Rainy day hike and back to work in Alaska

Before I left for Alaska this last time we took advantage of a rare cloudy day and went for a walk in First Creek Canyon.  It was one of Oscar's first adventures and he did great. The creek was full from all the monsoon rain we'd gotten that week.  I have some more photos I took with the DSLR that I'll have to post later.  These are the ones from the cellphone.

This photo's pretty grainy but I still love it.  It just makes me think, "Castles made of sand."

I think the next day or so I went back to Kenai, Alaska.  I really liked it up there, partly because I got to fly in a small prop plane for the last leg, Anchorage to Kenai.  I've decided one of my favorite things in this world is to look down at the landscape from high up.  It never gets old for me.

This is flying over the Kenai peninsula on the way in.

Most of this hitch was rainy.

 Not this day though.  New day dawning clear.

Saw this sweet Ford truck for sale.  Mid 70's it looked like.  I love the matching yellow building.

If you're going to get the truck you might as well spring for the original crab shack just up the road.  Contact Mossy Oak Realty.  No joke.

This cool building is just behind the "crab shack".  The property drops away to the beach along the Cook Inlet. 

AAA Frame

I saw this sweet web covered in fog and was so psyched!  Then I started seeing them everywhere...

Unknown sea critter.  Maybe a small halibut?

My hitch got cut short from 3 weeks to 2.  Oh darn.

I was working nights so my flight out was at 7:30 am.  We took off through a thick blanket of fog and popped out on top to an amazing clearing sky.  Another awesome Alaskan flight.

I know the flight path pretty well now.  Here is Mt. Ranier.  Getting close to home, relatively.

Mt. Hood

Back in home turf!  Here we're flying south along the Pahrump Valley just west of Las Vegas.  This shot is looking due east up Wheeler Canyon.  It leads to Wheeler Pass which is a fun 4x4 road we've driven a few times.  Mt. Charleston is on the right edge of the skyline.

Here Mt. Charleston and Mummy Mountain are pretty much center skyline.  Coming in from the right edge of the frame is the broad Carpenter Canyon.  This is where the Carpenter 1 Fire burned in 2013.  It spilled over the ridge line too, into Kyle Canyon but didn't burn any houses.  This summer though, one of the housing developments was severely damaged in monsoon flooding in part due to the fire damage.  Mudslides and flash floods are common after wildfires since there's no topsoil or vegetation to slow down the water.  You can faintly see where the green turns to brown/gray on the right hand side there.

A little further south you can see the backside of Red Rock.  Lovell Canyon is the greenish canyon running parallel with the Red Rock escarpment.  It's another dirt road that's fun to explore.  At the north end of the canyon you can take the aptly named Rocky Gap Road east over a pass which eventually drops you out at Willow Springs Pull-out on the Red Rock loop road.  

Here we've turned to the east, so this is looking north over Red Rock Canyon.

I love the shadows from the peaks in the late afternoon.  The Calico Hills (First, Second and Third Pull-out) are in the upper right of the photo.

Flying over Blue Diamond Hill, the site of the former Gypsum mine.  The town of Blue Diamond was established originally to house the upper management and their families.  The mine workers and their families lived on site.  This area was bought by Jim Rhodes who is maneuvering to build a Summerlin-sized housing development here complete with schools, shopping and neighborhoods.  So far he's been blocked by a zoning law which requires minimum 2 acre lots, which is not dense enough to be profitable.

If I was sitting on the other side of the plane I probably could have taken a picture of our house.

And finally, Sin City itself, the mirage of the desert, rather looking the part here in an uncommon rain shower passing over downtown. 

And, by special request, Oscar, enjoying some green grass at the Blue Diamond park, where nearly every day around 7pm he tries to play with dogs of all size who mostly ignore his presence.  This is a rare, non-blurry photo of the beast who now shares our home.