Up by alarm. Had my regular breakfast with the coffee to go. We left at 7:10 in the Jeep.

We headed up to Archangel Pass which is right by Hatcher Pass. It was my first time there, but J had been there before. The rough dirt road is gated before the top of the pass, so we parked near the gate and walked around the nice alpine environment with steep rocky mountains. We were going to walk down the hill away from the road to photograph a beaver pond with what could have been a nice reflection of the surrounding mountains, but J spotted some "cooperative" warblers by the road so we set up to photograph them. They weren't nearly as cooperative when we were ready to photograph them (read, "Neither of us got any good images."), so J got out her landscape gear and headed down to the beaver pond. I stayed and photographed some of the other flitty little birds, and was able to get a very nice image of a female common redpoll. :) For the record, that was about the only good image I got of the flitty little birds.

I got out my landscape gear and headed down to the beaver pond. It required a lot of bushwhacking through a small patch of willow before I came upon a short section of an informal trail. Then it was more bushwhacking to go through more willow lining a small stream and some boulder hopping to cross the stream. By the time I got down to the beaver pond, the nice clouds that had been above the mountains had moved away, and it wasn't worth taking a picture any longer. :( I thought about crossing the exit stream of the beaver pond to get a different perspective, but I probably would have had to get my feet wet. Plus, the clear blue sky wouldn't be that interesting, so I headed back up to the car. For some reason, it was much harder to find a place to cross the willow-lined stream on the way back than it was going down. I did however pick up the informal trail and took it all the way back up to the road which made things much easier, and I even stopped to sample some wild blueberries along the path. Because J was still down photographing around the beaver pond, I went back to photographing the flitty little birds. They were even less cooperative this time than before, and I didn't get anything good.

When J started heading up, I went part way down the informal trail to give her directions to find it. However, she stayed on the far side of the willow-lined stream because she didn't want to cross it. She had to go way uphill before getting to a place where the willow thinned out and the stream was crossable again. By the time she got there, she was really tired. I had found what I thought was the best place to cross the stream and directed J to it. There was a large step from the bank onto the first rock, but from there it looked quite easy. Well, J slipped as she was descending the bank and ended up "in the river" with the water up to her shins. It was "very traumatic" for her. Her camera gear stayed dry, but her boots got soaked and she wasn't a happy camper! She changed into some dry socks (no shoes) in the Jeep before we left around 11:30.

We got back to the RV around 12:15. I had lunch while editing images from yesterday.
I went out to photograph some of the birds in D's yard around 3:00. I got some decent images of the birds, and got some great images of a young red squirrel. J came out after a while and photographed too. I started to load up the fresh water tank, then went back to photographing the birds. D and Tootie came out and visited with us while we were photographing. Tootie spent most of her time right by my tripod, and even under it between the legs! When I changed locations, she moved over to where I was.

We had dinner of grilled silver salmon that L&S had given us. J had made our caper/citrus salmon sauce, and D had made his sour-cream/lemon-pepper salmon sauce. D did the grilling, and the fish was delicious! J also made Cajun garlic rice and peas to round out the meal.

D went back inside around 7:15 and I did the dishes. I did a quick edit of the images I took today. Processed images for yesterday's blog then worked up the entry. Had a piece of blueberry pie with some ice cream. Did some computer work.