The 4th of July

Quent, Justin and I went down to watch the parade. After the parade everyone walks around, visiting the food booths, games, and other such things.


The population of Wrangell multiplies over the holiday.

Me and my friend's daughter Katie. She's so much fun!

Meet Ander. He is our friend's James and Laura's son. He was enjoying kicking the ball around with the guys. Here he is wearing Quent's ball-cap. What a cutie!!

I don't think he was sure of what I was doing. He was quite tired...

Log Rolling

Another event that takes place on the 4th is log rolling. Quent and Justin went down to watch.

Egg Toss

For about 4 hours...ok, so maybe it wasn't that long, (but that's all we heard for a long, long time), was "Toss your egg now!!" One time the announcer said it and then said, "Oh, wait." Haha! We were laughing about that one. The egg toss on the 4th of July is a popular event. Last year it was in the Guiness Book of World Records.

Kevin, one of Quent's co-workers dropped his egg. My friend Joy is in the center of the photo.

Bugs...

We stopped at the hot tubs. Quent was the only one of our trio who went into the water. We thought that by going into the sheltered tub area that there would be less mosquitos...WRONG! Poor Justin spent his whole time in there swatting at the little buggers. Note for next time: Wear bug spray!

We had lunch at "The Desert". It was a beautiful spot along the river...pretty warm too!

Waterfalls and an attempt

This was our second time going up the river when we weren't able to see the glacier because of the ice flow. When the temperatures are warmer more ice breaks off of the glacier and blocks entry to the glacier.

Going up the Stikine

On one of the days our friend Justin was here we took him on a jet boat tour up the Stikine River with Breakaway Adventures.

Justin and Christina on the back of the boat. We had stopped for a little break.

The area we stopped had a beautiful field of lupines.

Finding Nemo...with Justin

We took Justin up Nemo Loop Road. The fine weather showed off the beauty all around us.

Christina, Quent, and Justin

Lupine

Wild Iris

Pat's Mountain

I took our visitor from Michigan, Justin, up to Pat's mountain on an overnight camping trip. The trail was a little muddy and steep in places.

Once at the top we had the opportunity to play in the snow. It looked like I could have skied about a thousand vertical feet on the north face.

After we set up camp we decided to hike back to the summit to cook our supper and watch the sunset. The sun was happy to oblige and gave us a spectacular array of colors.

Looking at the mountains north of the Stikine River.

This Way Down

One of my last photographs of the evening. But by no means was the sky done with its show. The beautiful light lasted well beyond my ability to stay awake. A ptarmigan woke me up at about 11:30pm... or was it later... can't quite remember and the horizon was still on fire. I also got to listen to wolves howl in the valley far below before a little rain chased me into the tent at about 2:30am. Yes, it was still bright.

Just looks over the the landscape from our campsite.

The only flat non-snow covered site at a decent elevation. The entire north face was covered with snow but the ridge and some of the south face had melted.

Justin takes his time negotiating a steep snow covered slope.

Fools Inlet Hike

On the 21st of June the Wrangell Hiking Club scheduled a short trek to the Fools Inlet Estuary. We started just after a light rain had stopped and by the time we finished out picnic lunch the sun started making appearances.

Stepping off the end of the closed road and onto the trail.

The bottom of the trail is in a floodplain and has many large spruce and hemlock trees and a lot of lush green vegetation.

Chocolate lilies.

Wildflowers

Looking down on Indian Paintbrush.

The flowers (a lot of lupine in this photo) and green plants at the estuary were lovely.

Chocolate Lilies and Indian Paintbrush decorate the foreground

My friend Ryan works on a composition that later appeared in the newspaper.