Flutterby™! : Blind Slough & more

I was going to hold off on posting what I think are the last of the Alaska pictures until some of them had scrolled off the front page, a few hundred images loading isn't the vision of fast and lightweight I've always tried to keep for the front page. But here we go, one last dump:

We got on the tandem and pedaled the 18 or so miles south down Mitkoff Highway to Blind Slough. The views of the Wrangell Narrows weren't as cool as I was expecting, but it was still a really nice ride. Stopped off at the fish ladder, which had all sorts of "at your own risk" signs, and climbed around some really dodgy broken down stuff to see what was there. Tooled along the past the late season wildflowers:

In a region ruled by boats and aircraft (one of the high school projects is surveying the aforementioned Le Conte glacier, which involves helicoptering in), and with plenty of local elevation for water pressure, we discovered the equivalent of writing your name on the town water tank: A long straight stretch of highway covered with high school names type graffiti. No real way to get a feel for it except riding down it, or capturing it from the air.

And then wandered down the boardwalk (because without the boardwalk, crossing the muskeg would be very difficult):

To Blind River Rapids, where the fish were jumping, and one or two other tourists were hoping the bears (which didn't appear to us, except in footprints) and the sea lions weren't going to make an issue of fish allocation:

On the way back we stopped at the newly opened The Trees RV Park & General Store at mile 10.2 on Mitkof Highway (907-772-2502 if you're ferrying your RV about the southeast), for some water and conversation. Sat and drank and talked while the ice machine was hooked up, marveling at the pluck of folks who'd been opened less than a week and whose store had a full stock of perishables. A very nice day.