Another Winter Dawn

You can't see it in the silhouette but there is about an inch of snow on the ground from yesterday.

Sky Threatening Snow

Taken from the top of Baycrest hill, looking southeast over Kachemak Bay.

A Rainy Evening at the Airport

An evening flight takes the runway to depart for Anchorage as the clouds obscure the bluff.

Before Dawn

I took this from our bedroom window at about 8:45 this morning.

From The Driveway

Just the lights on the cat run and our lighted wreath, reflected in the window of my car on the lower right. I put the wall-hanging tree in the cat run yesterday when I changed the hay on the ground.

Dawn Over Kachemak Bay

click for larger

A sunrise for a change. Taken yesterday morning from the usual location: the southeast side of the airport where I work.

I have dozens of pictures taken from this spot. Every day I think, "I have enough pictures of sunset over the Inlet. I won't take my camera to work today." But I do, and I end taking pictures, trying to capture what doesn't seem to translate well on film.

Daybreak is more problematic. From my vantage point, there are too many man-made obstruction to make for a picturesque photo. But this time of year, the sun has drifted far enough south so the obstruction are minimal.

Anyway, the photo is cross-posted from my daily-life blog just because I really like how it turned out.

November Sunset

A subdued winter sunset looking southwest from Homer. The setting sun is actually lighting up the underside of a high overcast layer. The snow of two weeks ago has melted but more will be along soon.

Winter Comes to Kachemak Bay

I took this yesterday on my way to work. This is the scenic pull-off at the top of Baycrest Hill before going down into town and this vantage point has figured in several of my photos. So that is why you probably recognize it.

Snow

Looking down our driveway to the woods across the way. A foot of fluffy snow fell overnight, transforming the landscape.

Dawn

One nice thing about this time of year is that daybreak happens at a time when we can all enjoy it.

The rising sun tints the clouds over Cook Inlet.

Quiet Lake

Beluga Lake is quiet as the seaplane season draws to a close. Fresh snow highlights the mountains across the bay though the snow that fell at sealevel has melted.

Fall Blooming

A spot of color in the increasingly drab late autumn, my African violet has decided to bloom.

Another picture taken from the Flight Service Station looking to the southeast. One cottonwood (poplar) still retains its leaves, a spot of color against the winter-dark spruce.

The First Kiss of Winter

29 degrees, light snow falling

The leaves on the alders around our house have not changed color but since the sub-freezing temperatures of earlier this week, they have been falling in the slightest breeze. This morning's blustery winds have piled them up on the deck where the first actual snow of the season found them.

The falling snow makes a whispering sound against the dry leaves that still cling to the trees.

October Snow

The classic view across Kachemak Bay toward the mountains, now wearing a more sharply-defined snow-line.

Autumn Colors

I stopped at Ninilchik on my way up to Kenai-Soldotna yesterday afternoon to take a few pictures.



This is the old Russian Orthodox church at Ninilchik, overlooking Cook Inlet.



The autumn colors on the tundra.

--As always, click for full-sized image--

First Flight

Another early morning--up before dawn to go to work.

Of course, this time of year, getting up before dawn is less and less of a challenge every week.

I could hear the wind squeaking our television antenna but was pleasantly surprised by the warmth as I stepped outside--forty-five degrees under low overcast. Another surprise came when I noticed that the airport beacon was reflecting off the cloud layer, the steady green-and-white sweep of light evident even as I drove down Green Timbers Road, some seven miles and a hill or two from the airport.

Morning traffic has slowed considerably from its summer pace. There was just one car behind me, hugging my bumper into town--apparently in some kind of hell-bent hurry to get to the grocery store.

Our station faces the other way, its back toward the classic view of the bay and mountains to face the town of Homer and the thousand-foot bluff that rises behind it to the plateau of the Kenai Peninsula. Usually when I get to work on the early shift, the first flight of the day has already arrived and I can look across the runway to the terminal, where it is disgorging the passengers who rose early-early in Anchorage to catch the flight or the weary travelers who arrived on "red-eye" flights from the States overnight and have been waiting hours in the Anchorage terminal for their first chance to get to Homer.

