After much practice, I finally graduated from the use of a cell-phone, but to be honest the setting on my camera is pretty much stuck on ‘Auto’.

Mobile Street Art

06 Saturday Feb 2021

Posted by danielwalldammit in Bad Photography, Street Art

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Art, Artsy, Cars, Creative, Murals, Paintings, Street Art, Transportation, Wheels

In this post, street art comes to you (or at least it could.)

Click to embiggen!

Leetul Buurdz!

12 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Animals, Bad Photography

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Awe, Birds, Cute, Snow Buntings, Squee, Summer, Tiny, Wildlife

I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I need a cuteness break, right about now.

So, I’m going to post some pics of these little birds we get here over the summer. they usually arrive in April or May, and it seems like they disappear with the first few snows of the Fall, so usually by October. I’m told they are called “snow buntings.” I don’t think these critters are really all that unusual. I probably saw plenty of snow buntings when I lived in the lower 48, but I sure notice them a lot more now. Their arrival is a welcome sign that what counts as Spring here is actually starting to happen. I hear them singing first in the Spring often without actually seeing any for a couple weeks. Finally, the numbers get large enough to enjoy the sites.

Love these little guys!

I took these pics over the last couple summers. (Click to embiggen!)

An Owlitation Meditation

11 Friday Dec 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Bad Photography

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Birds, Nature, Owls, Photography, Snowy Owls, Tundra, Wildlife, Wildlife Photography

One of the first things I did when I moved to Barrow was walk out onto the tundra with my little Backberry phone and try to get some pictures of a snowy owl that stayed out behind the college here. He would stare at me as I approached and then fly away just as I was almost in range for a decent photo, only to land a hundred feet or so away and stare calmly at me as I repeated my efforts. I almost got some decent pics of that guy. All day, I almost got them.

Almost!

There was something the way that owl just watched me approach. It was a forgone conclusion. It wasn’t going to get THAT close, so he was in no hurry to fly away. He took off just as I was about to get close enough for a decent pic, and he went just far enough to re-establish his own comfort zone, and incidentally to tempt me to engage in one more round of effort.

Ah well!

These days, I have an actual camera. I’m still a bit clumsy with a lens, but my camera is smart enough to compensate for some of my photo-foolishness, and the result is a (hopefully) passable batch of owlitations. Most of them were taken the summer before last. This year, there just didn’t seem to be enough hot lemming action to draw a big owly crowd. Anyway, …owls!

(Click to embiggen!)

In the Time of Quarantine

28 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Bad Photography, Travel

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Covid19, Denali, Glacier, Mountains, Nature, Photos, Quarantine, Travel

I had already booked a work-related flight to Fairbanks when Covid19 began spreading through the U.S. I remember talking about it with Moni in the days before I flew, and especially the night before I was to go. We seriously talked about cancelling the trip, but I thought it best to follow through with my plans. By the time the plane hit ground the next day, pubic sentiment had shifted from something along the lines of “maybe wear a mask, wash your hands a lot, and avoid crowds” to something more like “don’t go out at all, definitely wear a mask, and start shutting down the businesses. By the time I left Fairbanks 3 days later, the University was all but closed and restaurants were take-out only. Touching people, even to shake hands, was not done. Needless to say, I didn’t get much done. I felt pretty relieved to get home safely.

And then there was a period when we were all just locked down and travel wasn’t really an option.

I felt this.

I felt it in my teeth.

And in my stomach.

I had already scheduled a visit with an oral surgeon. He was to take the remains of 2 molars out the right side of my mouth, hopefully before the botched cap on my left side fell out and left me on a solid yogurt diet.

Oh well!

As the time of Covid stretched on, and people began to realize this wasn’t ending any time soon, I started to think about flying south to get my teeth done after all. With the help of her sister (a nurse), Moni had the safety precautions down to a science, and we started making limited forays out of the arctic. I still cringe at the thought of leaving the state, but with a little planning, I feel like we can get down to Anchorage and get what needs doing done. We can even venture pout of our room a bit, in which case we figure it’s best to keep going right out of town.

