friday night in healy

(two thursdays ago when clouds obscured much of the display)

i left chena hot springs road wednesday morning after two previous nights of good to excellent northern lights. monday was the better of the two- big and bright with lots of movement. although it didn't start until after 1:30a, it was worth staying up for:

tuesday night's display was kind to me in that it started at 8:30p soon after the sky got dark. the moon was just a day or two past full and was rising in the north, but didn't lessen the display as far as i could tell. although it wasn't as brilliant as the previous night's display, it did have nice red and purple color representation along with the usual green:

i've been in the denali area since wednesday afternoon, driving the park road up to the closure at mile 30. i have been chasing the denali wolves for years to get good photos and have not seen them once in the 10 days i've been in the park the past month. saturday morning i'm driving south to talkeetna to pick up a friend who'll be spending the week with me. there's been A LOT of solar activity the past couple days, so if we can find clear skies then we should see some nice northern lights. 

that's all i can say tonight. i have to finish cleaning up the rv and making space to accommodate another person. sometime in the next few days i'll have some time to wax more poetic about the aesthetics of living in an rv in alaska in the winter. there are a couple hundred caribou hanging around between the sanctuary and teklanika rivers in the park, so that is what i'll leave you with: