Carcross

Some of you know that Yukon has a desert. Just a small one; you might not notice if you didn't look carefully. Just the way the wind blows and the mountains shelter it, means it doesn't get much rain. It isn't a protected area or anything, so the locals drive on it. I'm kind of amazed there's any vegetation left on it at all.

The last couple times I was here I wandered along the right hand side of the bowl. This time I decided to head across to the left side, and see what the view that way was. I thought the side of the mountain might be photogenic.

I still wasn't well, and had to stop several times along the way to catch my breath and rest a bit. Walking uphill on soft sand is tough. 

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2. Sort of off to the right from where we parked. 

3. Sort of straight across.

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5. I was headed a bit to the left of this, as it turns out.

6. The outward view from there. Not as photogenic as I had hoped.

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9. Another view down the valley towards the town of Carcross.

10.  Our van, off in the distance. Going down is much easier than going up.

11. Along the way was this bit of fireweed. There was a bit of nice light on it as I walked up and saw the photo, and it went away seconds before I clicked the shutter.

12. Some of the tour trudging back to the van. 

13. One of the mountain views.

14. Some of the local art. You might think it odd that an orca would be part of the art near a desert, but this is also really close to the ocean. It's only 100 Km or so to Skagway.

15. If you should ever happen to be in Carcross, stop in that little shop on the left. Get an Americano. It is amazing. Easily the best coffee I had during the entire trip. The treats are awesome as well.

16. This is a sad story. They were rebuilding this steam boat as a tourist attraction, and it burned before they installed the fire suppression system. 

I didn't stroll around much, having been here twice before. More of the shops were open, so I cruised those.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Lily

Landscape, Red Deer River valley

Tombstone

Green Fools

Working on the design of the moon rocket.

Film

We think this was the local doctor's house, deserted on the bald prairie. Acros II.

Lynx

The long awaited Lynx

Is the plural lynx or lynxes? Pretty sure it's not lynxi. And the collective noun? Chain? Pestering? You've got to love English some days.

In any case, while visiting the Yukon Wildlife Preserve our tour group got to visit the 3 lynx. Lindsay took us into the enclosure (inside!) along with a bucket of meat and a highly engineered specialty tool to protect us. The cats are cautious around us, but they know that white bucket has lunch, and got surprisingly close. It's sometimes hard to know what cats are thinking, but the impression I got was they thought they could bring us down and eat us if they had to, but it would be a lot of work, and it's a whole lot easier to wait for that nice human to toss it to us.

Along the way we visited several other charismatic mammals that they're taking care of, though we didn't get inside all the enclosures. Oddly enough, while the lynx have the reputation as dangerous predators, they aren't the most dangerous animals. They wouldn't let us inside the moose enclosure. While it is extremely photogenic, it could also easily gore and trample a human without really noticing.

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2. I got carried away with lynx photos. There are many. A great many. The plan is to add them to the Of the Day feature till they're gone. This will be the case with many Yukon photos. Stay tuned!

I'm not sure which of the three lynx this is, but I think it's the mom.

3. You get one of the tree sequences. Lindsay uses the high tech protection tool to put a chunk of meet up on a tree limb. This whole sequence took only a few seconds.

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22. We also visited this cute fox.

23. And the caribou.

I wasn't happy with how the photos of some of the other critters turned out. They were a little too far away for the lens I was using. 

Of the Day

Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Lily

Landscape

Tombstone

Green Fools, a clown funeral.

Film

This might need a bit of explanation. This is a 37 minute exposure of Acros II B&W film. That black outline in the lower right is a gateway arch with a bunch of cowboy boots nailed to it. The composition idea was to have a bit more of it in view, but it's tough trying to compose a photo with a rangefinder in the dark on a low tripod for stability. I had light painted the boots, but clearly not enough. To get this effect digitally the photographer takes a number of short exposures, and uses specialty software to merge them. It can be a very clean image, where mine is not. This is only the second time I've tried this, and will likely try again.