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At left is a typical marmot, which is larger and putzier than an arctic ground squirrel (a standard marmot is smaller than your cat, a standard arctic ground squirrel is the size of a can of spam). At right is an AGS that wandered into the Eielson (I checked the spelling finally!) Visitor's Center, adding an unpredictible element to what was otherwise a rest stop. If you have food, especially peanut butter or a pink snowball cupcake that Kathy thinks is so gross, they will not hesitate to climb up your pants to get it. Don't feed them---this would be like introducing four-star Thai food to the Scots---it's just not a good idea. Advertising its exploratory nature and bite size, the AGS doesn't just have a haute place on the food chain, it IS the food chain. It's instant, compact, portable, probably tastes like chicken with fur.
Nobody mentioned that female moose don't have antlers, so we crept closer, thinking this was just a really spavined, ugly horse. The horse had a colt. The colt was darling, bolting around, chasing off ducks, sucking river scum with its mother..river scum...(THAT'S NO COLT -- THAT'S A- A- MOOSELET) stage whispering, slooowly we started backing away, realizing that upsetting mommy would be like crossing Mo Udall with a freight train.
Kathy did call it a "mooslette" in her postcards. Then she left most of her postcards on the bus. About a week later the people she had addressed them to actually received them. It's amazing how people in Alaska will blow stamps on you. We figure it must have been a park ranger because they wrote underneath, "moose calf, not mooselet."
This little sliver of grey is the tip of a whale's tail, swimming as far away from our boat as fast as it possibly could. Anne saw it before anybody else did. Kathy missed it because she and about a third of the other passengers were having a vomit contest off the stern. Anne and I bought her some ginger candy but it wound up stuck to a grille on the side of the boat, where we watched in fascination as it continued to bob in and out of the waves for hours. Eventually, she felt better and decided to come in to the main lounge. She sat down just as the Captain announced the All-U-Can-Eat Salmon Feast and the staff simultaneously uncovered about a dozen warming trays full of salmon. At that point I had to take a picture of the expression on her face. We're still friends. She has that shot of my butt climbing the mountain.
This
layout is somewhat geographically impaired so in order not to confuse
both of us I should mention that the whales and seals were taken off the
Kenai Peninsula which is somewhere around Seward and nowhere near
Denali. Plus, there's a state park next to the national park,"next to"
being a relative term since both are ENORMOUS. The antlered beast on
the left is a caribou, and Anita told us that when she was staying with
some natives they ate a sort of ice cream made from caribou fat mixed
with berries, Ben & Jerriak's Chunky Caribouberry or something, one
of those local flavors. The ones we saw left us with the impression
that A) they do a lot of Gary Larsen-style milling around, especially in
the middle of the road and B) most of what's inside their heads appears
to be dedicated to horn manufacture.
Some
of the animals in these pictures are really small. This is a
psychedelic part of Denali called "Polychrome Pass". Various mineral
deposits in the rocks have oxidized and combined in a postmodern way
with various teensy animals called lichen. One of our guides explained
that lichen are an algae-fungus combo, telling us the story of Alice
Algae and Freddy Fungus -- (pause) seems they took a lichen to one
another...(I know, I know, but if you go there, they really will tell
you this -- there's no avoiding it. Be Prepared.)
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