Gabi- got any more photos of you ice climbing?
Alaska! (OT)
Wow! Great pictures! Have already been through your facebook photo album, Gabi! I think those of us who have been are all pretty much in agreement- Alaska is phenomenal! I went back in 1995, I think. I remember standing a payphone in Homer on my first full day there and telling my mom that every picture one has ever seen of Alaska is exactly what it looks like. You just can't explain it!
We had picked up our fishing licenses on the way to Homer Hole. When we got there though I was so taken back by the two pairs of bald eagles flying pretty close overhead (they'd grown accustomed to just being able to "steal" fish that had been caught!) that I wasn't even paying attention to my line...not that it would have mattered! I had waded in and at some point looked down to see a salmon swimming around my legs and holy crap he had my pink lure in his mouth! Being an animal lover my friends kept teasing me that the salmon had come to me for help.... while I did feel a little bad - we had a darn good meal that night!
When we did the Seward boat outing we saw 7 whales - 4 different kinds! A humpback - which did the tail flip thing like in Mark's picture, 3 Beluga's, a gray whale (I think), AND TWO ORCA'S! The orca's swam right up and around the boat- I was so excited and it happened so quickly I didn't even get pictures of them! The boat captain said this particular pair had become known for doing that!
And the sea otters!!!! Great photo, Mark! Those little guys and the puffins couldn't be any cuter!
Really jealous of all your bear sightings, Gabi! Not a one when I was there, although did hear several times, "You should been here (fill in - an hour, a day, whatever) ago!"
I didn't want to come home EVER!
Gabi, when I get some time I'll scan a couple of my pictures (pre-digital!) and send them to you! So glad you had a great time!
Kelly
Oh...sort of funny - we slept in a VW van that we borrowed from a friend who was living up there (now in Antartica...) for the majority of the 9 days we were there. The one place we were at that had a makeshift porta-pot with no walls/curtain and when I inquired about it I was told it was because the area was frequented by bears and it's best to be able to see when they are around so as not to startle them.
Also, we showered (not too frequently unfortunately) at laundry mats where you'd have to jump out of the shower and insert more quarters!
AND oddly there were times when we would be driving for miles and miles and miles and suddenly in the middle of no-where there would be a roadside cappaccino stand - this was 1995!
If you've never been you need to go! It's invigorating!
Gabi, Fantastic photos!!! thanks for sharing!
Mark, love that scenery photo.
Carol, I also heard from the "bear professionals" that bells and spray are useless with bears - right after we got all this info, this one girl from Australia took out a huge can of bear spray and tossed it...from then on we just sang loudly on every hike "Hi bear, go away bear, don't eat me bear"!
Kelly, at least you saw a moose though...I was dying to see one the whole trip! Loved the sea otters and puffins too - SO cute! And I agree....there is no way to put Alaska into words.
Mark, great pics! I took that scenic boat cruise too, and I saw sea otters and those harbor seals in your first pic - but they were too far away and it was way too rainy to get a good pic. The bald eagle in the tree was also from that boat ride, and you can see the rain coming down! Love your whale tale pic. Yes, I have more ice climbing pics...I'll post them and a few other pics. It's funny, I also took pics of people sleeping on the boat - the only time they got up was when the boat stopped to look at sea life!
and...
going up..
the top!
After...(my arms didn't work for a few hours!)
Salmon that we caught...
Halibut - almost as tall as me! (ladies...look at the fish, not the half naked man)
Sea lion - looking right at me
Mark, this is the closest I got to a sea otter. It was during a sea kayaking trip, not the boat tour.
And this is one that I just like...I love that dogs in Alaska are treated just like people
More dogs...and they seem to be loving the views!
Too cool for school..
Not sure why this pic didn't come out. Oh well...
Kelly, looking forward to seeing your pics! And Mark, if you find more that you'd like to post, I'd love to see 'em.
Gabi
This message was edited Aug 6, 2009 10:33 AM
This is a great thread! I am loving all these pictures of the Alaska tours!
Mark: How cool that you got to go visit that beautiful state too! I love that sea otter ... they are cute critters! That picture of the family sleeping on the boat is a riot, looks to me like like maybe they are nearing the end of their vacation, have seen it all and are ready to go home! Or, maybe it's just the motion of the boat on the water that puts them to sleep!
