Hatcher Pass

Today was ultimately a fun family day. No work. That's always a plus. Started off by helping the wife capture our most skittish cat Amy (who was on to us) for a trip to the vet. She's a beautiful calico cat, but she's way camera shy and has not yet been blipped. Among working up a pee problem, she's getting tartar removed from her teeth (under anesthesia). I happen to think it's a vet money maker scam.

After Amy was tucked in, we went for a geocache excursion to Hatcher Pass which is in the Talkeetna mountain range about a half hour drive from our house. The last 3-4 miles up is gravel switchbacks to Summit Lake at an altitude of about 3500 feet (just over 1000 meters). This waterfall is from a stream draining from Summit Lake. We found our Geocache. Both Calico and I shot some panoramas 1 2. We had some sandwiches and then came home to see how our blips turned out.

I found that when I used very small apertures to get the moving water effect, image receptor dust was showing in the sky. I haven't cleaned my CCD in about 6 months, so it was an opportunity to show Calico. I fired off some test images afterward and it was clean as a whistle.

We played an hour of tennis in a local park after sweeping off some standing water from yesterday's rain. We had a nice salmon dinner cooked on the barbie. I haven't caught any salmon yet this year, but the local market price was fabulous so I couldn't resist.

After our stomachs settled, we played frisbee in the front yard. This was mostly exercise for Daisy the corgi.

We finished off the day with sherbet and a DVD "Master and Commander".

Overall a 5 star day.