Termination Dust

The first snow of the season has made an appearance on the mountains across the bay....

Homer, Alaska

So many of my photos are taken looking across the bay from Homer that I thought I would turn the camera the other way and show the autumn colors on the hill behind town. This was taken looking across Beluga Lake toward town.

Bare Mountains

No snow yet on the peaks across the bay though we hear the areas north of us are sporting new snow. We continue to experience warm, wet and windy days.

Fireweed Colors

Taken from our front carport.

Another Sunset

This time looking west over Cook Inlet from the airport.

Colors Too Subtle For Names...

Some times the view looking east at sunset is amazing...

I took this from the balcony at work this evening.

Cook Inlet Sunset

Mt. Iliamna steaming in the evening twilight. (Click on the image for a larger version...)

Castles in the Sky

Towering cumulus over the mountains across the bay from Homer. I took this from the base of the Spit on my way to work this afternoon.

Sunny Day

Lots of sunshine today but the lenticular clouds over the Kenai Mountains suggest rough air at altitude. I pulled the car over on my way to work to take this picture from Beluga Lake.

August Twilight

Just after I left the airport to head home after work last night, a glimmer of light over the mountains across the bay caught my eye. I pulled into the parking lot at the base of the Spit and watched the moon rise.

We had some thundershowers yesterday--an event so uncommon that I had to leaf through the handbooks to figure out the proper way to code it into our weather observations. Pilots reported several lightening strikes and the humidity increased to such an extent that low stratus clouds lingered into the evening. But by 9:30, the skies had cleared, leaving this vista.

Fireweed

You would have to live in the Northland to appreciate the bittersweet beauty of fireweed. This time of year it is everywhere--transforming empty fields, roadsides and river bars into scenes of astonishing beauty.

(This particular plant is growing up between the planks of the back deck to blossom beside my domesticated flowers and rival their beauty...)

But late-blooming fireweed is the harbinger of autumn. When I see it, my thought inevitably turn to the lengthening nights, the cooler mornings, the not-so-far-off first frost.

Before that happens, of course, fireweed puts on quite a show. From nothing in late April, the plants have grown to five-, six-, seven-foot tall spires crowned with dozens of the bright-colored flowers. Soon the blooms will be replaced by the seed-pods, which will burst with the frost to loose thousands of cotton-winged seeds to drift on the winds of autumn like fairy snow. The September temperatures will turn the rest of the plant scarlet--our hills and mountain-side flame into October with the ghosts of the fireweed.

We don't have the colorful deciduous trees here as they do in the Northeast--maple or oak. Our birches and alders wear autumn leaves in shades of yellow and gold--no oranges or reds.

But the fireweed lends the late summer and autumn of Alaska a certain glory.

Another Moose Picture

Just across the road from our driveway this morning, this young moose was browsing his way toward the Inlet.

Denny was calling cautionary warnings from the porch, but I kept a respectful distance--and this critter was less dangerous than his Mama, accompanying a younger sibling, would have been.

May kindly moose-spirits watch over you, little bullwinkle...

Blooming August

A stroll around our yard this evening.

Beautiful, ubiquitous fireweed...



These specimens were about seven feet tall...


Paintbrush is yellow in Alaska...



...kissed by the evening sun.



Cow parsnip offers bouquets of bridal-white flowerets.



About a decade ago, I got three trollius plants from a friend. They still are holding their own amid the wildflowers, surprising me with orange-yellow blooms in August. This one shares space with a wild geranium called cranesbill.



At one point, I started a garden outside our dining room window. The alders and fireweed have encrouched but the trollius asserts itself in late summer.



I love the way the low-angled sun illuminates my Icelandic poppies...





Sorry if I bore with the flower photos, but I want to remember summer when the snow is deep in the yard.

Sunset Tonight...

Coming Home

I spent Sunday and Monday nights in Anchorage and took these on the drive home this evening.


At the head of Turnagain Arm, looking across at the entrance of Turnagain Pass.


Looking across the waters of Turnagain Arm to the Placer River Valley...


Rain showers drifting down from Portage Glacier.



Up in Turnagain Pass...


Looking back toward the north...


Looking south toward home...


Click on any of the images for a larger version.