Feeling Good

Nina Simone

Birds flying high
You know how I feel
Sun in the sky
You know how I feel
Reeds driftin' on by
You know how I feel

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
I'm feeling good.

LONG-BILLED DOWITCHER

KLUANE LAKE MARSHLANDS, YUKON TERRITORY

May 24:  Stayed at very nice hotel in Whitehorse.  Did the laundry, went shopping, visited the tourism office and eventually got out of “Dodge” around 1:00 PM.  We started driving the Alaska Highway and never got off.  This is one

ALASKA BORDER - "WE MADE IT!"

nauseating drive.  Despite the astonishing scenery with its sugar-topped mountains, beautiful rivers and stunning forests of every shade of green, the road is a series of permafrost swales, heaving one way and then the next, up and down, back and forth.  We almost puked.  And then it got REALLY bad for about 60 miles of dirt, gravel, potholes and washboard.  The most interesting place along the way was Kluane Lake, the largest in the Yukon.  At its terminal end, there was a substantial marsh, set against the dry mountains.  Although shorebird migration had peaked a few weeks ago, there were still numerous western sandpipers feeding in the short grass, a fully breeding-plumaged long-billed dowitcher and some semipalmated plovers.  Here’s some more good news: we finally crossed over into Alaska at about 9:00 PM (full daylight, of course) and there, as the border sentinel, welcoming party and general host, was a lovely full adult bald eagle!  The road wound through black spruce and white spruce forest, brightened by the fresh spring greens of aspen, willow and birch.  Numerous ponds and meadows fringed the road and we finally saw our first moose, calmly grazing knee deep in the dark water.  On several ponds, huge trumpeter swans were nesting.  These were impossible to miss, pure white behemoths with feathers.  Deadman Lake Campground, about 70 miles southeast of Tok, Alaska, is our home for the night.  It’s 42 degrees (fahrenheit, gol dang it! we’re back in the land of miles and yards, gallons and USofA dollars), but that’s good because it keeps the mosquitos at bay.  Standing out on the dock for a few moments, a gaudily dressed spotted sandpiper teetered past, Barrow’s goldeneyes swam peacefully off for the night, a Pacific loon flew overhead and a pair of trumpeters dipped their long necks for a late snack.

RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET

RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET

May 25:  Brisk and chilly this morning but I’m so glad we went for a walk around this small campground before leaving.  The forest here is lightly perched on a bog that in turn sits upon permafrost ground.  That means pretty much what it sounds like - a few inches from the surface, the ground is permanently frozen.  Despite the fact that less rain falls here than in some deserts, all the water stays on the surface because it can’t penetrate the frozen earth, so bogs form with much wet sphagnum moss, scrubby vegetation and stunted trees.  Walking down the road, the familiar song of a ruby-crowned kinglet rang out.  This diminutive migrant loves to get on top of a tree and belt out its dee-dee-dee-dee, deedly, deedly-dee song.  Its red crown is not often seen, but this one not only was flaring it out, but definitely having a bad hair day.  We watched a red squirrel sitting on a stump, munching away on spruce cone seeds, and were amazed by the immense midden of seed hulls that had accumulated beneath it.  Suddenly, Gale grabbed my arm and pointed.  A male spruce grouse was just ahead of us, feeding on the forest floor.  These large birds can be very difficult to find because they live in such dense and dark surroundings, but once located are usually quite docile.  They are even nicknamed “fool’s hen” because they usually stay put when approached.

SPRUCE GROUSE

HORNED GREBES

We headed northwest a short distance and turned south on Northway Road, exploring the many ponds and lakes fringing the somewhat elevated roadway.  After encountering a few rusty blackbirds (whose population has crashed by 90%! over the past 40 years), we had the good luck to see a pair of nesting trumpeter swans on a small pond.  The award for best performance was a pair of horned grebes, in full breeding plumage, with a very amorous male seeking to win the favors of his best girl.  Both birds flared their “horns”, golden feathers that protrude from the sides of their heads and the male fully spread his black nape, framing his russet body and bright crimson eye.  Quite a show.  

