Not endangered anymore…and I can see why.
At the end of our trip to Alaska in June 2007, Mike and I stopped for a few days in the Seattle, WA, area where Mike’s cousin, Rick, lives. Rick took us northwest for a day trip, where we went island hopping via ferry. During our travels, we stopped at the northern part of Deception Pass State Park on Fidalgo Island, where we went for a walk.
There was a bald eagle perched at the top of a pine tree. Normally, this would have floored us, but we’d just come from 10 days in Alaska, where eagles are considered nuisance birds, like pigeons or seagulls. Still, it looked like a good opportunity to get a photo of an eagle doing sometime more interesting than waiting for the fishermen to dump their garbage. So I raised my camera, which (fortunately) had a 200 mm lens on it, focused, and waited for something interesting to happen.
The bird took off and I caught him in flight.
The photo isn’t perfect, but it is, by far, the nicest picture of a bald eagle I got while on vacation.
We saw a lot of bald eagles in captivity in Alaska. They were all injured birds that would never return to the wild. They were beautiful animals — quite large and very majestic looking. But those small, close-set eyes and sharp beak and claws were enough to remind anyone that these are birds of prey. Not a coincidence, I think, for the national bird of this country.
But I’m not complaining — it could have been worse. As you may know, Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird.
I took this shot on the first glacier. It’s a huge boulder — probably 8 feet long by 6 feet wide by 3 feet tall — and it’s being held horizontally off the surface of the glacier by a column of ice. The ice, of course, is melting — not from global warming but by summer warmth — and I suspect this boulder is now lying elsewhere on the surface of the glacier, a bit downstream as it moves with the flow of the ice. Perhaps it’s sitting in a similarly awkward position and another tourist has snapped a shot of it — maybe with his wife or kid sitting or standing on it! That’s the weird thing about glaciers: they’re always changing, always moving. The rocks and boulders on their surface are just along for the ride.
The Deception Pass Bridge crosses over this strait, about 180 feet above the water (depending on the tide). There are actually two spans to the bridge with a small uninhabited island between them. There’s limited parking on both ends of the bridge with plenty of places to stop and take in the view.
The bridge includes a 3-foot wide sidewalk on each side, which is definitely not recommended for those who are afraid of heights. We walked across on one side and back on the other. To prevent people from crossing the relatively busy roadway, a flight of stairs leads to a pathway under the bridge on either bank. That’s where I took this photo. I liked the symmetry of the construction and the fact that I could frame the photo in such a way that the pattern seemed to go on forever. This is a theme I try to capture in my photos when I can: infinity.
Last year my husband Mike came along for the ferry flight to Page. We stayed two nights — I fly only around sunrise and late afternoon for my clients on this gig — and departed early the next morning for Wickenburg. That’s when Mike took this shot of the Glen Canyon Dam with the morning sun casting shadows in the canyon.
The lake is highly controversial. The dam flooded a huge area of pristine canyon lands with many archeological sites and even a few active settlements. This land was mostly inaccessible, like so much of America’s desert wilderness. That may be why the decision to build the dam was made. Although the Sierra Club would like nothing more than to destroy the dam and drain the lake, at this point I think it’s too late. The canyon walls are stained with minerals from the water and all plant life beneath the current water level is dead. It would take hundreds, if not thousands, of years for the area to be restored to its original health and beauty. Sadly, the need for water in the desert southwest has become more important than the need for another remote wilderness. We should be thankful that the original plan to stretch a dam across the Grand Canyon was scrapped, as we could have lost that instead.
I think we should be satisfied with the beauty of the lake and the recreational opportunities it provides. Although most boating activity goes on in the Page area, there’s nothing so peaceful or relaxing as climbing aboard a houseboat for a week-long trip up lake, where few day-trippers venture. Exploring the side canyons by small boat or on foot gives you a sense of what it might have been like before the waters rose.
This case of cakes and pies and pastries called to me. In Arizona real bakeries are a rarity. Supermarkets here are big and new and almost all of them have a bakery department. Some are actually quite good. Our recently renovated Safeway here in Wickenburg has a nice display case of cakes and cookies these days. But I’ve never seen any bakery in Arizona with a display like this. And I’ve never been to a bakery in Arizona worth writing about.