We go up at 5:00 by alarm so we'd be ready to photograph Mt. McKinley at sunrise. I peeked out the windows and it was clear again! :) Had a quick breakfast and instant coffee to go. It's 33°F (0.6°C) this morning. We left at 5:33 in the Jeep.

We headed east on the Denali Hwy looking for a good place to photograph Mt. McKinley with more of the mountain visible than at the lake where we photographed yesterday. For some reason, the places that had looked good yesterday had unwanted distracting trees in the composition, so it took a while to find the right place to stop. We finally settled on a location that had some potential, and we were treated to some nice alpenglow again. However, the perfectly clear sky was on the boring side.

We left and went to look for the swans , but they weren't on their pond. Then we went to look for the beaver, and it wasn't out either. We turned around and headed back towards the RV.

We stopped at the lake where we photographed Mt. McKinley yesterday because the fog, that had been really dense earlier, had burned off creating a nice line of separation on the far shore. We bushwhacked from the road to a good shooting location, and had a blast capturing some fleeting images. There were lots of blueberries where we were, so we decided to pick some so J could make some blueberry crisp. It took us about 40 minutes to collect about a quart (about a liter) of blueberries.

We returned to the RV around 8:30. I downloaded images from the morning and J started to make a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. After a while, the inverter started beeping and entered a shutdown mode because J had been running the microwave to make the bacon and then started to make some toast at the same time without thinking. The microwave by itself pulls slightly more than the rated amps of the inverter, so we're pushing our capability when we run it. When J started the toaster while the microwave was still running, without thinking, that pushed us over the edge and the inverter had a fit. We just unplugged the toaster and reset the inverter, then J continued cooking while being conscious not to run both the microwave and the toaster at the same time. The scrambled eggs were the best that I've had in a long time — they were cooked to perfection! After I did the dishes, I showered and then processed images for the blog. Did some computer work.

Had lunch around 11:50. Did more computer work and J took a nap.

I started to make my spaghetti sauce around 4:00. I start with Ragu Chunky Gardenstyle Tomato, Garlic, & Onions sauce, add some cooked ground beef from when I make my chili, then add a secret blend of herbs and spices to kick it up several notches.

I started getting things ready to camp at Wonder Lake and J made the blueberry crisp.

Had dinner of spaghetti and Texas toast around 5:55. J loves my spaghetti, and I must say it's pretty tasty too. As we were eating, J was baking the blueberry crisp using the already preheated oven from the Texas toast. When she opened up the oven to check on the crisp, she realized that she had forgotten to add the butter to the topping and that's why it wasn't looking right. She scraped the topping off, added butter, put the topping back on, and then put it back in the oven. Then she confessed that it was supposed to be a fool-proof recipe. :) We finished eating, and J did the dishes.

I edited images from this morning, then we had some of the blueberry crisp around 6:55. It was awesome! J would have preferred it a bit sweeter, but it was perfect for me. We left at 7:18 in the Jeep.

We drove east along the Denali Hwy, and Mt. McKinley was now covered in its own cloud bank. No animals were out at their ponds, so we turned around and headed to the Parks Hwy. The top of Mt. McKinley was visible above its cloud bank now. We stopped to watch a pair of trumpeter swans on a different pond, but they were too far away to photograph and too much bushwacking would be required to get close enough to them. We left and explored the ponds around Cantwell, and there wasn't anything interesting to photograph there, so we headed back east along the Denali Hwy.

We stopped at a pond by the road to photograph the reflections. The grass in the pond was nice as a foreground element as in the image to the left and also as a subject itself. We waited until after the sun had set hoping that the clouds would light up, but they kept getting duller and duller so we left.

We returned to the RV around 9:45. Downloaded images and did a quick edit. The color for some images I took with the new HiTech ND (neutral density) filters is odd. I'm going to have to take some test shots to determine what's going on.
We'll be heading into Denali National Park tomorrow, and will most likely be without an internet connection while we're there. I'll start posting again in about a week when I can get online again. See you then.