9/9/06 Saturday

      One of the amazing things about the Interior, is just how close the "treeline" is to . . . sea level, I guess. I feel odd using that term---given that we're something akin to 400 miles from the nearest moderating body of water.  (Of note, being in an inland valley so low in altitude, atmospheric pressure--not terribly infrequently--gets over that of sea level.  This can--and I kid you not--ground planes.  They have to level their altimeters to the pressure at the ground---and if that pressure is at, say, 31.5 lb./in^2, well . . . they were never designed to do that.  -Who ever imagined that they ever would?  :) ;) ) So, climbing a mere 1,000 feet [in altitude], one can find oneself in an entirely different biome:



      (Of note, driving up here, limbs and wheels flying every which way, over the roughshod tundra--was one of the craziest things I had ever done.  I thought so--and said so--at the time (my half-screams beat into a stocatto from the shocks transferred from the bike).  (. . .))

      Tundra. And while this is "alpine tundra," and not "true arctic trundra"--at 65 degrees north latitude--the differences are those only a specialist could really discern.



      -Except for the road, as Robert said, "like the Pleisticene":



      Long range view of the radar dome, [from] up there. . . .



       . . . and on max zoom:



      The Alaska Range, over two hundred miles to the south, made for a breath-taking sight:



       . . . Like a Bob Ross painting:



      (Perhaps because he first trained himself in Alaska.  :) :) I was devastated to hear that he had died.  :( :( :( :( -And so "young"!! -This was ameliorated only by the news, approximately at the same time, that Howard Cossell (spelling? -On second thought, "Who cares??"  :) ;) ) had FINALLY kicked.)

      Here is a picture of--among other things--some dudes hunting moose-dudes.  ('T'was the season.) I think they were . . . a bit annoyed by our noisy dirt bikes. . . .



      More "Dirt Biking on Murphy Dome" :)