TRUMPETER SWANS

We continued on to our destination for the night, Tolsona Wilderness Campground, just west of Glenallen.  Going for an evening walk, I ran into a group of three couples - one each from Anchorage, Phoenix, Arizona and Raleigh, North Carolina.  The wives worked together at the same company, but only over the internet.  The husbands had never met.  They shared a semi-large RV, all sleeping in the same room, for over a week.  That is optimism at its highest level!  Somehow it worked.  They were all great to talk to, offered me a cold one and then invited me to return with Gale later for social hour.  We had a wonderful time mostly talking about travel in Alaska, our careers and whatever else came up.  There was some alcohol involved.

TOLSONA CREEK

GRAY JAY

May 26: We went out this morning and walked a few miles around the campgrounds and surrounding forest.  It was fairly quiet, but we did find a noisy family of gray jays, singing yellow-dumped warblers and a Swainson's thrush,belting out its multiethnic melody that rang through the forest like a flute duet.  After semi-warm showers, we began our drive to Palmer, Alaska.  The route took us past magnificent mountains, braided rivers and the immense Matanuska Glacier.  Although the thin icy foot of the glacier reached almost to its terminal moraine, we could see how much it had shrunken laterally, leaving rumpled mounds of earth where dense ice had once flowed.  It was unusual for us to arrive at our destination by 2:30 PM, but we planned to meet our friends from Connecticut, Doug and Shirley Beach at a campground.  There they were, having arrived in Anchorage yesterday, picked up their rented RV today and pulled into our meeting place, Matanuska River Park, at about the same time.  It was a wonderful reunion and we spent the rest of the day catching, walking the park's trails, just hanging out and relaxing.

YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER

MATANUSKA RIVER VALLEY

May 27:  Got a good start driving south to the Kenai Peninsula, but had to negotiate Anchorage rush hour traffic. Clearing the city, we arrived at Potter Marsh at about 9:30 AM and walked the new and expanded parking and boardwalk system.  You no longer had to risk your life by pulling off the side of the road and dodging traffic to get to the marsh.  There weren’t too many birds around, but some ducks, Lincoln’s sparrow and a common redpoll gathering willow catkin fluff for nesting material provided the entertainment.  Onward down the Kenai, passing glaciers, uncountable snowy peaks, Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet, magnificent rivers and lakes.  We stopped at Anchor Point, not too far from Homer, AK, and went walking on the beach, which was primarily occupied with a horde of bald eagles standing around on the sand looking like grumpy old men.  Two of them stood 

POTTER MARSH

COMMON REDPOLL

BALD EAGLES

BALD EAGLE

May 27:  Got a good start driving south to the Kenai Peninsula, but had to negotiate Anchorage rush hour traffic. Clearing the city, we arrived at Potter Marsh at about 9:30 AM and walked the new and expanded parking and boardwalk system.  You no longer had to risk your life by pulling off the side of the road and dodging traffic to get to the marsh.  There weren’t too many birds around, but some ducks, Lincoln’s sparrow and a common redpoll gathering willow catkin fluff for nesting material provided the entertainment.  Onward down the Kenai, passing glaciers, uncountable snowy peaks, Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet, magnificent rivers and lakes.  We stopped at Anchor Point, not too far from Homer, AK, and went walking on the beach, which was primarily occupied with a horde of bald eagles standing around on the sand looking like grumpy old men.  Two of them stood

r

BALD EAGLE

CAMPED AT HOMER SPIT

right next to each other, clumsily walking around.  But when they take to the air, it is pure ballet.  Up in the conifers above the beach, numerous orange-crowned warblers sang and flitted among the boughs, kicking up a puff of pollen dust each time one changed position.  We proceeded down to the Homer Spit, self-proclaimed “halibut fishing capital of the world.”  This narrow strand extends out several miles into the middle of Kachemak Bay and is completely blanketed with every tacky fishing charter place, tourist shop and restaurant imaginable.  It’s so far over the top it’s fun.  A complete zoo, especially on this packed Memorial Day weekend when every single camping spot on the Spit is jammed with RVs cheek to jowl.  We got our adjacent spaces, facing right out onto the water and enjoyed every minute of it.  From our “front yard” we saw sea otters, harbor porpoises and a humpback whale, hundreds of common murres streaming by and an endless procession of gulls of various shapes, sizes and demeanors.  What a blast!  Across the bay are, you guessed it - a complete mountain range of snow covered peaks.  