How cool to see whales too! The Right Whales breed and calve here on the NE coast of Florida in the early part of the year: http://www.news4jax.com/news/18627984/detail.html I've never seen a whale except in captivity at Sea World and I bet it's a great experience to actually see one in it's natural habitat of the sea!
Gabi: Love the shot of the little fisherboy! He is absolutely adorable! That was you ice climbing?!!! Wow! I am so impressed! I admire folks who get out and do challenging stuff like that. I can't imagine ever being so brave myself ... even when I was young, LOL. I have a thing about heights ... maybe from living in Flat Florida for so long. When we vacation in the mountains I'm a nervous wreck when we are driving some of those steep, narrow roads ... I don't do the driving, my husband does - but when the cliff is on my side I am leaning way over towards him ... like that would save me if we went off the road! ^_^ Back in the 70's we visited my sister in Atlanta Georgia and she and her then boyfriend took us around showing us the sights and we went downtown to the Peachtree Plaza. That building is @ 72 stories with a glass elevator on the outside ... they shoved me right up to the front of the glass and I had to close my eyes! At the top of one of the buildings (not sure if it was the same one) there was restaurant all glass with a revolving bar that was pretty neat ... all you saw was clouds floating by. Can ya tell I'm a southern, country gal and haven't seen much of the world? ^_^ I've never been to NYC and my friend and I have talked about visiting there some day. I would probably have a sore neck from looking up at all those tall buildings!
Wow! Look at all those fish! Did you all catch all of those! Did you get to cook and eat them? That Salmon looks really great! We eat a lot of seafood, my DH loves salmon and would eat it three times a week I think! I get tired of it so sometimes I grill salmon for him and grouper or mahi for me!
Well, I hope y'all will keep this thread going with these fabulous photo's! I'm enjoying the tour while sitting in my easy chair but I have a dental appointment so will check back later in hopes there are more photo's!
Well either the motion of the boat or the Dramamine put those people to sleep...or both!
Yes Lin, that was me climbing the ice wall. I'm not afraid of heights (although I'm the same way about cliffs!), but that was the most difficult thing I ever did. I've done rock climbing before, but at least you have crevices to put your feet in and rocks to hold on to! With ice climbing, it's just your crampions (the spikes on your shoes) and the ice pics (not sure what the actual name for those are) to help you climb up - you feel like you're gonna lose your footing any second....not to mention that your arms go dead after awhile. I chose the most vertical part of the wall to climb, and let me tell ya...I never thought I'd make it to the top!
And yeah, those are salmon that we caught while deep sea fishing - what a blast that was! I caught 5 huge silver salmon...I never caught a fish before in my life! The ones in the picture were photographed right before we grilled and ate them...yum!! The halibut was caught by other people...I just wanted a picture of me standing next to one that was my size!
You should come visit NYC...it's very touristy but has a lot of culture. I prefer the wild outdoors though - cities aren't my thing! I'd move to Alaska or somewhere out west in a heartbeat if it wasn't for my family - it's just so gorgeous out there.
Gabi
So speaking of gorgeous scenery, here are some pics of one of my favorite places...Yellowstone National Park. Thought you all might enjoy these - this is one of the places I went to on another camping/hiking trip with the same group.
Geysers in Yellowstone:
Another Geyser:
Old Faithful:
Rainbow:
Yellowstone River:
If anyone hasn't been here and has easy access to the Northwest, I highly recommend it! You can spend several days here. There is so much wildlife (I have pics of Elk and Bison and Bears), and so much beautiful scenery. You also can be on the Wyoming side of the park and then hop over to the Montana side!
Thanks Mark and Gabi for your 'more' photos....
Another incident I remember was sailing across the Sea of Alaska heading for Prince William Sound - it was light at 3 a.m. and a Sei Whale - longer than our boat - came up about 20' away swimming along next to the boat...eyeing it carefully. Then it went around to the other side...then followed us...then came up beside the boat again. I was on watch and woke Bob up to share this experience. It went on for about 20 mins and finally Bob turned the engine on...both of us were worried that maybe this whale had fallen in lust with our boat which was 43' long, and we wanted to make sure they knew we were not an animal. The whale took one last look and peeled away. Sort of a 'Close Encounters' situation... Loved it!!!