One good thing about Alaska, some of the best things about it take you well away from other people.

Still got one last procedure before I can sink my teeth into a proper steak. I would prefer to hunker down completely for the next few months, but I may need to risk one more trip. In the meantime, it occurs to me that I haven’t done a proper poto-gallery in awhile. So, here are a few pictures from recent travels. This of course includes a few drives around town, and maybe a few from before the pandemic. Anyway, …pics!

(Click the pics to embiggen them. You know you wanna!)

Gallery 1: In flight.

Gallery 2: The Beaches of Barrow.

Sea Ice.

Skies.

Denali (and Nearby).

Matanuska Glacier

Southeast from Anchorage.

Other.

…and, oh yeah!

Whatever you are doing?

This guy disapproves!

Last Sunset of 2020

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Bad Photography, Travel

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Arctic, Family, Landing, Last Sunset, Photos, Sunset, Travel, Youtube

I know! Most of y’all will get a few more of these, but no so, those of us up here in Barrow. Our last sunset was yesterday. I’m told we can expect to be overrun by vampires any moment. We hear about that every year, actually, but this being 2020 and all, it seems like it actually might happen this time.

Ah well!

Anyway, I was flying up from Anchorage yesterday, caught a couple pictures of the sunset as the plane came in for a landing. Turns out, my nephew, Danielito, was filming the sunset on the ground, and he caught my plane coming in.

Danielito is a good kid.

I hope the vampires don’t get him!

STOP!

27 Wednesday May 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in Bad Photography, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Frost, Graffiti, Signs, Snow, Stop, Stop SIgns, Street Signs, Winter

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…cause even a street sign sometimes needs a helping hand.

A New Decade Arrives

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Bad Photography

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Celebration, Dinner, Fireworks, Happy New Year, New year, Photography, Polar Midnight, Thanksgiving, Turkey

Well we started this New Year by correcting an egregious crime. See, my gal, Moni, hadn’t been able to eat much on Thanksgiving. This didn’t stop her from making a great turkey dinner for myself and several of our friends. (Her first time cooking a turkey.) It just prevented her from enjoying it herself.

…which was an egregious crime!

We corrected that crime tonight. Moni made an even better turkey for New Year’s Eve dinner, and this time she got to eat her share of it. Afterwards, we went on down to the fireworks display for the town. That’s the thing about Barrow. Fireworks aren’t that cool here in July, so we do our fireworks on January 1st, right in the midst of polar midnight. This being the modern age, it didn’t happen without some electronic record of it, so both Moni and I froze our hands for the sake of ontology. It was worth, I think. I got some pictures and Moni caught the whole thing on video.

Presented for your enjoyment…

(Click to embiggen)

Fireworks 2020 3 I lost count

It was delicious (Another pic from Moni)

Fireworks 2020 4

(Moni took this one too) Our Spirit animals had a meal as well.

Fireworks 2020 5

Fireworks 2020 6?

Moni took this. (Why this lovely happy woman is with my cranky butt, I will never know.)

Fireworks 2020 Something

Fireworks 2020 umpteen

Fireworks 2020 3

Fireworks 2020 2

Fireworks 2020 1

Happy New Year everybody!

Summer at the Beach

06 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Bad Photography

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Beach, Ice, Ocean, Photos, Pics, Sea Ice, Summer, Water

36868123_10216821637638330_8479229804195872768_n Damn!

I have papers to grade. So, I guess summer is really over.

I was planning to take it easy this summer, but it didn’t exactly work out that way. A move across town took up a lot more time than Moni and I expected. Our trip to Valdez is still the highlight of the season for me, but I also made it down to Montana on a work-related trip and down again to Fairbanks to help put on the Motif Film Festival. When I wasn’t traveling or taking boxes upstairs, I was busy working on class materials and whatnot. Suffice to say, it was an interesting summer.

