Treadwell

Photograph taken on Sunday, October 27, 2019 by Henry
Treadwell Beach

Treadwell Beach

In 1898, Cathy’s great grandfather traveled from the iron mines of Michigan’s northern pinensula to the gold mines of Juneau. Specifically, he worked in the Mexican Mine in Treadwell on Douglas Island, across the Gastineau Channel. In 1917 the mine flooded and all work ceased. This photo was taken from near the cave-in site, which is on the extreme right although it’s not really visible. As you can see, it was more overcast than the previous two days, which were pretty nice. We couldn’t see the top of Mount Roberts across the channel. Nevertheless, it was good to get out and to walk where Cathy’s ancestors had walked (although we’ve been there before, of course). The Treadwell Mine’s office building, which was in pretty rough shape when we lived in Juneau, has been cleaned, painted, and given a new roof.

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Airport Flats

Photograph taken on Saturday, October 26, 2019 by Henry
Airport Flats

Airport Flats

As mentioned in my earlier post for today, it was a busy day. In the afternoon we went for a walk with Brian and Lisa around the airport. It’s a pretty place and it’s not like the busy airports we’re used to from the DC area with planes taking off and landing one after the next all day. It’s a relatively quiet place except for the occasional plane and we had a nice time outdoors. If you need a reason to go to Juneau, here’s one. It’s beautiful regardless of the weather. The clouds were high enough today that we could see the mountains pretty well. We didn’t have a clear day the entire ten days we were there but if you need clear skies to enjoy a place, then maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. The airport walk is an easy one, with virtually no hills to deal with. Very nice for a mid-afternoon walk. Highly recommended.

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Mushrooms

Photograph taken on Saturday, October 26, 2019 by Henry
Mushrooms

Mushrooms

Day four of our Alaska trip (the third full day in Alaska) was busy. Dorothy had to work so we dropped her off and then went into town. We started by going to Evergreen Bowl and walking around a bit. That’s where this photograph was taken. After that we took some pictures of her mom’s old house, across the street from the Governor’s mansion. Then downtown for a little while to do a little shopping and also spent some time in the library. I took pictures of the mural on the parking garage that features Cathy, her aunt, and her aunt’s great grandson. There is a new park that runs from near the bridge to Douglas towards the Coast Guard dock and we went there for a while. It’s probably nicer when the fountain is running but it was nice. Finally we went to Evergreen Cemetery to find a few grave markers. My memory of where Cathy’s grandparents are buried was pretty good. We also found the markers for her mom’s sister and her husband. We had a few more to find but had more opportunities later in the week.

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Rainbow Over Mendenhall

Photograph taken on Friday, October 25, 2019 by Henry
Rainbow Over Mendenhall

Rainbow Over Mendenhall

As mentioned in my previous post, it started raining as we returned to our car at the Eagle River trail near the Boy Scout Camp. It rained fairly hard but as we approached the Mendenhall River the sun came out and there was a rainbow to our left. We stopped at Brotherhood Bridge, where there’s a pretty decent view of the glacier and we had it framed by the rainbow. Rainbows can be tricky to photograph because the colors are fairly faint relative to other things in the photograph. Slight underexposure can help but that tends to make the rest of the shot dark. Anyway, This one turned out pretty well. At a different time of year, this photo would benefit from fireweed in the foreground, but the autumnal colors aren’t bad, either.

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Muskeg

Photograph taken on Friday, October 25, 2019 by Henry
Muskeg, Boy Scout Trail, Juneau

Muskeg, Boy Scout Trail, Juneau

Near the confluence of the Eagle and Herbert Rivers, about 26 miles from downtown Juneau, there is the Eagle River Scout Camp. A trail leads from there along the south bank of the Eagle River to the open waters of Favorite Channel and Lincoln and Shelter Islands. Cathy, Dorothy, and I took the dogs and had a nice walk through the woods, along the river, and along the sandy shore. This photo was taken near the beginning of the walk in an open area in the woods.

