Saturday, May 30, 2015

Alaska 2015


Day 1—Travel to Anchorage—My daughter took me to the airport around noon on May 28.  My flight to San Francisco was on time leaving and arriving without incident.   Not so for my partner, Melanie Hoffman, whose plane was delayed over an hour in El Paso.  Fortunately, Melanie was able to secure another flight that got her into Los Angles in time to take the Alaska Airline flight she was supposed to be on.  I arrive at 10:50 PM in Anchorage as scheduled (equivalent of 1:50 AM CDT).  That will give me time to gather my luggage and get the rental car arranged before Melanie arrives at 12:15 AM.  Then its off to the Puffin Inn for the night.  I am excited about breakfast in the morning at one of my favorite restaurants anywhere—Snow City Café.  So after a long days travel of over thirteen hours and a few hours of sleep it will be time to scout the Anchorage area.  It is supposed to be in the 70s this week so all the Alaskans will be at Walmart buying fans for the heat wave they will experience.  They have no idea what heat really is!  

Day 2--After what was a short night—I hardly slept—we woke up at 6:30, had our coffee and then headed down to Snow City Café for breakfast.  This is always my first stop in Anchorage for a meal and as usual it was excellent.  I especially like their raspberry and boysenberry jams on sourdough toast.  The usual wait of 45 minutes is made easier by the beautiful, sunny day and sitting outside with a fresh cup of coffee eating one of their famous pecan sticky bun.  After breakfast Melanie and I headed up to Arctic Valley to do some birding.  Birds were fairly active and we logged Yellow and Yellow-rump Warblers, a Fox Sparrow, Swain son’s Thrush and at the ski lift site we were able to get good pictures of a Golden-crowned Sparrow.  From there we headed to Campbell Creek Bridge to check and see if the American Dippers had an active nest this year and we were rewarded with more pictures.  There is another spot nearby that I usually check out and there we encountered a family who reported an active grizzly near the lake I wanted to check out.  To insure not surprising this animal I used the technique taught me by a park ranger at Glacier--

You shout “hey bear” as you trudge along.  Not much on the lake so we headed to Potter’s Marsh to check it out.  The number and diversity to birds at Potter’s since I came here in 1998 has vastly decreased.  We found the usual Mew and Glaucous-winged Gulls, Red-necked Grebe, several duck species and a very large number of Cackling Geese.  After a brief tour on the boardwalk we called it a day and headed to the hotel for a nap before supper.  We were joined at Moose’s Tooth restaurant by Kim Risen and Larry Vaughn and had a great visit over beer, root beer and pizza.  One my favorite places to eat in Anchorage.  Then we called it a day.

Day 3—Anchorage—This morning Melanie and I joined a group of local birders to participate in the annual Potter’s Marsh Smackdown (so named by the venerable White Keys, president of the local Audubon and real nut).  The contest last from 8 till noon and the area is limited in which to bird with an oath the beginning on a National Geographic Bird Guide written by White Keys.  This was a hoot.  We then headed out with our respective teams to chase down birds.  We ended this contest in 3rd place with 41 species for the day.  Probably the best bird for us was a Western Wood Pewee but the opportunity to visit with local birders was worth our effort.  A former president of the Texas Ornithological Society, Lynn Barber, recently moved to Anchorage and it was good to see and visit with her again.  Following the contest we had a burger at my favorite hamburger place, WeeBe’s.  Jim, the owner is 91 years old, still works every day and is old school for sure.  He make his own fresh sour dough buns, grinds his own hamburger meat and even makes his own ice cream for the delicious shakes he sells.  Always a treat to return and Jim still at it.  He is an inspiration.  The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping for groceries to take with us to Nome, packing and repacking for our trip there in the morning.  We will meet the group there this coming week and we will do some scouting in hopes of making it easier to locate special birds when the group arrives.  Tonight we are eating the Bridge, a local restaurant specializing in salmon (something Melanie loves) and then head to Eagle River for an AA meeting where I will get my 26 year chip.   (note—if there are grammatical or spelling errors just overlook them.