Alaska, Cruisin', Part 5

We got up early on Monday so we could drive the 2 1/2 hours down to Seward for the day cruise. It was raining a bit on the way, but it wasn't too bad. What was great was the double rainbow it caused.



We got there with plenty of time to spare so we sat and enjoyed the sun and scenery.





Then we finally got going. It was just beautiful, if a bit chilly.







If you look at this on Flickr I put a note so you could see where the eagle is.


Here's one of the shots of seals that I got.


Here's the glacier that we stayed at for about a half hour, watching it calving. I'd never heard the term before but I found out it means big chunks falling off and hitting the water with the sound of an explosion.


This one looks much cooler in the larger size.


Every time I look at this I expect to see palm trees. This just looks tropical to me.


This bunch of seals was really neat. I like the old guy who was heading down to the water. If you look at the picture in Flickr I put a note on him so you can find him.


Here is the lodge where we had a nice salmon dinner.


Here are some whale bones we saw on the beach.


And here's the boat waiting to take us back to port.


Here's the whole cruise set.

Alaska, Being There, Part 4

Well, we'd had a bit of rain, but mostly sunshine and heat on the way to Anchorage. But Anchorage was cool, gloomy, and rainy. It didn't rain constantly, but there was a drizzle off and on. Like I said in the previous post, we weren't in the very best hotel even though it was a Days Inn. It wasn't bad, but the clientele was kinda noisy. But the good part about it was that we were right in the downtown area. We could walk to restaurants and the mall. One of the important parts of having the mall nearby was that we got umbrellas right away. This made walking around much more pleasant.

That day, Sat 8/4, we also went to the Anchorage Museum. There was some really interesting foliage outside. They used things like chard and kale for decoration.




The museum was pretty interesting. It's so hard to not take a gazillion pictures. Here are some that I did take.







wtf?




I'm glad I didn't meet this fellow in the wild!


Then on Sunday, the 5th, we were going to go on a flightseeing tour, but it was too cloudy and the flight got canceled. So we set up a cruise for Monday and spent Sunday driving around a bit. One of the places we went was the Alaska Botanical Garden. Here are some shots from there.












It was so sad, after seeing these beautiful mushrooms that someone had gone through and destroyed a lot of them. There was a sign at the beginning of the trail that had asked people to please leave them alone. I don't know why someone would do that, but it happened.







I know I posted a lot of pictures here. But there are even more in the slideshow. You may click here if you're not tired of them already. :-)

The next post will be my last installment of the Alaska trip, the one-day cruise. I might be able to talk Ichabod into doing a guest post for the part of the trip he did after I left.

Alaska Vacation Part 3

After we had that lovely coffee/tea time with Eclectic, Ichabod and I took a bit of a stroll around the city. We were waiting for Sears to open so we could have something checked on the van.





Then we headed north to Canada. The weather was beautiful and we saw some beautiful scenery.







We stayed in William's Lake that night. The next day, Wednesday, we got onto the Alaska Highway. We think we saw a wolf cross the road up ahead of us toward evening. We also were bombarded by dragonflies. It was terrible hitting that many big bugs. They're so neat, too. Some of the carcasses were hanging from the windshield wipers for quite a while. We saw some deer that day, too, along with some osprey. I didn't get pictures, but there were some rainbows. That night we stayed in Ft Nelson, BC. That hotel was sweet enough to have a little hot tub. My muscles really appreciated it.

The next morning, after our complementary breakfast, Ichabod took some bags out to the car. I was waiting for him so I could help him carry the rest of the bags out. He took forever and I started to worry. Just as I was getting ready to go down and check on him he came back in the room. The van had a flat and the spare tire was kind of low. He had to run that to a close by station for air. Then we loaded up the van and went to the nearest tire place.

After a bit of a wait they got the tire plugged and back on for us. When Ichabod took out his wallet the man gave him the paperwork saying that they did the job for us for free! As we were walking out the door I turned around and said, "I love Canada!"

This was Thursday, 8/2, and we planned to make it to White Horse in the Yukon Territory that night. The day was filled with wildlife. Ichabod took this shot of the baby elk for me. He's blurred because he was moving right along. Thanks to tshsmom. I thought this was a moose, but she set me straight. :-)



We stopped for lunch at a lovely lodge. You could see a storm in one direction while it was sunny in the other direction.


The lodge had some gorgeous nasturtiums.


We saw these Stone Sheep.


The clouds were beautiful.


Then there were the Wood Bison.


You can bet we waited for these guys.


We made it to White Horse around 8 or 9 that night. We went to a couple of stores, then went to look for a room. The whole town was booked. The next town, Haines Jct, was 98 miles away. It was quite dark and I was getting pretty tired. It's a good thing we weren't going too fast because that's when we came across some caribou.


I was trying to prepare myself to have to sleep in the back of the van along the side of road. Trying to be stoic about it and all. Then, around, midnight, we made it to Haines Jct. I'd been in the car so long that day I could hardly walk straight. There was a sign for a hotel but at that time of night you had to go to the bar to book a room.

The bar wasn't very big. The crowd looked to be a bunch of locals. One of them was really drunk and trying to tell them a story. I don't know if he ever got through it. There was plenty of swearing, though. :-)

Thank goodness there was an open room. It was small but there were two queen sized beds so we did get a good night's sleep. It was luxury compared to the idea of sleeping in the van. The next day, Friday, 8/3, was spent finishing the trip to Anchorage. The Yukon Territory has some gorgeous scenery.















We made it to Anchorage that night and found a hotel downtown. It wasn't the greatest hotel I've ever stayed in, but being downtown there were plenty of places we could walk. I'll take up Anchorage in the next post.

Here's the link to see all the pictures from this set.