Eaglecrest held its annual Winter Spectacular last evening, complete with a torchlight parade and a fireworks show that rivaled July 4th’s! The weather looked like it might rain on the parade, so to speak, but it held off long enough to not make the show completely miserable. I didn’t get any shots of the torchlight parade, but I did get ideas for next year… Just wait.
First Alaska post of the new year! I spent a beautiful afternoon at Eaglecrest watching brave skiers and snowboarders doing crazy things that would likely land me in the hospital… I’m content to snap a few photos. Of course, Pittman Ridge is an awesome place to see something you just can’t see from Juneau – the other side of Douglas Island. It’s amazing to be at a spot where you can see Admiralty Island and beyond on one side and the Mendenhall Valley on the other. Definitely reminds me why I love living here.
One of my favorite kinds of photography is macro photography. Basically, getting up close and personal with whatever you’re taking a photo of. Here are some up close and personal photos of some flowers, a leaf, and a snail. Enjoy!
The summer of 2007 was a fantastic bear year in Juneau.
If you visited the Mendenhall Glacier anytime between late-July and August of that year, you were nearly guaranteed a black bear viewing. There were 13 black bears concentrated in a roughly 1.5 mile stretch of Steep Creek, feeding on the spawning salmon making their way upstream. The raised viewing platforms of the Moraine Trail – originally built to enhance salmon viewing – proved to be a wonderful and safe way to watch the bears and their cubs go about their feeding.
I don’t know the proper name of this creek, only that me and my camera were in it while shooting this 360 degree panorama.
I was taking a drive out towards Echo Cove and made use of the Auke Rec bypass that lets you cut straight to Lena Pt rather than hugging Auke Bay with all its twists and turns. As I was driving along, I noticed this deer on the opposite side of the road. I stopped, pulled over, and backed up – the deer didn’t seem to mind that was literally right across the street from it. I snapped some photos and all of a sudden, I noticed the deer’s head perk up. I took one more shot, this one, and lifted my eye from the camera’s viewfinder to see what the deer was worried about. That’s when I saw the jogger I’d passed earlier and his dog… by the time I got my eye back to my camera, the deer was spooked enough to run off into the woods. You never know when you’re going to run across some wildlife here!