C and I took a late drive to Teklanika, enjoying wildlife and the surreal Alaska twilight. 

We set a new personal record by seeing 17 caribou in this one trip.  We saw 2 groups of 8 each, all at a distance,  then the above bull caribou crossed the road in front of us.  No young caribou calves yet, but we are looking hard!

We left our house at 8:30 pm, arrived at Teklanika rest area about midnight, and were back home by 2:30 a.m.  We had a couple hours of nearly dark (nautical twilight), though the northeastern sky was already a brightening peach as we drove home.  We can put the headlamps and flashlights in storage for a couple of months!

We also saw 8 moose, a porcupine, and 4 Harlequin Ducks.  Three of the moose were bulls beside the road.

During Civil Twilight, we could still see animals far away. As it darkened to Nautical Twilight (12:28 to 3:15 a.m.), the animals had to be pretty close.  The mountains remained easy to see and increasingly gorgeous in the deep blue sky.

Speaking of Nautical Twilight,  tonight (May 20), it is only 20 minutes long, from 1:42 to 2:02 a.m.  Then, for the next two months, the darkest it will get in Healy is Civil Twilight.  Nautical Twilight returns on July 22, Astronomical Twilight returns on August 14, and Night returns on September 1.

P.S.  If you watch the Pika video,  please tell me how it streams for you.  While it looks good directly from my phone gallery, when I watch it on the blog website there is a LOT of buffering which isn’t much fun.  I usually don’t add videos.  But maybe for people with Wifi it looks ok, even though it is terribly choppy for me.