Almost over!

Our B&B is very nice. The rooms are lovely and the beds quite comfie! There is a big deck with a hot tub overlooking the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet. We are all intrigued with the Turnagain Arm - it is about 45 miles long and about 15 miles wide at the mouth. When the tide is in twice a day, the inlet is filled with sea water up to 40 feet deep - deep enough that beluga whales hunt there. Then twice a day the tide goes out - and out and out! The entire arm empties leaving huge eroded looking mudflats - it is amazing and trying to describe simply does not do it justice.

The sunset from the deck overlooking the Turnagain Arm.

Monday morning after an amazing breakfast at the B&B, we climbed in the car for another great road trip. There are very few highways (or even roads!) in Alaska - there is one that went north to Denali and there is one that goes south to what is called the Kenai peninsula. The first part of the trip went all 45 miles back down the Turnagain Arm - the tide was in (last week when we came in from the cruise ship the tide had been out and mud flats extended for as far as you see. Once we rounded the Arm we started to climb into the mountains - there are more snow covered mountains than you can imagine in Alaska. We drove all the way to Seward and shopped a little bit. Just north of Seward is Exit Glacier (pictured above) and we hiked back to the glacier. There is a place where you can actually walk up and touch the glacier but because of the spring run-off the streams at the toe were too deep for us to cross so we hiked up to the side area.

We thought we were pretty hardy hiking back to the glacier until we ran across a group of much younger people who had hiked all the way across the icefields - over 40 miles in 9 days - they had sleds that they pulled their supplies on.

Seward harbor with the mountains in the background

I should mention that one of the reasons we hiked to the glacier was that we knew we were going to return to Seward for a dinner we had to do while in Alaska - King Crab Legs! They were amazing!

The scenery on the road to Seward and back was incredible. I am finding I keep using all these descriptive words over and over -- there is so much that is almost defies simple words. Our weather has been beautiful and it helps that it stays light practically all night - we didn't get back from our drive until almost 10:00 and it could have been 5:00 in Kansas. At 1:30 last night it was light enough to see clearly outside.


Tuesday

Today we had a mission. K & G had to get packed up as they were to fly home tonight. We had both packed a box to send home and had to find a postoffice to mail those things from. Then we had some last minute shopping done. Gary wanted an Alaskan Railway shirt so we headed downtown to the station and got that taken care of. We went to Ship Creek which runs through Anchorage where people were salmon fishing. It is just the beginning of the season and it didn't seem that anyone was catching anything. We shopped for a bit and had a reindeer sausage for lunch. Then we went to the Alaskan Native Heritage center and spent several hours learning about the different cultures.

Haida longhouse at the Alaskan Native Heritage Center


There was a pretty neat end to the day. The B&B had a book of interesting things to do in Anchorage and when we went back to get K & G's luggage, I saw that included on the list was the Old Anchorage Hotel. When Bob and Betty got married, there was no married couples housing on Elmendorf Ari Base and they lived in the Anchorage Hotel for a number of months before being sent back to the states. So the four of us went back down town and found the hotel (which is still an active hotel) and they let us wander the halls a bit because there were old historic framed photos lining the walls so photographed the ones from that WW II era. Kind of cool!

Sorry about this picture - don't know what happened druing downloading! Had that happen once before.

How could I forget!

I almost forgot about our float trip! It was pretty chilly and the water is between 35 and 40 degrees and there was a lot of snow and ice left along the banks. We chose the scenic float as opposed to the wilder ride so that we could take pictures and look for animals.

They had us dress in dry suits which have rubber gaskets at the openings achieving the equivalent look of the micheline man and once at the river we had our safety talk about how you would go about pulling in a "swimmer" but our guide (with 28 years experience) said that on the scenic float no one ever went in! Good to know.

Here's Kathy and Mark in the front of the boat with a couple and their son from India. They were getting the worst of the water splashing into the boat so Kathy tells the guide that she thought he ought to get the people in the back wet. So he turned the boat but apparently underestimated the results of that action because guess what?

Oliver went in! Fortunately, he hung and Gary and I grabbed him also and before very long he was back in the boat not much worse for wear and very glad he had on his "drysuit" - it really worked and he didn't get wet under the suit. Kathy will - of course - never hear the end of it!

A great road trip!

