Alaska

We went to Alaska to visit Linda, a friend who we worked with in Saudi Arabia. Alaska is a very large state, but actually has very few people (about 750,000). The city of Seattle has over 704,000.

We spent a day visiting downtown Anchorage. Lots of gift and souvenir shops. The picture shows what is supposed to be the world's largest chocolate fountain. One other large thing was the sign warning you NOT to eat the chocolate. We wondered how long it had been in the fountain.

  This is Hatch Pass. Linda took us up there to hike around and see an old gold mine.

They were filming an action-comedy-heist movie the day we were up there. Look for this "blockbuster" in 2018. The same people made "Moose the Movie" in 2015.  

  Here is the cast and crew filming a scene. The guy with the "mop" is not cleaning the building, he is holding the microphone for the lead actor. The lead actor is holding a cat who we got to see do his big scene. On cue, the cat jumped out of the man's arms and ran up the stairs. After the director yelled "Cut!", the cat wrangler lady ran up the stairs after the cat. 

During the whole trip, we kept trying to see an actual moose. The highways had lots of warning signs and counting signs to tell you how many moose crashes had occurred. This was the only moose we actually saw. As you can see, all the other tourists wanted a picture of a moose, too.

One day, we drove down to Girdwood to ride the cable car at the Alyeska ski resort. 

  We also stopped at Potter Marsh. It is a large Coastal Wildlife Refuge near Anchorage. This is a muskrat. In spring and fall, a lot of birds stop over here when they migrate north and south. We saw a couple of salmon migrating down towards the ocean, but not much else.

This is the Alaska Railroad. There is only about 470 miles of track in the entire state. The railroad connects Seward up to Fairbanks. The vast majority of people in the state live along this route.

This a Dall sheep we saw from the train.  Hard to get a good picture from a moving train!

This is a tunnel to the "secret defensive post" built in Whittier for WWII. This tunnel is dual use: train and automobiles. It is the second longest highway tunnel in North America.

We took the train down to Whittier and took a catamaran on the 5-hour "26 Glacier Cruise" in Prince William Sound. We saw a lot of glaciers and wildlife.  There are three kinds of glaciers in Alaska. This is the one that comes all the way down to the ocean. It is called a tidewater glacier. This photo makes it clear that a glacier is often a river of ice.

This is an alpine glacier. It comes down part-way up in the mountains.

The last type of glacier is called a piedmont glacier. It rests at the foot of a mountain range.

There were a lot of waterfalls along the trip, too.

This is a rookery of Kittiwake gulls, the most prevalent bird in Prince William Sound. 

We caught one in flight!

In College Fjord, we were looking at Harvard Glacier. The boat stopped to show us some calving (pieces falling off the glacier). The color of the glacier gives you an idea of how old the ice is.

The blue ice is the oldest ice in the glacier.

The crew picked up some floating ice from the Sound. It felt colder than an ice cube!

The boat would stop if there were animals or birds to see. The Captain would actually rotate the boat to make sure everyone had a chance to see everything. These are some Harbor Seals on floating ice. 

These are Stellar Sea Lions on rocks. 

  This is a pair of Sea Otters.

In Seward we walked around the beach and ended up at the Alaska Sea Life Center aquarium.  Very well done aquarium!

We didn't see any puffins in the wild in Iceland or Alaska, but we got to see them in the aquarium. Puffins are cute!

Parts of Seward are decorated with murals of local wildlife, flowers and activities.

On the way back to Anchorage from Seward, the train went through this whistle stop. People ride the train out into the wilderness and get off and hike or go kayaking or camping etc. We saw people get off and on here and at another whistle stop. You have to arrange for the train to stop, otherwise they just keep going!

This was in Talkeetna. This is a small tourist town that looks a lot like the Gold Rush days. Lots of tourist shops and tourists! 

Jim wanted a snowmobile ride, but this was as close as he got. 

Linda and Alonda found this blue moose and thought it was really cute.

Alonda wanted a picture of a real moose and found one at the airport just before we left Alaska. Next time we go to Alaska: Denali!