A muskeg is “a nutrient-poor peatland characterized by acidic, saturated peat, and scattered or clumped, stunted conifer trees set in a matrix of sphagnum mosses and ericaceous shrubs.” I personally find them to be beautiful, although it’s not something you want to walk through if you can get around it. I particularly enjoyed the fall color as seen in this photograph as well as the reflections on the pool in the foreground. The sky was particularly overcast today and we only had glimpses of the mountains that would otherwise be in the distance. The overcast tends to heighten the colors, though, so that’s a plus. And the rain was barely noticeable until just before we got back to the car.

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Bald Eagles in Lemon Creek

Photograph taken on Thursday, October 24, 2019 by Henry
Bald Eagles in Lemon Creek

Bald Eagles in Lemon Creek

Well, we landed in Juneau after a long day of flights and layovers in Los Angeles and Seattle. We slept well and didn’t worry about getting up early (although I woke up at 7:00 anyway). We took a walk with the dogs in Lemon Creek, where Dorothy is living with our good friends, Brian and Lisa. The dogs, Kippen and Ayla, are border collies and are a lot of fun. The walk in Lemon Creek is surprisingly pretty for something so close to their house and it was nice to get out. The air was cool and it was raining very lightly but we knew what to expect and were ready for it. I got one photo with three bald eagles in it but I think this one is better. You can see the one at the top of the tree pretty easily but there is a second that’s not quite so obvious a little ways down on the right side of the same tree.

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Mount St. Helens

Photograph taken on Wednesday, October 23, 2019 by Henry
Mount St. Helens

Mount St. Helens

From Los Angeles we flew up the coast and had a nice view of Lake Tahoe. We also had a nice view of Yosemite Valley from the west and I was able to make out some of the most notable features, including Half Dome, Cathedral Rocks, and El Capitan. I only had my wide angle lens so the pictures I got were not very good, although I can identify landmarks pretty well. A little further on we passed Mounts Hood, Adams, St. Helens, and Rainier. At this point I had retrieved my 100mm lens was able to get some nice pictures such as this one of Mount St. Helens in Washington. You can clearly see the hole in the top from when it blew its lid in 1980, an event that I remember vividly from the news reports of the time (but thankfully didn’t experience anywhere near first hand).

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On The Road (Metaphorically Speaking)

Photograph taken on Wednesday, October 23, 2019 by Henry
Cathy at LAX

Cathy at LAX

Cathy and I began a ten day trip today, getting up at 3:40, driving to the commuter parking lot on Georgia Avenue and catching the 4:21 bus to BWI airport. That was the beginning of a 23 hour journey spanning four time zones. Our first flight left BWI at 7:00 AM EDT and arrived in Los Angeles at 9:45 PDT. Add three hours to that for the time zone change and we were in the air about 5 hours and 45 minutes. We had an equally long layover in LAX, not leaving until 2:40 for Seattle. We walked nearly two miles from terminal 6 through tunnels under terminal 5 and then up and through terminal 4 to the Tom Bradley International Terminal (a.k.a., Terminal B), walking the length of that (and back). That wore us out but also passed a good bit of time.

This photo, taken from Terminal 6, is of Cathy resting her ankle briefly with a view of “The Theme Building” in the background. We had lunch and then went to our terminal ahead of boarding. You know how in airports there are often announcements where a person is named, but it’s never you so you don’t pay attention? While we were waiting for our flight, the woman on the PA called my name and asked me to come to the service desk. Needless to say, I was surprised. I was even more surprised when I went to the counter and she handed me my driver’s license. It had been in my pocket and apparently fell out. The amazing thing is that not only was it found but someone went to the trouble to find out where my next flight was leaving from and get it there. I didn’t know it was even lost until it was returned. I was more than a little grateful.