HMS RAINBOW CONNECTION

GULL ISLANDS

May 28:  We stretched out our sea legs today and boarded the HMS Rainbow Connectionfor an all day excursion around Kachemak Bay.  The first stop was the Gull Island complex, where thousands of common murres congregated in a huge raft, the sky was filled with jabbering black-legged kittiwakes (many years ago, my then young son used to call them “tiddly winks) and tufted puffins, sporting blond locks and massive red beaks, cruised around us.  Sea otters lolled about, floating on their backs, while dining on sea urchins or other delicacies, using their tummies for tables.  A few pencil-necked pelagic cormorants looked like spikes on the jagged rocks.  We spent some time here and then cruised through an inner passage toward the little town of Seldovia, reachable only by boat or small airplane.  Kachemak Bay is a favored summer home for humpback whales and their calves and we were not disappointed, seeing about six during the course of the day, some of them creating great splashes by slapping their flukes on the water or completely breaching.  On one  island, the wave eroded rock formation strangely resembled an elephant with its trunk extended.  As we passed by, another nearby formation made it look like the elephant had raised its trunk in a friendly salute!

TUFTED PUFFIN

BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKES

Seldovia, perched on the steep hillsides of the bay, is a community of about 250 permanent residents.  First established by the Russians, who owned and occupied Alaska until it was purchased by the US in 1867 (“Seward’s Folly”), Seldovia was a perfect port from which sea otters and sea lions could be hunted for their furs.  Now its economic life is based on tourism and fishing, so we had no trouble finding $17.00 hamburgers and $5.00 ice cream cones.  Everything is expensive in Alaska, but here they have to ship in everything but firewood.  

SEA OTTERS WITH PUP

ELEPHANT ROCKS

ELEPHANT ROCKS

SELDOVIA, ALASKA

Pretty much burned out by all the sea air (we rode on the bow the whole trip), our sole evening activity was a stroll down to the end of the Spit to sit on a bench and watch the birds, people and boats swing by the bay, all with a magnificent backdrop of the white mountains.

May 29:  Still trying to get used to no darkness at night, but at least it is dusky for about 5 hours each evening.  As we approach the summer solstice and continue further north, crossing the Arctic Circle, the sun will NEVER set, as it circles endlessly through the boreal sky.  I started wearing a sleep mask and as uncomfortable as it is, I find that I sleep better with it on.  Not recommended for driving at “night”, however.

VARIED THRUSH

The four of us began the day by birding around Beluga Lake, just north of the Spit, but still inside Homer city limits.  There were common redpolls flying all around, dressed in their finest pink plumage.  I thought a cell phone rang, but it was a varied thrush singing its bizarre monotone notes.  On the lake, a pair of red-necked grebes swam in and out of the tall grasses, as did a pair of trumpeter swans (“cob” - male, “pen” - female) with their three young cygnets.  We walked a lengthy trail on the north side of the lake, traversing spruce forest, meadow and bog.  

HERMIT THRUSH

The funniest moment of the trip happened when I tried to play a recording of a hermit thrush and, as the bird sat right over our heads,  instead of bird song, somehow Pandora came on, playing what else but Nina Simone singing “Birds Flyin’ High”,  the lyric from “Feeling Good”.  Coincidence?  I think not.  The bird gods were definitely at work here.

Pacific wrens trilled their lengthy complex songs throughout the forest and we watched a study in orange and black, also known as a Townsend’s warbler, collecting fibers and grasses for a prospective nest.

Then onward to the other side of the Kenai Peninsula at Seward, where we camped for the night amidst towering Douglas firs with yet another  backdrop of snow-covered mountains. 

May 30:  Got a slow start today.  On purpose.  Have you ever seen the movie, “Major league”?  Wesley Snipes plays a very enthusiastic rookie who is insanely fired up in the first game of the season.  His teammates calm him down, saying, “Dude, we’ve got 161 more games this season.  Pace yourself.”  With three more months of our trip ahead of us, we needed one of those days, so we took it.  Made pancakes for brekkie, Took long hot showers.  Nice.

