#wetwednesday - - Week 4 and a couple of walks
10-1-2018 Monday.
It was a not so great weather day on Monday, but also not to bad of a weather day. Fall was getting real close to ending. We started our day out at one of the local rock and antler shops. Tom's place in Sterling Alaska, Alaska Horn & Antler. He has a lot more than just horn and Antlers. A shop with a lot of unique rocks and other things, here is one of the rocks. Nope I do not know what it is, did not ask, just liked how wet and shiny it looked and how green. We are running out of natural green with the approach of winter.
For the Steemsilvergold crowd (stackers), a story of one of Tom's adventures. He does find some real treasures every now and then, join him on his adventure from 2011, and his hunt for the gold. https://redoubtreporter.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/rich-in-experience-%E2%80%94-sterling-rock-hound-strikes-gold-in-vacation-pastime/ - It was a nice story to read.
Now like I mentioned above "other things", Tom Cooper is a pretty good carver also. This is one of his matching rams horn carvings. He has a lot of carved antlers and other horns also.
I am not sure if Tom was the Artist on this mammoth tusk or not, I forgot to ask him.
It was difficult to get a nice picture because of the lighting glare, here is a second one to show a little bit more close up and less light splash.
He has a lot of very nice things in his store and of course a lot of antlers and horns. Some carved some not. Just a lot to look at and think "Damn I wish I could afford that or could carve like that". We end up spending hours everytime we go there just looking through the rocks and the art and the knives and the ulu's, and well a lot of things.
A very much must stop and visit place if you ever visit Alaska and the Kenai Peninsula. That ends our first walk, oh I did forget to mention he has a tailings pile, a pile he lets people search through if they buy any rocks they can go through his cast off pile. We found a few nice ones in the pile.
After Tom's place we wanted to check out a couple of lake and campground area's now that the tourist were mostly gone.
This is the view from the small boat launch area, Johnson lake is not a very big lake but the Alaska Fish and Game do stock it so it is a popular summer time fishing spot. Nope sorry I do not fish much anymore so I have no clue if it is dolly varden or trout that they stock the lake with. Even though it was a somewhat, well okay real overcast day, I still think the picture and the reflection came out very nice, sometimes the reflection shots look a like brighter than when there is a lot of sunlight. On the overcast days, you do not get all the light sprites on the water.
Some very nice camping and day picnic spots and places in this campground, and a lot of different areas to access the lake for fishing so you are not having to fight for casting room with other peoples. We had not even been out of the vehicle for more than a minute, (not even time to get the first picture), than a fisherman pulled down and was getting ready to launch his boat. We got about 6 pictures each before the boat went in and the ripples started. The ripples did add a nice effect to the water, i'll try and remember and may post one of them.
At the end of the road is the boat launch and river access to Tustumena Lake. It is a big deep lake. Almost 94 square miles in area, and 950 feet deep, yes 950 feet. The elevation for the surface of the lake is only 112 feet above sea level. It is deep, and has about 71 miles of shoreline.
I took a lot of pictures all in the same area all to try and get a picture of a minnow jumping out of the water, I got two pictures, this was the better of the two, the circle inset is of the minnow standing on its tail as it just clears the water.
All images were taken by me with my Nikon D7500 Camera. All image open slightly larger if you use right click open in new window. Short walks and short wanders, well except the store that was actually a lot of walking, pretty amazing how much you can walk around in a small store when you keep retracing your steps, to look closer at something you saw earlier. In case you are wondering, yes I asked prior to taking any pictures if I could take them. Tom is a pretty nice guy.
WOW that carving work is amazing,
thanks for joining Wednesday walk tip!
he is pretty good at carving, has some great carved antlers also. I'm going to have to do a whole post one day on just his carving.
I would love to see that
Amazing view in Alaska, and congrats catching a jumping fish on photo.. super cool
It is a hard thing to do, even though it is only a little one inch minnow, I was pretty happy to actually get one out of the water straight up and down. A good thing these new cameras have a lot of pixels so even though it was kind of far away, it still looks like a fish when zoomed in.
@bashadow
yeah my recent video there were fish jumping out of the water but never got it on video. Yeah 4k video is 1080p times 4 so you are correct. Its nice we have better video these days.
Oh, i love rock shops! Do you think the rock mught be Jasper? Ir is beautiful.
And those carvers... what patience they must have.
Your photos are fabulous, my friend!
I loved that story about Tom Cooper. Makes me want to head north.
Posted using Partiko Android
Very nice and still very active person. part of the long shop is talking to him asking questions and stuff.
howdy there bashadow! I love this post, it's amazing in information and gorgeous photos...I think that top photo of the green stone looks like petrified coral to me but that's just a guess.
The carvings are amazing, I wonder how long it takes to do that kind of thing and then I didn't know you could buy Mammoth tusks, I thought they'll all be in museums I guess.
Any great post. Has it started snowing yet? lol
Not yet, hoping it holds off til Halloween. When I first got to Alaska 30 some odd years or so ago, columbus day October 11th used to be the first snow, now just about Halloween on Nov 1st time frame. It varies. Still in the upper 40's only two days of frosty morn's so far.
well thanks for getting back to me bashadow! I think that Alaska would be a wonderful place for a summer home, like on a lake somewhere but come November I'd head South because I like the change of seasons but not severe cold so I salute you guys for handling those dark, cold, long winters up there!
Oh they recommend people that drive out start driving on the 15th of September, while snow down south start can be unpredictable, it can start in late september in parts and then there is Canada to drive through. They don't call it White Court for nothing, I think they get the first snow. Then the highway to Edmonton can become a nightmare. But then there is always the Jasper Route, more scenic anyways.
Are you sure that was a minnow and not the cousin of Nessie? You never know with those creatures... :D
The Monster Lives in Lake Iliamna, Here is a story in The Alaska Daily News from last year. https://www.adn.com/outdoors-adventure/2017/06/28/lake-illiamna-monster-lore-resurfaces-with-new-sightings/
The Monster of Lake Iliamna was also featured in the “River Monsters” on Animal Planet show.
Wow, very beautiful images. I personally couldn't handle the cold, so I will live the Alaskan adventure vicariously through you lol.
Hi @bashadow! You have received 0.1 SBD tip from @tattoodjay!
Check out @tattoodjay blog here and follow if you like the content :)
@tipU voting service | For investors.
Hi @bashadow!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 4.105 which ranks you at #3112 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 3 places in the last three days (old rank 3109).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 291 contributions, your post is ranked at #112.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server