A Fall Friday Drive

          It was Friday, it was time for a drive. It had been a little while since we went out, and Fall falls fast in Alaska when it starts to go. We decided to head east to Skilak Lake. It was solid overcast where we started out from, but things were beginning to break a little bit to the east. Still pretty overcast at Skilak Lake, but we did manage to get a few good shots, they will be featured in a different post. So we pushed on eastward, waiting out the construction and heading to Trail Lake.

Trail Lake

          It is not easy taking pictures of red berries up close, but I think this small batch came out very good. Of course I did crop a lot out, but it was not stuff important to the berries. So I present my Macro shot of the day. The only real close ups I tried on Friday's trip.

          Here we have a view to the North over Trail Lake. Fall colors are really set in and going away very fast, leaves were all over the place. There is a small batch of red trees on the hill across the water, to the naked eye it looked really nice, so I tried to capture it with the camera. It was still mostly overcast, and the lighting was not that great.

          I did tweak and color enhance and of course crop to try and bring the real view as I saw it, close but real life view was better, okay well at least looking at it on a computer you are not donating blood to the last gasp of the mosquito population, so maybe not better in real life. So not to many pictures from Trail Lake, time to head on up to the next stop Jerome Lake, it is just a little bit past the highway intersection heading toward Anchorage. Here is a real road picture, I do not do these very often at all but did manage to get this one along the road.

          I just thought it was a nice road shot. I am glad I did take the picture, when we got to the Jerome Lake pullout we had no sooner gotten out of our vehicle with cameras in hand then someone had to pull in and stop right in front of my vehicle where I was pointing my camera. People, can't live with em, can't live without them. It did not really matter the lake was choppy, and there was no reflection, and with where the sun was at behind the mountains not much sun at all, I did get a couple of halfway nice shots, and may post them later.

Tern Lake Upper Pull Out

          So since Jerome Lake was pretty much a bust we headed back to the Tern Lake Upper Pull Out. A small pull out along the road that over looks Tern Lake. A pretty nice view from up high also, I have a few pictures posted of the view of Tern lake from this vantage point elsewhere. So here are a couple shots looking to the mountains to east and south east.

          I have been experimenting with the auto focus function on my camera, most of the time I would always be on AF-A, but for a few of the pictures today I was alternating between the other two. AF-S and AF-C, I think they were called. The picture properties does not tell me though which one I was on. In the second picture the foreground stuff is slightly blurry, and background stuff pretty clear. more practice needed.

Tern Lake Campground

          Onward and backward, heading back toward home. The Tern Lake pull out at water level had a couple people that were, well, not neighbor friendly, so we did not even bother to get out and just continued to the Campground area for Tern lake. It is a nice campground day use area. The salmon were in the little creek just a spawning away, sorry no pictures, maybe for my wednesday post. They were in there thick. The lighting was doing a good job in this location so I got what I think were a couple of very nice scenery shots.

          Two different angles on the same general area. Deeper sky blue in the lower one, and darker cloud shadow, the upper one slightly light, could have used a little darkening, but still I had a hard time deciding which one I liked better so both views.

          It was a pretty nice drive, we did stop at Skilak Lake for a little bit, about an hour taking pictures there, and I will get some of them posted. A few of them, I think came out pretty nice. They are still working on the roads, and will right up until the weather really turns, not to many delays when we were heading out, but coming back a couple of long waits, such is life in Alaska during the construction season.

          The creak and outlet for Tern Lake really was filled with salmon, and there was a lot of them, like the Skilak Lake pictures I hope to get them posted at a future date also. That was my Friday, it was pretty good, even had a bratwurst sandwich at one of eateries along the road. It was okay, best part was they make real onion rings, not the packaged preformed mushed up onion parts from a bag, real onion rings, deep fried, and they were delicious.