EXIT GLACIER NEAR SEWARD, ALASKA

SEWARD, ALASKA

First activity was a visit to Exit Glacier, just north of Seward.  It’s part of the Kenai Fjords National Wildlife Refuge and is the only part of the NWR accessible by car.  The rest of it is marine.  This glacier was first recorded in 1815, during the “Little Ice Age”.  Several miles from the glacier, a sign on the road showed where the terminal moraine or foot of the glacier was at that time.  Further signs showed where the foot was in 1856, 1899, 1951, and so on up to the present, as it has continued to retreat.  From once filling the entire valley, Exit Glacier now is miles from where it was 100 years ago and is currently retreating (a euphemistic way of saying “melting”) at the rate of about 100 feet per YEAR.  We hiked 1.5 miles up to the edge of the once mighty sheet of ice as it poured down from the mountains.  A glimmer of its former self, crevasses creased its face, revealing exquisite turquoise/blue interior color.  This results from the ice absorbing every color in the light spectrum except blue.  Silty water, also known as glacial milk, thousands of years old, flowed out from under the glacier’s “toe” to form a wide braided river in the valley the glacier once fully occupied.  The hard granite rocks that had once been under the sheet of ice now showed all the scratch marks and abrasions caused by hundreds of thousand of pounds of ice dragging smaller rocks across their surface.

HARLEQUIN DUCKS

We continued on to the small city of Seward, at the head of Resurrection Bay.  This town was virtually destroyed in the 9.2 magnitude earthquake of 1964.  The land beneath it subsided 10-30 feet and giant sunamis smashed into what was left shortly thereafter.  I can’t imagine what that was like, but it had to be completely terrifying.  Nonetheless, the rebuilt town is now quite charming, a bustling hub of tourism and commercial fishing.  A stretch of about 1/2 mile of waterfront has been transformed into a lovely campground, directly overlooking the bay and we were fortunate enough to have a site right on the water, with only a bicycle/walking path between us and the swarming gulls fishing on the placid water.  After getting our site, we continued south on Lowell Point Road, a narrow serpentine dirt road that hugs the water and the adjacent mountains.  Signs warn: “Danger! Do not stop. Avalanche zone.”  Flocks of mostly male harlequin ducks floated in rafts just offshore.  We made it safely to the end of the road, parked and scoped the bay for seabirds.  Lo and behold (for you lo and beholders out there), we found both marbled and Kittlitz’s murrelets out in the deep water.  This called for a celebration, since both were “lifers” for Gale, bring her life list to a new high of 580!  51 lifers so far on the trip.  A Mounds Bar for Gale and a Klondike Bar for me did the trick.

DINING WITH THE BEACHES AT RAY'S, SEWARD

We all went for a fancy dinner at Ray’s Waterfront Restaurant and I managed to consume 1.5 pounds of king crab, washed down with a pint of Kasilik’s Roughneck Oatmeal Stout.  For those of you who know me, that was more than enough to put me under the table.  Gale drove home.

Note:  we checked the dictionary and learned that the word “murre” is pronounced “murr” and the word “murrelet” is pronounced “murrlet”.  It seemed to me that “murrlet” sounded like short-skirted, high-heeled, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, overly made-up woman in a Texas bar, looking for a line like, “Hey, Myr-lette, if ah bah y’all a drank, will ya go out to mah pickup with me?”  This was after several glasses of Bailey’s Irish Cream back at the campground.

May 31:  After briefly birding the brackish marsh at the end of the small Seward airport (Birding Guide advice: “Be careful when crossing the runway - watch out for low-flying planes”.), Gale and I drove straight back to Anchorage, for a day/night/day of R&R, getting our mail, paying bills, returning phone calls and emails, shopping, laundry, writing this blog and posting it, etc.  We drove along Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet, where the tide was completely out, revealing vast clay mudflats.  These flats are extremely dangerous because the mud is sticky, has quicksand in places and if you get caught in it, the odds of drowning are high when the 39 foot tide comes inexorably rolling in.  Seemingly bored bald eagles, however, did not seem to be concerned as they lined the edges of the water, looking like they should be holding balloons and waiting for the Memorial Day parade to pass.

We stayed at the Marriott Springhill Suites Hotel and luxuriated in the wonderfully king size suite, nice guest laundry, indoor hot tub and other amenities.  We even get breakfast without having to set up lawn chairs in the RV!