One of the most interesting things about this particular summer is just how long the sea ice seemed to remain intact, and how long much of it stuck around shore. It seems like this last winter got started late (snow didn’t start sticking here in Barrow until well into October), so I suppose it’s fitting in some sense that the remnants of that winter would linger a bit. It certainly made for some beautiful views. Few sites compare to the midnight sun shining down on an entire ocean served on the rocks, so to speak.

Yeah, people do swim in this stuff, usually just for a minute or two, just long enough to say they did it.

Other people do this.

Not me.

(Click to embiggen.)

This little guy really wanted me off his beach

Icy Reflections

Just Cold!

Looks like I tweaked this pic a lot, but I really didn’t tweak it much

Hadda zoom a bit for this one

…and the world gets diagonal

A little sea life in the fog there.

Okay, this might not be sea ice

The cloud here steals the show.

Clear and peaceful evening

Mid July

A touch of yellow

Lotta Blue

An ice bow, some sea ice, and an annoying little blue dot.

Sorry, for the poor quality of this video, and in particular for my very shaky hand.

Road Trip! (Anchorage to Valdez)

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Bad Photography, Travel

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Boats, Glacier, Harbor, Nature, Photos, Road Trip, Travel, Valdez

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Moni likes to take pictures of the road.

Between her new job and our move into a new apartment, my girlfriend and I haven’t had much of a chance to to travel together this summer. We did manage to sneak out for a week or so in mid June. What we decided to do this time was a quick road trip from Anchorage to Valdez. Of course, getting to Anchorage required a little flying time, but that’s old hat. We had to make a couple purchases for the new place, so that meant staying a couple days in the vicinity of Anchorage, so we found a lovely bed and breakfast in Palmer. After that, we hit the road!

Not literally, of course. I ain’t got nothin’ against the highway.

Anyway, the trip was about a 5 hour drive, but we made plenty of stops. We traveled along the Matanuska river for quite some time, made a brief stop a bit south of Glenallen, then headed off toward Valdez. To say that we found a number of beautiful sites along the way would be putting it mildly.

Valdez itself was absolutely wonderful. I hit a couple museums (The Whitney Museum and the Valdez Museum & Historical Archive) and we hung out at the docks for a time. We ate at the Fat Mermaid a couple of times and made stops at Mike’s Palace and Fu Kung. …suffice to say that we were well fed. We also ran into the folks from Sweet Cheeks Bakery, run by the parents of a coworker, but we didn’t get back in time to get our cinnamon buns. Still, …all of Alaska is just one small village! You just can’t travel through this state without finding connections to the people you meet. Eventually, we bought tickets on a tour boat, which of course meant that I got sick (yes I took some meds), but mostly that was just amazing. I almost never opt for a paid tour, but I’m very glad I did this time.

On the last day as Moni and I were strolling around downtown getting ready to say goodbye to the place, a random guy came out of Mike’s Palace and asked us if we lived in the area. The answer was ‘no’, of course, and then he proceeded to tell us that he had lived here himself once, 30 years ago. I cringed inside as he launched into his efforts to tell me about the good old days. A few minutes later I felt a twinge of sadness as he left us with tales of bar fights between Okies and Texan (oil workers) spilling out of the Palace and onto the street. Apparently, the police had once been disarmed so as to enable the fight to continue. Additional stories involved a pair of Korean prostitutes who paid him extra for a pizza every night so as to have a place to stay. Just how much of this was true, I have no idea, but the stories were a good deal more entertaining than I had anticipated. I found myself wishing we’d run into him before lunch rather than after and on the verge of leaving. Still, a few more eagle pics and off we went.

Hell, even the shopping we did back in Anchorage before boarding the plane back home went well.

I wish every vacation was this cool.

(You may click to embiggen!)

Ruins from Old Valdez

Columbia Glacier

Mountains in the Background

On the Wing

Factory across the water

Snow Goose BnB

The chunks of ice on top got there when they were thrown up out of the water as the ice broke apart.

This juvenile whale was playing around the boat for about half an hour. …his mom was not amused.

