Land of the midnight sun – {back From Alaska}

We’re back! We had a wonderful time visiting with lots and lots of dear friends.  I have a ton of catching up to do and I will be getting through all my emails shortly. In the mean time here are some photos from our trip.

I make no claim to be any sort of wildlife or landscape photographer. I was traveling light this time and I only took my D700 with my 50mm 1.8. It’s not exactly a wildlife or landscape lens.  I have never wanted a zoom more badly in my life but I just had to make due with what I brought.

Above you can see a mother moose with her calf. It’s a bad idea to get to close because moose spook easy and like most animals are extra skittish around their young. You see moose all the time in Anchorage. We weren’t even looking for them and we saw 5. This particular shot was taken in a filed that was just off a church parking lot on a main road.  Before we lived in a house with a fenced  yard moose would wander into our backyard all the time. I thought the moose crossing sign would be humorous to some of you readers.  Simon was quite intrigued by all the wildlife sightings.

This is a picture of Mt. Susitna (AKA sleeping lady) across cook inlet. The legend is that Susitna was from a race of giant people who is peacefully sleeping waiting for her betrothed’s return.

And finally a picture of downtown Anchorage. I know a lot of people labor under the misconception that Alaska is only a bunch of small villages. There are a lot of small villages in Alaska but in truth Anchorage is a modern city like most others in this country. It sports a population of nearly 280,000. I think that is about comparable to the population of Spokane Washington.

Once in college (I went to the University of Idaho) I was at a salon having my hair cut and the stylist wanted to know where I was from. I told her Anchorage Alaska and she stopped cutting and said “Wow! so in Anchorage did you just have a friend cut your hair or did they fly in a stylist and do the whole village at once?”  I explained that we had a ‘few’ hair salons.

The other thing people want to know about when you say your from Alaska is whether it is either ‘dark all the time’ or ‘light all the time’. My response is always “didn’t you study about declination in elementary school?”.  (I realize this sounds sort of snippy but after being asked this question 3000 times it gets a little old.)   This morning the sunrise was at 4:25 AM and the sunset was at 11:34 PM. That’s a little over 19 hours of daylight. On the summer solstice (June 21st, the longest day of the year) there will around 19 hours and 20 min of daylight. At the opposite end of the year on the winter solstice (December 21st) there will only be 5 hours and 26 min of daylight or nearly 19 hours of darkness. Obviously the further you are from the equator the more extreme this effect.  If you go north of the Arctic Circle (note that most of Alaska is not north of the Arctic circle) the sun will be visible continuously for 3 or so months (more days the farther north you go). So there you have your science/ geography lesson for the day.

It is worth mentioning that all of these photos were taken between 10 and 11:30 PM.

I know I have seen stop motion videos of a day above the article circle in the summer but I can’t find any right now other than this. After typing this all out I think that video explains everything a lot better than I did. Anyway – I hope that everyone is enjoying their summer! More soon!

-Emily

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