The road to Fairbanks is rather convoluted for a Sitkan. We started on the MV Fairweather on Thursday; spent the night in Juneau at the Mendenhall Campground (outwash is hard); took the Malaspina to Haines and spent last night at a campground we had visited years ago while taking in the Southeast State Fair.

I haven't spent much time looking around me; the heavy rains and general distraction of keeping things going in the right direction have been a bit of a deterrant.

We did stop at Mendenhall Glacier for a quick photo of Deirdre and to let her look at the rocks from her new perspective. She gets pretty excited by striations and weird textures.

We noticed alot of people hanging out in front of the restrooms; now this isn't unusual in a busy tourist area, but they had cameras and were busily snapping photos. Finally saw a group of fledgling Barn swallows on the ledge just above the Restroom sign. There were 4 when I took the photos; later there was a 5th bird. A parent visited twice while I was watching.

So far this is a three tarp camping trip; one under the tent, one over the tent and one over the eating area.

Picked a sandwich container of Arnica lanceolata ssp prima at the shore of Lake Rezanof near the old cabin and our camp site. My intention was to do a bit of experimentation with the plant. I was pretty sure that only the flowers were used for medicinal purposes, but didn't want to collect too many in case I was incorrect about that assumption. I also dug up a small clump for the garden.

I had hoped that Janice Schofield's book "Discovering Wild plants" would have a recipe for preparing a cream for aches and pains. No such luck. A bit of research turned up a few articles on preparation of tinctures which can be used to treat bruises (I bruise very easily), bug bites (I was covered) and aches (not usually an issue).

The flowers filled an 8oz spagetti jar a bit more than 3/4 full, then I covered then with cheap vodka, and put the jar in the dark. The Doctor quoted in the Herb Companion article (http://www.herbcompanion.com/Health/Natural-healing-Arnica-montana-Natural-Magic.aspx) gave the following recipe: " 1 part arnica flowers and 10 parts 96 percent alcohol should be put together in a bottle and left for a week, during which the bottle should be shaken. Then the flowers can be removed. It is important that this alcoholic solution must be diluted with water from three to ten fold..."

Seems like my mixture will probablly be on the strong side, so I'll go with the 1 to 10 dilution (or maybe a bit more).
In the same article another person said to leave the steeping tincture in a sunny place for 3 weeks. At this point, I'm going to leave the jar in the pantry while I do a bit more research.

The species most often used medicinally, Arnica montana, is native to Europe and I'm not sure if North American species have been tested in any way for effectiveness.

The Doctor in the Herb Companion article said that the active ingredient in Arnica are Sesquiterpene lactones which seem to inhibit the release of inflammatory mediators e.g. transcription factor NF-kB, which seems to be involved in a number of basic cellular processes besides inflammation.

Sesquiterpene lactones aren't entirely benign; doesn't sound like Arnica should be ingested internally in anything but extremely small doses (homoeopathic sort of doses seem to be okay). Seems like I should be a bit cautious trying this tincture as it could cause contact dermititis.