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Hard Drives

Photograph taken on Tuesday, October 22, 2019 by Henry
Hard Drives

Hard Drives

I’ve worked my way through quite a few hard drives over the years. When I bought my first computer, a NEC APC. I had the option to buy a 10MB drive for about $5,000. I opted not to spend that much for a hard drive that was only 10 times the capacity of the 8″ floppies it used. My phone now has a 128GB micro SD card that can be bought for $20. That’s roughly 13,000 times the capacity for 1/250th the price or about 3.25 million times the storage per dollar. I have two 5TB and two 6TB drives in my main work computer that cost a little over $100 each, more than 20 million times the storage per dollar. What I really need to do it make sure there is nothing left on any of these drives that I need and then destroy them. But like so much of what needs to be done, it takes time.

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Sweat Bee

Photograph taken on Monday, October 21, 2019 by Henry
Sweat Bee

Sweat Bee

I met Cathy outside for a little while early this afternoon. As we were walking back towards the entrance to my building we saw a white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) near the parking lot and I was able to get a few nice photographs of her. Cathy went back to her office and I went down near the pond and took some photos of insects. There was a type of fly that I hadn’t seen before. I thought it was a thick-headed fly (Family Conopidae) but it was identified as a Dioprosopa clavata, a syrphid fly (Family Halictidae) that resembles a thick-headed fly. Today’s photo, however, is of this metalic green sweat bee, a female in the genus Augochlorella.

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Maple

Photograph taken on Sunday, October 20, 2019 by Henry
Maple

Maple

Like the dogwood from yesterday’s photo, this maple tree in our back yard is turning for fall. It’s ahead of most of the trees around, which are predominantly green still. It won’t be long before the rest have changed but it’s been so dry lately that I’m not sure the colors will be as good this year as some. We also may miss a bit of it, but we’ll be in a pretty place for a few days, so won’t mind too much. I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.

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Dogwood

Photograph taken on Saturday, October 19, 2019 by Henry
Dogwood

Dogwood

The dogwood in front of our house is in full fall color. It’s not really a good place for a tree, much too close to the house. I’ve planted a camellia near it that, if it survives, will replace it. Last winter was tough on it and all but one small branch near the base died. If it makes it through this winter it will have a chance but I guess we’ll see. If I can get a replacement growing, I’ll cut the dogwood out, but until then, I enjoy the flowers in the spring and the red leaves in the autumn.

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Reflections

Photograph taken on Friday, October 18, 2019 by Henry
Reflections

Reflections

Cathy and I went to Trader Joe’s after work and then stopped at the Rio for a bit. We walked around the pond and I took some photos, mostly of the reflections in the water. This is the Launch Workplaces building near the western end of the pond. I thought the reflections were nice. There was a gaggle of (probably middle school) girls on the bridge posing for group pictures on their phones and we heard the dad of one of them say something like, “Well, we’re eating now. You can take pictures or you can eat.” The girls didn’t seem interested in eating.

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Lake Frank

Photograph taken on Thursday, October 17, 2019 by Henry
Lake Frank

Lake Frank

As I mentioned, it’s begun to feel like autumn. Today was very windy and cool. After work I walked down to Lake Frank and took a few photos. The trees are just starting to turn and it was lovely to be out in the fresh, cool air. This photo was taken from the dam looking northwest along the length of the lake. It’s a three-exposure, high-dynamic-range (HDR) photo and I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out. There were a few others out walking, mostly wearing coats and hats against the suddenly cool weather. I was in my shirt sleeves, although I did roll them down while I was out on the dam, where the wind was strongest.

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Oxford Athletic Medal

Photograph taken on Wednesday, October 16, 2019 by Henry
Oxford Athletic Club Medal

Oxford Athletic Club Medal

My grandfather and his brother were both Rhodes scholars. My grandfather, the older of the two, was at Exeter College from October, 1907 through July, 1910. His younger brother, Ralph, was at St Johns and received a B.A. degree in 1912 and a B.Sc. degree in 1913. They both competed in athletics, and we have this medal that Ralph won in a competition in 1911. It was for second place in the high jump and his height was 5 feet, 3½ inches. That wasn’t close to any sort of record. The world record in 1912 (the first world record in the men’s high jump was recognised by the International Association of Athletics Federations) was 6′ 6¾”. The current record is 8′ ½” (2.45 meters).

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Walnut Bark

Photograph taken on Tuesday, October 15, 2019 by Henry
Walnut Bark

Walnut Bark

It was a pretty day today. The weather has finally turned cool and it’s clearly autumn now. The leaves on the trees are still mostly green but there are occasional splashes of color from early maples or some of the smaller plants that tend to react more quickly to the changing seasons. Outside my office window, the Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) is a deep red, climbing up into two large elms and the other trees on the edge of the woods. Cathy and I met at a picnic table briefly early in the afternoon and then I walked in the woods and took a few pictures, including this one of the bark of a black walnut tree (Juglans nigra).

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Black Bomber Cheese

Photograph taken on Monday, October 14, 2019 by Henry
Black Bomber Cheese

Black Bomber Cheese

I don’t often do commercial photos in my blog and I have no financial connection to the Snowdonia Cheese Company other than the money I spend on their cheese. We had a little, black-was coated round of Black Bomber cheese at some point and really enjoyed it. I don’t know where we got it and we haven’t seen it in stores locally. Today I found it in the new Giant grocery store in Olney. I don’t know if they have it regularly or not but I naturally bought some. It’s actually a creamier cheese than many aged cheddars but it has a really nice, deep flavor (or flavour, since it’s from the British Isles). Recommended.

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Fragaria virginiana (Wild Strawberry)

Photograph taken on Sunday, October 13, 2019 by Henry
Fragaria virginiana (Wild Strawberry)

Fragaria virginiana (Wild Strawberry)

I only took a few photos today, all in the back yard. Most of them were of the maple leaves that are starting to turn red, but really they have only just started and it’s premature to have fall-color photos. This is a wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana, also known as scarlet strawberry) growing and fruiting in the yard. This is a native herbaceous perennial and in the description on the Missouri Botanical Garden’s PlantFinder web site, it says they “spread indefinitely by runners that root as they sprawl along the ground.” They aren’t kidding. These will take over a yard. Also, “Cultivated strawberries found in stores are hybrid crosses between F. virginiana (native to North America) and F. chiloensis (native to western coastal South America including Chile) which combine the excellent taste of the former with the larger fruit size of the latter.”

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Silas

Photograph taken on Saturday, October 12, 2019 by Henry
Silas

Silas

I’m getting pretty far behind on posting photos here. Never fear, I’ve been taking photos and they will make it eventually. I can tell you now there are some nice pictures ahead (as well as some that are not terribly exciting, I’m afraid). Anyway, we had a family dinner night and the boys were there, Kaien and Silas. Both continue to grow and are becoming their own individuals. Kai really enjoys bouncing on the hobby horse and is getting fairly comfortable really bouncing. Silas is a bit more reserved and cautious, which is fine, of course, as he’s quite a bit younger. I like this photo of him, in which he isn’t exactly smiling exuberantly, but which is still a good picture. He’s a sweet boy and fun to play with. We hadn’t gotten together for a while for various reasons, including that Tsai-Hong was traveling in Africa. When we go longer between seeing each other, he takes a little longer to open up when we do.

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Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina)

Photograph taken on Friday, October 11, 2019 by Henry
Staghorn Sumac (<em>Rhus typhina</em>)

Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina)

I had hoped to get outside yesterday but didn’t. Today I did, walking up the road and onto the empty lot next to my building. The vernal drainage pool is nearly dry. The small areas with water are interesting because there is something in the water that’s not happy to be quite so crowded. If it rains soon, they may be saved. The fall color has only just started to be in evidence but a few things tend to turn early and they stand out. This staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) is an example. They are also crowned with their bright red, annual, pyramidal fruiting clusters.

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