St. Innocent, Russian Orthodox Church in Anchorage (Moni really wanted to see this one)

Random Waterfall empties into the sea

Yep, lotsa bunnies too!

Looks Kinda Smug for a guy that lives on the scraps tossed out by fisherman!

When you look into the scenery, sometimes the scenery looks back at you.

Copper River

Blues happen

Almost there

Just purdy

Are these guys ever not angry?

Water will fall

Mountains over trees

This, I’m told, is an oyster catcher.

Well hello there!

Almost an island of sorts

Local ruffians!

Heading Out

That mountain was framed!

Glacier

Horse Tail Falls

Lotta little ice

Moni likes to stop and take pictures of the road.

Big chunk of ice

Closest I could find to street art

Random roadster (Anchorage)

Columbia Glacier has the blues!

Couldn’t get over the color of the water

You otter sea the mountains!

Abandoned structure along the Matanuska

Local Humor

Athabascan footwear (Copper River Heritage Center)

Matanuska River

Bit of color

Model Athabascan food cache.

Columbia Glacier

The view from the Snowgoose BnB

Worthington Glacier

A Wondrous Road Trip!

23 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in Bad Photography, Travel

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

California, New Mexico, Road Trip, Route 66, Santa Fe, Summer, Taos, Travel, Wonder Woman

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Just south of Taos

It was the summer of Wonder Woman. I mean, I know she was in the theaters this last summer, and I certainly enjoyed the movie, but that’s not what I’m talking about. She was in our car. Wonder woman, I mean. She was in our car.

Yep!

We were wondering what that strange sound was coming from the back. We didn’t hear it often, at first anyway, but it was just an odd sound. Were the Jarritos bouncing up against the Mexi-cokes? Maybe something was falling out of the luggage? No, not that over and over like that, and it doesn’t sound like bottles. Neither Moni nor I could quite place it. And then an impression started to form, but it just couldn’t be right. I thought perhaps all those years of role-playing geeketry were playing havoc with my ears, because I couldn’t possibly be hearing it right. Still, the more I listened, the more convinced I became.

“Is that a sword?”

“It does sound like a sword, yes.”

Hearing Moni confirm my seemingly-impossible impression was a little reassuring. It was also a little disturbing. Why in the hell would the sounds of sword fighting be coming from the back of our vehicle? And then Moni remembered the costume. I had bought her a Wonder Woman costume for super-hero day at her gym. It came with a plastic sword and that sword made sounds whenever you moved it around. We meant to give it to one of of her nieces or nephews, but I guess we never got around to it. Instead, the noisy blade was buried somewhere in the back beneath a pile of luggage, snacketry, random shoes, and countless things we probably didn’t need. Evidently, the sword had room to juggle. So, Wonder Woman had room to fight in the back of our vehicle.

No matter! We would dig her out soon enough.

I think we first noticed the sound on a trip to Sequoia National Park. We could still hear Wonder Woman doing battle after a diversion to Monterey, another trip to Sacramento and San Francisco, several small trips around Los Angeles, a road trip to Santa Fe by way of the Navajo Nation, at least three trips back to to Taos Pueblo through Espaniola, one to Bandelier, one to Kasha Katuwe, and one each to Santa Ana Pueblo and Cochiti. We never did find her, or if we did, we missed the chance to find her a new home. Hell, she was still fighting her foes when we made it finally back to California at the end of the summer.

We actually did make an effort to find Wonder, but we were thwarted by the piles of unnecessary baggage. So, Wonder Woman spent the summer with us. She protected us from evils all across the southwest, and even scolded us when we did wrong. She could be kinda bossy that way, but otherwise, I must admit the living weapon herself was actually pretty good company.

Presumably, her sword is in storage now.

It’s been a little over six months now, so I guess it’s time to share some pics from our road trip, the one Moni and I took with Wonder Woman.

I’ve already blogged about a few of these things, but I do plan to produce at least one more post about the street art in San Francisco. I’ve posted about the Institute of American Indian Arts before, and about Santa Fe. These are definitely favorite stops of mine. Here are a few pics (click to embiggen)!