This is the Florida I really like. On my only off day in Orlando, not counting the day I flew in, I went out to Lake Kissimmee State Park in search of their 13 miles of trails. Luckily, not one of them had a TRAIL CLOSED sign at the trailhead.
Kissimmee is a 5900+ acre park with an incredible variety of terrain: From forest to floodplain and flatwoods to hammock, Kissimmee had it all.
One of several deer I saw while hiking. There were actually three here, with two hiding behind the ferns.
At the trailhead was a fishing hole that had a lot of attention. Mostly parents with kids were fishing from raised platforms. It wasn’t hard to see why they were fishing from above the shoreline: I immediately spotted two alligators floating offshore, with only the top of their heads out of the water. I could see fish everywhere, practically begging just below the water’s surface. I was told they were Florida Largemouth Bass, although they looked like a bunch of pet carp.
I didn’t hang out long enough to see one caught. I had just spent the past several days immersed in a sea of humanity, with a second round coming the next day, so I was looking for solitude on the trails. I found it too. The only company I had once I left the trailhead was several deer that I hiked past.
On the edge of a controlled burn
It was an absolutely beautiful day, with temps in the low 70’s F, not a cloud in the sky, and I had those 13 miles of trail to hike.
This remnant of Florida fascinates me. I honestly love hiking through the flatwoods and hammocks. It’s so different from what is in Alaska. It’s also kind of enjoyable to be hiking in a t-shirt in March and without mukluks.
They very recently had a controlled burn in the park, and one of the trails went right through one of the burns. The scent of burnt vegetation hung in the air. The burn was so recent, that I would occasionally walk through a pocket of air where I could smell the heat itself. I’m not sure if it was a hot pocket or just an area where the sun beat down in such a way as to amplify the scent, but it was intense.
I had never been to Orlando, which shocked the hotel manager. In fact, I even received a head shake when I confessed that this was my first visit to the city. I did not add that I would not have visited at all if it wasn’t a business trip.
It’s an interesting town, and I enjoyed the 80F degrees, but I’d prefer the Everglades or Dry Tortugas. I’m more of an orca in the wild than an orca in a pool, kind of guy.
Still, I did enjoy the trip, and the food was decent, although prices easily surpassed Fairbanks, which took me by surprise. Car rental prices were relatively inexpensive, but gas prices varied wider than I have ever seen. They were all over the map, with a difference of 60 cents a gallon around the city. The cheaper ones are not around the airport, by the way.
Last week, I had a 10 day business trip down under, as in the Lower 48. Orlando was Part One of the excursion. I landed at their airport at 5:30 am. Since I was not going to be allowed to check into the hotel until 3pm, I had some time to kill. After breakfast, I picked up a few things that I forgot to bring and then searched for a park with a trail to hike.
I picked one out and headed down the highway. This was my first time to Orlando, and after spending the past 12 hours traveling, I just wasn’t in the mood for the intense traffic. It’s pretty nasty in Orlando. Shout out to I-4!
After arriving at the park, I walked about a bit then came across the trailhead:
There were three trails, and a TRAIL CLOSED sign at the start of each trail. An hour fighting traffic to go twenty miles, and the trails are closed. I was not impressed. There was no explanation. I’m not overly familiar with trails being closed. In Fairbanks, it’s usually because the trail is going through an active wildfire zone, and in Anchorage I remember warning signs highly discouraging of the use of a trail due to a grizzly killed moose carcass just down wind a bit, and one never knows when that grizzly will return to chow down some more. I was hoping to at least find a sign saying “Trail Closed due to Alligator Eating Wayward Tourist”, but there was no such sign, and I started to assume it was probably due to the trail getting a bit muddy, or something equally hazardous.
In the end, I found what I thought was a small hardly used trail along a creek, but eventually I was told off by a woman in a canoe who said that I was not on an official trail and I needed to go back.
I almost told her to go soak herself, but in the end, I just pointed to the opposite shore, and asked, “Is that an alligator?” Then I walked back to the car.
A bronze Balto, one of the four legged heroes of the Nome Serum Run; Photo circa 1934
The Iditarod has its ceremonial start in Anchorage tomorrow, followed by the official start in Willow on Sunday. The Last Great Race commemorates the Nome Serum Run of 1925.
Alaska Airlines has announced the end of an era. Their 737 with the king salmon painted on its fuselage will be repainted. Dubbed the Salmon-thirty-Salmon by an admiring public (mainly Alaskans), the repaint is facing a recall effort on change.org, but it seems the lure has been cast.
The paint job made its debut in 2005, and the plane has been a favorite up here ever since. That first painting of the 129 foot long king salmon was paid for by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, but subsequent repaints have been done by Alaska Air itself, as it continued to help promote wild, Alaskan seafood.
A spokesman for the airline stated that “a wonderful new design will be introduced in the coming months”. Alaskans seem skeptical however, thus the change.org petition.