We had been a bit disappointed that our day in Denali park had been so grey and rainy. We did get to see four of the big five animals - we never did get to see a wolf! But another thing that people always want to see is Mt. McKinley and we did not get to see that from the park. McKinley is so big that it is said that it "makes" it own weather - which is usually too cloudy to see the top - there are usually only 90 days a year that it is visible. We did get to see it from the air but even on our flightseeing, the top was hidden in the clouds. Today (Sunday) was a beautiful sunny morning but we had to load up and head back to Anchorage - Kathy and Mark had an evening flight. We were not really looking forward to the 6 hour drive (our trip up had been on a cloudy day and was pleasant but nothing spectacular. We were in for a terrific surprise! We hadn't been on the road very long when the mountain showed herself!

A picture never really shows what you see when you are there.

Great road trip!

Wildlife we've seen!

Black bear we saw on the Yukon and White Pass train ride we took that followed the old gold rush trail.

Grizzly bear in Denali - we saw 7 grizzlies during our 8 hours bus ride into the park. The park is so protected that private vehicles are not allowed, the only way to see it is on the park bus. Our day was was pretty cold and dreary but we did see the bears. This one was a mom with her year old cub and they started out on one side of the bus and then walked alongside the bus for a minute and then crossed over and slowly wandered off up the hill - pretty cool!

Oliver is most proud of his shots of these Dall Sheep which are very illusive and hard to photograph as they are usually only found very high in the rocky mountain sides. The guys went for a hike and found this group of young males down by a creek.


He got some great shots.

We kept looking for moose everywhere - this one was just having a snack beside the highway near our cabins in Denali.


A marmet seen on the guy hike

An eagle soaring above Sitka. We have seen lots of eagles.

We have also seen foxes and caribou.

The pictures I couldn't add to the blog before this!

Our last day at sea, we cruised the Prince William Sound and had a great chance to see the glaciers that flow down into College Fjord. There were lots of small icebergs in the water but we didn't actually see any glacier calve. There were also lots of otters swimming around in the water.

This is a picture of Whittier at 11:30 at night!

One of the things that Karen and Kathy and I wanted to do while on this trip was to go to Elmendorf Air Base which was where are parents met and were married during WWII. We didn't know if we would be able to even get on the base and if we did get on, if there would be anything left from that time. We did finally find the chapel that they would have been married in and felt pretty successful.

Building in the little town of Talkeetna.

The view from the air!

We have been no where near the internet for days so I have some catching up to do. We arrived in Whittier late on Tuesday evening but you would never know it by the amount of daylight. At 11:30 it was still very light. It had been getting dark later and later on the way up the inside passage but once we got to Whittier it was really pronounced. No one has managed to see darkness here. Even when the sun goes down it stay light. We all had trouble sleeping that night. We rode a bus into Whittier and from there up to a place named Talkeetna which was a very quirky little town. More about that in the next post because for some reason this is not letting me add any more pictures! The thing that Talkeetna is known for is as a place to do one of two things: catch a flightseeing plane to see Mount McKinley or to go climb it - which one do you thing we did!

11,000 feet from a very small plane! Scarey!

We were all amazed by the glaciers that flow down the mountains. Here is one that flows for 45 miles!

Can you imagine climbing this!

Trying Wow over again!

Sorry if you were looking for any messages or pictures last night - the internet on the ship was terrible - it took 10 minutes to try to post one picture and it still wasn't done so I just closed it down. Today we are using an internet cafe in Skagway. This morning we took what is called the White Pass and Yukon train to the Summit along the path the the gold miners had to use to get to the gold fields. Pictures from that may come tomorrow - if we can find a cafe in Sitka - our next port.

It has been totally awesome so far. This is the most incredible country and just the few pictures below will not do it justice - so these are the highlights!

Our big excursion in Ketchikan was a float plane trip to Misty Fjords - words cannot descirbe!

The day was a typical Alaskan day - some clouds, alot of mist and some rain! But even with the weather we were able to get the most amazing views of the mountains, fjords, lakes, waterfalls, etc. as our pilot took us soaring over the treetops and banking to follow the granite cliffs.

The flying foursome!

As soon as we started talking about Jane going on the trip with us, there were many jokes about her travels as a single - and Bub was born. Many months ago we decided that a blow up doll would be her main guy! Unbeknowst to her, we had brought a "bub' with us and she had brought her own! The "introductions" were made after dinner in Ketchikan! Here is Jane with both Bubs

This is the view from the top of Mount Roberts in Juneau - we were surprised at how small Juneau really is.

