Mostly sunny and chilly. Temperatures in the 20s overnight rose to a bit above freezing during the day. Windy at some locations.
I went up to the first viewpoint of Verstovia Trail again today while chatting with my parents.
I was only the second person on the trail since the snow fell. I imagine after this weekend the snow will be compacted and icy in places, but today that was not the case. I did not need the microspikes I had packed.
Scenes on the way up were striking, but not easily photogenic. Snow that shedding off branches up high dispersed into glittery sparkles drifting down in the sunlight. Perhaps if I had used my big camera and spent a little time with it, I could have figured out a way to convey the experience in an image.
Instead, I paused only briefly and continued on. I made it to the viewpoint in about 29 minutes today. Similar to last week’s timing. I’m not sure if the snow slowed me down, it didn’t really feel like it was an impediment.
I always enjoy the view of Mt. Edgecumbe on days like this. Today the the ocean was showing deep blue but the skies were more blue gray with clouds in that direction.
Before heading down, I paused to make observations of lichens/mosses/liverworts. Much of the ground was covered in snow, but I was able to find organisms of interest in nooks underneath an overhang.
I had noticed the wind blowing out of Silver Bay on my way to the trail. Fortunately, there wasn’t much on the trail. After getting back down, I drove out to Silver Bay to check it out.
I could see wind blowing off the mountains, especially Lucky Chance (earlier I think just as much or more had been blowing off Cross Mountain). I didn’t watch for long, but didn’t see evidence of williwaws on the water while I was there.
I drove by Swan Lake and was a little surprised to see how much open water there was. I thought it was cold enough to get ice across the entire surface (especially after all the snow). Perhaps the wind was sufficient to keep things more open. The forecast for the weekend calls for a couple of days with highs in the 20s. I don’t expect the open water will stick around.
I spent more time working with the stereomicroscope today. I confirmed that I’m not able to get clear images for most magnification settings. I get marginal image quality at the 5.5x setting, but clarity dropped off rapidly from that low bar as I reduced the magnification of the microscope.
I had much better image quality by using my cell phone to take pictures through the eyepiece. This was despite the suboptimal quality from that method due to annoying behavior of the phone. It switches between the 3x lens and a 3x digital zoom of the 1x lens based on its own inscrutable calculations. I need the 3x view to come close to filling the frame with the microscope view. I set up the phone so the 3x lens is aligned with the eyepiece. Despite this (and the fact that the 1x camera is basically showing nothing, the phone still chooses to use the 1x with digital zoom.
At this point I’m hoping there’s something wrong with the DSLR adapter or the trinocular part of the microscope (or that I’ve just overlooked something, but I don’t think that’s the case). I would be very disappointed in the setup if the quality I’m getting now is the best I can expect. I’ll take some photos showing direct comparison (with DSLR camera through trinocular vs through eyepiece with phone or Olympus camera) and then send an email to see if what the company says. [<em>Update: I eventually figured out the issue was the magnifying adapter, using the camera straight through trinocular with only a tube resulted in much higher quality images</em>]
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
