always get into trouble but they always come home.


He hooked up his famous and beautiful Jefferson...

...and gave him some personal attention and lovin' just like he does to all his dogs.

I bought a t-shirt from Martin's Happy Trails Kennel.  It's long sleeved and pink.  I had him sign it on the back, just below where my hair ends.  He wrote "Happy Trails.  Martin Buser"

It was a really fun day. It was so special to have such a casual and intimate setting with this famous, accomplished professional musher.  And what a treat to get to go with the dogs, "the true athletes", on their daily free run.

Sunday Morning 1:00 a.m.

Home.  Sunday morning around 1:00 a.m., after 4000 miles and five days of hard driving, we pulled into home from Alaska.  Tired and a little beaten up by the road, we are safely home and glad to see the spaciousness of our small home.  Compared to living in the van, it's a mansion!  We always appreciate our home so much more when we've come back from van camping.

I flew up to Alaska the end of August to spend a few weeks with The Fisherman there before driving back to Arizona.  I hope to get some posts and photos up in the next week or so.  And I hope you enjoyed the photos I scheduled to post while I was away.  Kind of a wrapping up of the summer here in the woods.

I'm looking forward to catching up on the blogs I follow to see what you've been up to this September.

I'll be back soon!

Ponderosa Water Drops

I'm kind of behind in getting some summer photos posted but I figure better late than never.  A couple weeks ago we had a nice gentle sprinkle that lasted about an hour.  It was so gentle that it took awhile for the long needles of the Ponderosa Pines to begin accumulating droplets.  So gentle was the rain that the droplets clung to the needle tips for a long time without dripping.  I had a fun time trying to capture this beautiful sight.  Here are some of my best attempts.  They turned out better than I expected, but still, a macro lens is what would work best for this kind of photography.

Mushrooms

It's amazing to me how quickly mushrooms spring up when it gets really rainy.

During those weeks where we had so much rain every day that I'm still collecting water out of the basement, mushrooms started coming up all over the place.  It was at the same time I was dogsitting Clancy and as I would take him out walking several times a day, I'd see new mushrooms breaking through the gravel and pine needles.  For such delicately skinned things, I always wonder that they can push through the forest floor without getting damaged.

We had a few varieties of them, too.  I like these little flat topped ones.

These look like they might be the same as above, only at an earlier stage?  These kind always remind me of Walt Disney's cartoon, I think it was, Fantasia where mushrooms turned into Chinese dancers with thier broad cone shaped hats.

This one pushed up through the earth and carried with it some of the soil.  I love that!

Thistles, Thistles! Everywhere!

Several years ago, we had a couple Thistles in the area.  Then we had a couple on our property.

And now they are everywhere.

I really like them.  they have such cute flower, and, as I said before, I love purple.  This is more of a lavender or a pinkish purple, and I like it, too.

I took these photos along a road with a typical form of fencing for our area: barbed wire.  There are several things that say "RURAL":  worn split rail fencing,  beat up old trucks,  gravel roads, cows or horses in a field.  Barbed wire fencing is another.

And Thistles.  Though they are a weed, and have nasty thorny stems and leaves, I do like their little spikey "hats".

These are some gentle photos of just a few thistles along a roadside.  I didn't get out to our little fruit tree orchard to take a photo of the solid 3ft x 6ft patch of hundreds of them.  I wish I had.  Thistles are just weeds, but wasn't it nice of  God to put such a cute flower on top of them?  Weeds are a result of the first sin in the Garden of Eden.  But I think God made some of them pretty for us as a gesture of kindness.