Admiring Eklutna Lake

On the list of nearby beautiful places with beautiful names that I had been meaning to go see is Lake Eklutna.  At the end of the road, in a quiet campground, sits this vision of serenity.

I have no idea who the couple in the picture were, but they had claimed the place first and after some waiting I realized I was not going to get a peopleless picture of this place.  However, with all the signs warning of a black bear that had been approaching campers (hence the quiet campground), it might not have been bad to have had some other people around.  Sadly, the bear was shot 3 days later near this site.  In Canada, the park and campground areas are much less than Alaska, and manned by rangers who will close the campground and try to keep people and bears apart, and you cannot bring a gun into those parks.  Alaska, and America in general, is less regulated than Canada, for better or worse (worse is you're a bear I guess).  Anyway, here's a nice picture of the scene and some strangers.

I was again a little in awe of how green Alaska is.  The grasses are lush and thick, and life swirls vibrantly around you at every step.

Alaska is beautiful.  Somedays there just aren't enough words to describe it.  Every place is a little different.  100 feet from the parking lot and you feel like you are in the middle of the wilderness.  I guess you are.  There are pockets of us humans in the vast Alaska wilderness, but this is truly mother nature's last stand.  I saw something on a news story over the weekend. One photographer in Anchorage has done one portrait a day -- for 5 years.   He has captured people from all professions, ethnicities, and walks of life.  He says he has noticed one thing is the same in all of his subjects, one Alaskan quality.  The people of Alaska are strong, one way or another.  Be it the stark environment, a tough job, a quest, or something inside that drove them to this land or ties them to it now, strength of character shines through.  This is a special place, worthy of these special characters.

To me, moments like this are invaluable.  I believe the human soul needs a break from all of the other people, and a chance to be removed from them and look at something bigger than the lives of man.  Even New Yorker's get this, and Central Park is one of the biggest testaments to this idea.  But from the shore of Eklutna Lake, place like Central Park, surrounded by city on all four sides, start to seem more like a zoo.  No pollution, no encroaching noise, just little old you, and a piece of the world the way it was meant to be before we remodelled it.

The only sounds were a gentle lapping of water against the shore, the frequent buzz of some very large dragonflies, and the skipping of stones from the stranger couple a little further down the shore, and the sky was amplified, one perfect blue one above and its equally blue mirror reflection on the lake.

We had to get one of Shibby at the lake for the Alaska Vacation Album.

Or maybe two....

The only problem with using this as a backdrop is it's so big, you can't get it all in the frame without making your subject too small to see.  So I took a few more to capture the color set of the day, just of the green and the scene.

This morning however, it's a different picture.  After a very mild winter, we got a fresh snowfall yestereay.  I would say at least a half a foot.  I don't mind so much, better on a weekend than a weekday for the commute to work, and it will help get some much needed moisture to all the forests and grasses.  Less snow equals more forest fires in Alaska, with 2015 being the worst fire year on record.  So here's the view today.  But it won't be long until the summer views posted above are back, and hopefully I will have some more visitors to explore with this summer!