Salmon-thirty-Salmon’s final flight will be April 17, when it flies the Southeast Alaska “milk-run”: Seattle to Anchorage, with stops in Ketchikan, Petersburg, Wrangell and Juneau.
Mount Edgecumbe, as seen from Thomsen Harbor, Sitka, Alaska; Photo credit:U.S. Forest Service/Jeffrey Wickett
Last April, a series of earthquakes around and under Mount Edgecumbe brought greater attention to what was considered a dormant volcano. Measurements show that magma is moving deep underneath Edgecumbe. Other signs have also brought new scrutiny: Hikers have discovered vents with bubbling gas near the volcano, and satellite images show a bulging of the ground around Edgecumbe.
None of this means that Edgecumbe will blow anytime soon, but the State of Alaska has reclassified Mount Edgecumbe as a “high risk volcano”. With 73,000 people living in the region, the reclassification was probably wise. Currently, the east side of Edgecumbe is bulging faster than any volcano in Alaska.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory has plans to install seismic sensors and other instruments on Mount Edgecumbe over the coming months. Core samples show that the volcano erupted between 4000 -4300 years ago, and Tlingit oral history tells of an eruption approximately 800 years ago.
Currently, Alaska has one volcano at Code Orange, and four others at Code Yellow.
Unrest under Mount Edgecumbe and a bulging eastern flank
The storm that took over the Alaskan skies last night was pretty impressive. The entire sky lit up to the point that the snow on the ground glowed green.
I heard that last night’s magnetic storm was rated a Kp7. The Kp index rates the magnitude of a geomagnetic disturbance. A 0, 1 or 2 is considered “Quiet”. A Kp3 is “Unsettled”. Kp4 = “Active”. Kp5 is a “Minor Storm” G1. Kp6 is a “Moderate Storm” G2, while last night’s Kp7 is considered a “Strong Storm” G3. Kp8 and Kp9 top the index as “Severe Storm” G4 and “Extreme Storm” G5, respectively.
There are some really incredible images out there online from last night’s Strong Storm. The two here are only cell phone images, and they do not do the aurora justice. It was really a phenomenal show. As you can see, we were not limited to just the green northern lights, but quite a bit of red was visible to the naked eye.
The skies were crystal clear, as expected, with temps dipping down to -32F at the cabin. I can’t wait to see if we get a second round tonight.
There was a somewhat unexpected traveler through downtown Fairbanks on Wednesday. A wolf was spotted alongside a major road in town. Wolves tend to not seek the social media limelight, so they are not often spotted in town. I have seen them outside of town on several occasions over the years, but never anywhere near town.
That said, the wolf was the talk of the town all day, although I was late to the party with my limited social media presence. Fish & Game officials believe the wolf came down the Chena River and took a sight seeing tour of the town. They were keeping tabs on the wolf’s whereabouts, but remaining mum.
Alaska Native civil rights icon Elizabeth Peratrovich
Today Alaska celebrates the life and dedication of Elizabeth Peratrovich.
In 1945, the Anti-Discrimination Act came before the Alaska Territorial Senate. The bill had already passed the House, and Peratrovich was slated to testify on the bill’s behalf. The State Legislative Building was packed to the rafters, and the doors were left open so that those in the hallways could hear the proceedings.
A Juneau senator cemented his place in Alaska history with this question: “Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites, with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind us?”
When Elizabeth Peratrovich testified, she responded with, “I would not have expected that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with five thousand years of recorded civilization behind them, of our Bill of Rights.” She went on a passionate plea calling for equal treatment for Indigenous peoples in the state.
The bill passed the Senate 11-5 and was signed by Governor Gruening on February 16, 1945. Alaska was still a territory, and its Anti-Discrimination Act passed almost 20 years before the United States passed the Civil Rights Act.
An automatic weather balloon launcher, near Fairbanks
I’ve been out at Poker Flats, which is outside Fairbanks, on several occasions when they were launching weather balloons. These days, most weather balloons are filled and launched by robotic launchers called autosondes, which takes some of the romance out of weather balloons, but that’s not the purpose of this post.
In the United States alone, there are 92 sites that launch two balloons every day of the year. There are over 800 locations worldwide doing the exact same thing. Here in Alaska, we have 13 sites that launch weather balloons twice a day, every day, and always at the same time: Midnight and noon Greenwich Mean Time.
A small collection of weather instruments, called a radiosonde is attached to the balloon which collects data and transmits that data back to the NWS as it rises. A weather balloon makes it to roughly 100,000 feet before it pops and falls back to earth. These days, radio balloons are highly biodegradable.
The first weather balloon with a radiosonde launched from Fairbanks in 1933. They started launching two balloons a day in 1941. I’ll let you do the math, but no matter how you figure it, that’s a lot of balloons.
