This week's Alaskan Panorama is...

...storm clouds on Pioneer Peak.




This panorama was created from eleven hi-res shots, taken with my Sony Professional D770 from the roof of my house. As always you can click on the picture to get the high resolution version in my Picasa album.

What was I doing on the roof of my house? Checking the flashing around the furnace waste gas vent, of course. It needs to be re-tarred. If the rain holds off for a while, I'll get that done today.

And, yet again, obviously I have not uploaded bowl work pictures. Yes, I am a slacker. I was going to do it yesterday, but then I decided to take Beastly and the kid silver fishing. We headed down to the Eklunta tail race (the stream below the Eklutna hydroelectric plant) for about eight hours yesterday evening. Didn't catch much of anything, the silvers just weren't interested I guess. However, Beastly nearly caught himself a couple of black bears. A sow and a cub were wandering the bank, looking for spawned out fish carcasses. They were well fed and not even remotely aggressive - but still, you really want to keep your distance, especially from a mother and cub.

The bears came down the other side of the river and startled a couple of folks away from their fishing spot. Then they swan across the river and ended up on our side of the bank, upstream. They ambled towards us, but at the last moment turned and wandered up into the parking lot. I wanted to get a picture, but the light had faded by that time and all I would have gotten would have been black blobs. I kept an eye on them for a while, but they were obviously used to people and we weren't too worried. The mother did eventually attempt to come down the bank and over top of Beastly's position. He had the shotgun in hand, but a big fellow who was fishing beside us hollered and waved his arms and the bear decided that she'd rather be elsewhere. All and all, it was more interesting than exciting. But, hey, we had a good time even if we didn't catch any fish.

I've got work in the shop to do, but it is my intention to get those dammed pictures uploaded this weekend. We'll see how well I do with that resolution.