Day 3 in Alaska!

      Well, today was somewhat of an improvement with the weather. It still looked quite bleak, but at least the rain has stopped.

     The hike we took was again, just a walk outside the house, but this time it was all up hill, at least the outgoing part was. The steep parts were a bit difficult too because of the foot or so of wet heavy snow, but somehow I managed to not get my camera wet. The trees are thick up here so views are few and far between and unfortunately all the beautiful snow and frost had melted from the trees, but there were a few locations where we could get a glimpse of the world around us and the alpen glow on Denali (aka Mt. McKinley) over 100 miles away, was beautiful. The flat land in the foreground is the Knik Arm, one of two inlets from the sea surrounding Anchorage.

     Mt. Eklutna, about 4,110 feet loomed before us as we continued up the ridge we were on. The low clowds shrouded this mountain in mist. I like the bleak look of these photos -- misty mountains and leafless trees....

     Sidra of course came along with us on this walk. She was of course on a leash, but these being digital photos to begin with, erasing the leash was a simple task.

     Finally on the way back down the mountain, one last photo in the dwindling light of 3:00pm. It gets dark up here early, but not overly so. There is a good 6 hours of light this time of year despite being so far north. It's just that the sun is always low on the horizon and many areas on north facing slopes do not see the sun all winter, they just see the sunlight on distant mountains further north. This sure makes for nice photos.