Day: 14 August 2016

10-11 August 2016.

I spent today looking for flowers and driving back to Anchorage. I found a couple more populations, and stopped for a large pizza on a restaurant by the road. It tasted delicious! On the way I stopped in the Kenai River, and in some smaller tributaries. The creeks were full with sockeye salmon. In those places of easy access, fishermen were having a field day. I wondered if intense fishing competes with wildlife that relies in the salmon runs. The fishing of salmon in Alaska I supposed to be regulated, but I suspect the fishing quotas are seldom enforced. There are too many fishermen and too few park rangers.

Now I am at the airport, waiting for my last connection back to Scotland. I am excited to go back to my family, and can’t wait to see my wife and two-year old after three weeks away.

The trip has been amazing. I learned lots, met great people, and saw monkeyflowers in their natural habitat for the first time. Alaska has captured my imagination once again. And the Aleutians have been as exciting as I expected and more. Now the second part of the project can begin. Using thousands of genetic markers we will attempt the first world-wide analysis of monkeyflowers. The samples we collected in the Aleutians and the rest of Alaska will be studied alongside with other samples from western North America, Europe, the Faroes and New Zealand. We hope our study will help understanding how species adapt to new environments, and throw some light into the origins of a little yellow-flowered plant that was collected more than 200 years ago in a Russian expedition to Alaska.

9 August 2016.

I woke up at 5:00am to pick up camp and drive to the ferry terminal in Valdez. The ferry took me across Prince William Sound to the port of Whittier. In the sound I saw my first orca whale! The fog and cloud accompanied us most of the way.

Whittier is a strange place built in secret by the army in WWII. The only way out of the port by road is through a long tunnel through the heart of the mountain. The single lane tunnel changes direction every half hour to allow traffic both ways. Coming out of the tunnel I was received by Portage Glacier and finally some clear and sunny skies.

Near one of the mountain passes, within the Chuchach National Forest I found more Mimulus, again different from what I saw in Valdez. I kept driving into Kenai with the aim of reaching Homer that night. It was a good drive with lots of mountains, glaciers and the incredible Kenai River full of salmon fishermen. Around 8pm I reached Homer in clear skies. The port town is framed by snowy mountains and glaciers. In the spit, an eclectic mix of people and wildlife hung out together. A couple came out of a grounded boat turned into a house. The beach was full with RVs and tents. Near the shore, some seals or sea lions hung out not far from the fisherman on the other side of the spit. This is my last night in Alaska.

8 August 2016.

After two days searching I found Mimulus today. Along a salmon stream a few plants poked their fruity and flowery heads through the grass. A couple of people were mesmerized by seeing the salmon swim upstream to find a place to lay their eggs, but I was too excited to find monkeyflowers here. The National Park ranger (Bonnie) looked at me amused and happy to have helped to find the plant.

There were only a few plants, but they were enough for spurring me into keep looking. About 20 miles from Valdez I found more plants and up the road a few more. Success!

As I was pulling out from one of the sampling sites I noticed a tire had gone completely flat. I changed the tire on the side of the road and found a metal hook deep into the broken tire. A few hours later I had driven back to Valdez and repaired the tire. I collected a few more populations at increasing elevation. These plants are different to the other ones we have seen in the trip. There is a most interesting phenotype here that I have not seen anywhere else. I’ll have to look more carefully at these plants when I get back to Scotland.