Mushrooms

Last summer I noticed that there are lots of mushrooms that grow here.  Think thick peaty soil that stays fairly saturated because runoff can't percolate down once it hits the permafrost.  Good for mushrooms.  I got a comprehensive mushroom guide but haven't had the time to get out and ID them yet.  So, I don't know what we're viewing here, but I think they're fun to look at.  Great colors, shapes, textures.  I hope you enjoy them too.

The color didn't really come through -- a great blue-black

Some early morning dew

Is it a fungus or a bagel?

I really like this picture

Fuzzy picture but sharp mushroom

Puffball

I had trouble getting both the caps & stems in focus at the same time

Another favorite picture

There were several other kinds, but these are some of the better pictures.  Coming soon...Blueberries and Desperation Lake.

Wildlife at Camp

A Gray Jay on Bird Picnic Table

I still have not seen much of the classic megafauna of the region -- bears, moose, or even caribou.  (I have seen muskoxen a couple of times.)  That's alright, though, because it gives me something to look forward to.  I can't have every experience at once.  I did see some neat things at the Hogans' camp, though.  They are avid birders, so if I know the names of most of the birds I saw, it's because they told me what they were.  Here's a partial list starting with the coolest first:  red throated loons, osprey, merlin, bald eagle -- didn't see the great horned owls that others have spotted there but found some of its pellets -- white crowned sparrow, boreal chickadee, gray jay, and some other little birds that I couldn't keep up with.  I didn't get any bird pictures because they never stay still long enough, and I can't get close enough.  I didn get some of the gray jays on their picnic table (and by "their," I mean it was set aside for the birds!).

Great Horned Owl Pellet

By the way, do you know what an owl pellet is?  Here's a picture of one from a great horned owl.

Other than these, I didn't get any wildlife pictures.  Like I said, I didn't see any macrofauna -- except the seals.  I didn't really think about seals swimming upriver into fresh water, but they're following the fish.  Chum salmon are making spawning runs upriver, and the seals follow them.  The river was loaded with fish, and any time of day you could spot at least a couple of seals. 

I did get a picture of one kind of microfauna I've been wanting to see more of -- a tundra bumblebee.  Look how fuzzy he is.  The fuzz helps insulate them from the cold, and they can cause their muscles to quiver to generate heat (remember they're insects and not warm blooded, so that's kind of cool).

I see a bee...and who's this other guy?

That's it for the fauna.  Of course there were plenty of plants.  I have some pictures I'll share later.  The real score was with kingdom Fungi -- I got some fairly nice mushroom photos.  I've been wanting to ID some of the many mushrooms around here and haven't spent much time at it.  I probably won't any time soon, so I'll just post them without their names.  That will be for a later date, however.  It's late, and I have a plane ride tomorrow.  I was invited out with our archaeologist to a place called Desperation Lake in Noatak NP.  It's more remote by far than where I got to camp in July.  If weather cooperates, it should be just a day trip, and there are supposedly some nice archaeological structures there.  So, if I can keep up here, I should have blog fodder for a few more days...stay tuned!

Hogans' Camp

My Cabin

I'm lucky to have some friends up here, members of the church, who invited me out to their camp for the weekend.  It was actually their Christmas present to me.  I and they travel frequently and stay busy enough that we just now made our schedules coordinate.  The first attempt was for last weekend, around the 14th, but the weather for more than a week was just icky -- cold, rainy, windy.  Even last Wednesday was bad and Thursday questionable, but it cleared up for a nice hour-long boat ride out to camp on the Noatak River on Thursday evening after work.  We had about 3 full days that went by all too quickly.

View from "my cabin"

The Hogans have had this camp about 35 years, and they've worked on improving it over the years.  Ron must have sensed my awe at their "camp," because he chuckled and said, "Just because you're at camp doesn't mean you have to suffer."  You can tell it's taken lots of planning, organization, and labor on their part, but life there not only has the benefit of being blessedly uncivilized, it's also quite comfortable.  I even had my own little cabin to stay in.    

The main cabin and shower were down below.  There's no running water or electricity, but they have gas appliances and lamps.  It was all quite cozy and comfortable.

Zona & Ron

Fire Ring

Main Cabin & Shower

Typical August?

I don't remember this much rain last August, but apparently it's the wettest month of the year here. It's been so rainy that I was starting to be suspect of this area's classification as "cold desert," but I guess it hasn't really come down in quantities. After days of drizzling, the airport weather station had recorded less than 1" of precip. Of course, without the rain, we can't have scenes like these.




This was actually taken on that trip to the Kug...equally rainy but not as prolonged.

If this rain let's up, I may be headed up the Noatak River with the Hogans to their camp. Actually, it's not even the rain so much as the wind. There have been some big waves crashing over the new sea wall that's being constructed as part of our Front Street renovation. Anyway, the Hogans had extended the invitation a while back, but between their schedule & mine, it wasn't working out. We're hoping to fit it in before I start travelling to schools again.
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My Grayling (sans head!)

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Originally uploaded by Gina Landis Hernandez

I also caught a grayling, a little bigger than Marci's. I missed my opportunity at taking the trophy shot because I was in a hurry to put it out of its misery. It's a whole lot easier to eat meat when it's already dead and dressed. I tend to personify these animals or project myself onto them or something like that. I suppose I haven't caught and dressed fresh meat enough to desensitize myself to the killing of it, so I was in a hurry to finish the process and make myself feel better. I did give thanks and enjoyed every bit of it after it was roasted in the fire that evening.


Here's a picture of me dressing it.  (Not sure why the picture posted sideways.)

Graylings are pretty fish with their tall, sail-like dorsal fins. This was my only catch -- we were just fishing for what we could eat out there. Marci's goal was to catch an Arctic char, and she did do that on our last morning there (picture follows). That one is a truly beautiful fish with its pink spots. Notice in the picture how she caught it? Yeah, it's snared, not hooked! I couldn't figure out where the fish were coming from. While Marci fished the last day, I opted for swimming. The water was truly freezing, and it took some work to submerge myself initially, but I did do a bit of wading and swimming; however, I didn't see anything swimming by at all.
Marci's char.                                              Here's a link to more info about graylings & char.

Fishing on the Kug

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Originally uploaded by Gina Landis Hernandez

Better late than never? Oh well, at least the weather lately has reminded me of the day my neighbor and I headed out to the confluence of Kagvik Creek and the Kuguroruk River...incessantly rainy!

After bearing with a wet camp for a day, however, the sun was out for most of the 5 days I was out there. It should have been 8 days, but the river level rose around 3 feet with the rain, and it only took us a turbulent 200 meters down the river to figure out it wasn't a good idea. So, it just turned into a camping trip with some hiking, fishing, swimming, and good old quiet time.

In case you're wondering, I did have my AK state fishing license on me! I'm not a fisherman usually, so I'm just using my neighbor's gear here. She caught an Arctic grayling on her first cast. It took me more than once, but....