Who doesn't like flowers? They are not only pretty, but they will stay still and let you take their picture with no complaints. That's why I like to take pictures of them - they are pretty and compliant. Here are two galleries of flower photos -- one from the Alaska trip and another from our recent trip to St. Louis.

St. Louis Flowers
The Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis is truly one of America's treasures. This marvelous place has gardens of all types, ranging from a formal Victorian-era garden to a Japanese garden to gardens for your backyard. It is an absolute visual treat. 

I must say the people of St. Louis know what they have. We visited on a Saturday morning, and there were long queues to enter. You might have thought it was the box-office line for the summer's hot movie.

Here are some photos I took during our visit. Just click on any photo to enlarge it.

Alaska Flowers
The towns we visited in Alaska all had lots of beautiful flowers, in parks, in town squares, in hanging baskets, and in flower boxes in front of shops. The photos below are from all of the ports and cities we visited on our trip. I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I did taking the photographs.

I chose the short flight which took off and flew over the Port of Seattle and around the Space Needle and back to the airport at the museum. It was perfect. Air speed was a whopping 75 mph. Since the wind was 15 mph, that meant we were traveling at a ground speed of 60 mph heading into the wind, and 90 mph flying with the wind. 

About the Plane
This plane is a WACO UPF-7 built by the Weaver Aircraft Company in September, 1942, just three months before I was born. The WACO F-Series was designed as a pilot trainer and production began in 1930. The UPF-7 was the final version and was built from 1937 through 1942. To my knowledge, it is the last production biplane.

It was used in the Civilian Pilot Training Program, a program that started in 1939 to build a backlog of pilots in case of war. Interestingly, the Army Air Corps did not like the UPF-7 and returned 11 of the first 14 delivered. They never ordered more, but the plane continued as a civilian trainer throughout the war.

I don't care if the Army Air Corps didn't like it. I'm battle-ready. Curse you, Red Baron!

This moose crossed the stream no more than fifty yards from our room in Denali. We "just missed" most of the wildlife in Denali -- our tour guide kept telling us about what they saw yesterday.  So this moose was quite a treat. The next morning we saw another cow with a calf sleeping in a copse of trees right on the lodge property. But out in the wilds of Denali there was little to see that was less than a half-mile away.

While on the train to Denali, I leaned out from the platform between the cars to take a picture of the trainman manually changing a turnout so the train could switch to a siding. 

It was only after I looked at the results that I saw that the steam caused some distortion in the photo. But what serendipity! I ended up with a scene that I think easily could have been painted by one of the great impressionists of the late 19th century. What do you think?