Carol
Well, I'm thinking lots of folks must visit Alaska in the summer time! I went to my dental appointment this afternoon (originally scheduled for last month but had to reschedule because my hygienist was taking the month of July off). I asked her how her time off was and she said fantastic, she just got back from an Alaska vacation with her family! They took a cruise and went hiking and fishing as well. She said it is a truly amazing place, she had been to Alaska before but it had been awhile. She said they didn't see any bears but saw sea Lions, otters, whales and seals.
From all the beautiful photo's I've seen today, I can't wait to go to Alaska! Yellowstone is another place I'd like to visit someday ... along with N.Y., Wyoming, N. & S. Dakota, San Francisco ... gee, my list is so long just for places in the Continental U.S.!
Oh Carol...you must've broken that whale's heart!!! That's the cutest story. He must've thought he was swimming next to the prettiest she-whale he ever met, and maybe the way it circled your boat was a whale's way of courting another whale. Well, at least you didn't lead him on!!
Lin, that's too funny about your hygienist - what a coincidence. It's so strange that bear siting has been non-existent to some people - I thought they were the easiest animals to see in Alaska (and the ones to fear most)...but I was wrong. We saw 2 at camp and 7 in Denali - I guess we were just lucky! You have a good list going there (sounds like a David Liddle want list!)...I love the U.S. and think there is so much to see here. I've traveled to other countries, but I still love the U.S. the best! N. and S. Dakota are 2 states I've never been to...gonna have to add that to my list too.
Gabi
Wow Carol, that was a great whale experience, kinda scary and exciting at the same time! I can't imagine being on the water and having a huge whale come alongside! It sounds like it was really checking out your boat, maybe it was just lonely.
Speaking of marine life ... a brief news report just came across the news about a dolphin jumping into a boat here in Florida! I have heard reports of big fish jumping into boats but never a dolphin. The Bottlenose Dolphins are quite common in the waters here in Florida, we see them all the time when we are out in the boat. I usually have my husband go into idle mode so we can sit and watch them playing and feeding ... now I will be watching for one flying into the boat! A few years ago I remember reading about a woman being severely injured by a large sturgeon that jumped into the boat! A big fish sure could do some damage if it smacked into a human.
Here's a link to the dolphin in the boat story: http://www.abc-7.com/Global/story.asp?S=10847806
My nephew gave us a book called GRIZZLY when we took off for Alaska...full of the scariest 'true tales' I have ever read!Learned alot...didn't go with Bob when he went walking off a beach....figured if he came running out I would start the engine on the dingy and get us out of there!!! Happened once....but the bear didn't follow him out. Scared the wadding out of him, tho'!!!!
Gabi, your halibut photo reminded me that there's all sorts of awe-inspiring scenery in Alaska.
Oh Carol, that would have scared me! If I had been at the helm, knowing me ... I woulda seen the bear coming, freaked out, got the dingy started ... and left my DH!
Mark, with a 6:1 male to female ratio in Alaska, there's tons of great "scenery".
Probably you should have been in Anchorage to see moose- they are apparently very cosmopolitan, since they were hanging out all over town. Outside of Kevin's parent's house, for example:
And at the PX parking lot:
It is an amazing fact that more people are killed/injured in Auto Accidents from encounters with a moose than by any other factor: not even DWI.... Not only hitting a moose on the road...but by being charged by a moose .... them are big critters. Forget bears...Moose are worse!!!
They are big creatures but so interesting. That one outside Kevin's parent's house looks like a Teenager and I love the Mama and baby in the parking lot! I know folks who live in the areas with wildlife are very used to it but I think it's just so cool! The only wildlife we see on occasion in our neighborhood are the many birds, rabbits and at night raccoons and possums ... oh, and eek! snakes! There are black bears here in central Fla but the only time I've seen bears in the wild is when we were on vacation in the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. We hear about deer getting hit by cars and on occasion a bear and they do damage but I can only imagine what kind of damage a huge moose would do!
I wonder moose get into people's trash like the bears do? I don't even know what they eat, whether they are carnivores or vegetarians or what. Will have to go google to read about moose!
Awesome moose pics Mark! And Kevin's parents' neighborhood looks really cool too.