One big attraction in Juneau is the Mendenhall Glacier.

The really cool thing we did was to took a whale watching trip with a small company called Harv and Marv's. Our captain was Steve and he did a terrifci job of finding the whales for us. We saw quite a few and were pretty pleased - the boats have to stay fairly far away from the whales to protect them. On the way back, we ran into what we think must have been a teenage boy whale judging from the way he was showing off! Here he is waving his fluke at us!

And here he is jumping way out of the water!

Later!

Wow and double Wow!

Sailing Away!

Our last day in Vancouver was like all the rest - Great. We took the sky train out into the "burbs" just for the fun of it and then Oliver and the girls took the quick way back and rode the seabus across to North Vancouver while Mark and Gary went on down the line to see a bridge. Then it was back to the condo to be out of there by check out at noon. We decided to walk the eight or so blocks to the cruise ship pier (pulling our suitcases!) After a stop for lunch we got on with the business of boarding. It wasn't too bad except for Oliver's setting off the alarms! He had a nuclear stress test before we left and is very radioactive at this point and for some reason the immigration people don't like people who are "hot"! Slight delay - which we also had when returning from Victoria. Oh well....

The Spirit from the seabus - our cabins are 4th floor up right in the middle.

Our first sunset!

We probably won't be adding to the blog very often or adding much because internet time is expensive and takes forever to download the pictures!

Canadian money

The blog from Monday told about the funny money incident with Kathy trying to pay for the bus with what she thought was a Canadian $5 coin - which they don't have! After going back and looking at what she had in her purse, Kathy discovered that what she was paying for things with was pesos leftover from Dara's trip to Mexico. So she was trying to pay for a $5 bus ride with 5 pesos- funny thing is she had done the same thing on the bus on the way to Chinatown and the bus driver didn't even say anything. The buses don't take bills and Karen and Gary didn't have change so he just told to go on and sit down - think that bus driver was ready to go home?

Perfect Day in Vancouver

The rain that the Northwest is so famous for finally caught up with us. It rained most of the morning but not enough to stop us. We rode the trolley down to Granville Island Market. The Market was amazing and we spent hours just looking around.

The fruits and vegetables were wonderful and were so artistically arranged.

This is the mushroom pot pie that Karen and I shared for lunch at the market. Since we shared, we had room for a wonderful tangarine lime gelato. Ymmmmm! By the time we finished at Granville Island, the sun had come out and the rest of the day was mostly sunny.

Gastown is the site of the original downtown area. It is now the home of shops and restaurants. This is a steam run clock that is one of the icons of the area. We ate outside at the original Spaghetti Factory and (surprise!) did a little shopping. It should be noted here that Oliver and Gary were very patient with the ladies today since a bit too much time was spent looking and shopping! Mark went his own way early - he must have had an idea that shopping was on the plan for the day.

This is the view from our condo window on the 24th floor.

Stanley Park - Vancouver

Great day in Vancouver. We went to Stanley Park which is a huge wonderful park that is right in Vancouver. It sits on a point and is surrounded by the water on three sides. There is a seawall that serves also as part of the walkway that goes almost all the way around the city of Vancouver. We took the Hop on/Hop off trolley in and got off at the Totem Poles - a collection of Totems from all the groups from the area.

From the totem poles, we walked around most of the park on the seawall - it was a beautiful morning and there were lots of walkers, bike riders, and roller bladers.

We figure we walked over 5 miles of the seawall. After we met up with the rest of the crew, we came back to Stanley Park and did it again - this time without the 5 mile walk - just rode the trolley around.

As kids, the Keiser girls took many fun trips to Chinatown in San Fransisco and when we found out that there was a Chinatown in Vancouver we knew we had to go. The best I can say is that we went! It was pretty sad - nothing to do ever again. We had a recommendation for Hons House of Noddles for dinner which also ended up being pretty sad! Not one of us got a noodle. But we had a good time - the bus ride back was pretty funny when Kathy tried to pay the driver $.05 for a $2.50 each ride - the finer points of Canadian money had escaped her - she thought she had a $5 coin but they don't have one of those! We got several comments from other bus riders about "being from Kansas" and Dorothy!

PS - there is a link at the bottom to Karen's blog - check it out