10-1-2018 Monday.
It was a not so great weather day on Monday, but also not to bad of a weather day. Fall was getting real close to ending. We started our day out at one of the local rock and antler shops. Tom's place in Sterling Alaska, Alaska Horn & Antler. He has a lot more than just horn and Antlers. A shop with a lot of unique rocks and other things, here is one of the rocks. Nope I do not know what it is, did not ask, just liked how wet and shiny it looked and how green. We are running out of natural green with the approach of winter.
For the Steemsilvergold crowd (stackers), a story of one of Tom's adventures. He does find some real treasures every now and then, join him on his adventure from 2011, and his hunt for the gold. https://redoubtreporter.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/rich-in-experience-%E2%80%94-sterling-rock-hound-strikes-gold-in-vacation-pastime/ - It was a nice story to read.
Now like I mentioned above "other things", Tom Cooper is a pretty good carver also. This is one of his matching rams horn carvings. He has a lot of carved antlers and other horns also.
I am not sure if Tom was the Artist on this mammoth tusk or not, I forgot to ask him.
It was difficult to get a nice picture because of the lighting glare, here is a second one to show a little bit more close up and less light splash.
He has a lot of very nice things in his store and of course a lot of antlers and horns. Some carved some not. Just a lot to look at and think "Damn I wish I could afford that or could carve like that". We end up spending hours everytime we go there just looking through the rocks and the art and the knives and the ulu's, and well a lot of things.
A very much must stop and visit place if you ever visit Alaska and the Kenai Peninsula. That ends our first walk, oh I did forget to mention he has a tailings pile, a pile he lets people search through if they buy any rocks they can go through his cast off pile. We found a few nice ones in the pile.
After Tom's place we wanted to check out a couple of lake and campground area's now that the tourist were mostly gone.
This is the view from the small boat launch area, Johnson lake is not a very big lake but the Alaska Fish and Game do stock it so it is a popular summer time fishing spot. Nope sorry I do not fish much anymore so I have no clue if it is dolly varden or trout that they stock the lake with. Even though it was a somewhat, well okay real overcast day, I still think the picture and the reflection came out very nice, sometimes the reflection shots look a like brighter than when there is a lot of sunlight. On the overcast days, you do not get all the light sprites on the water.
Some very nice camping and day picnic spots and places in this campground, and a lot of different areas to access the lake for fishing so you are not having to fight for casting room with other peoples. We had not even been out of the vehicle for more than a minute, (not even time to get the first picture), than a fisherman pulled down and was getting ready to launch his boat. We got about 6 pictures each before the boat went in and the ripples started. The ripples did add a nice effect to the water, i'll try and remember and may post one of them.
At the end of the road is the boat launch and river access to Tustumena Lake. It is a big deep lake. Almost 94 square miles in area, and 950 feet deep, yes 950 feet. The elevation for the surface of the lake is only 112 feet above sea level. It is deep, and has about 71 miles of shoreline.
I took a lot of pictures all in the same area all to try and get a picture of a minnow jumping out of the water, I got two pictures, this was the better of the two, the circle inset is of the minnow standing on its tail as it just clears the water.
All images were taken by me with my Nikon D7500 Camera. All image open slightly larger if you use right click open in new window. Short walks and short wanders, well except the store that was actually a lot of walking, pretty amazing how much you can walk around in a small store when you keep retracing your steps, to look closer at something you saw earlier. In case you are wondering, yes I asked prior to taking any pictures if I could take them. Tom is a pretty nice guy.
