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!

Iceland and Scotland

Welcome to Iceland! We flew from SeaTac to Kefllavik on Iceland Air. We stopped over for 3 days since we had never been to Iceland. There is a LOT of lava rock in Iceland. This means a LOT of building material. We caught the best Spring weather in living memory. Keflavik is where the International Airport is located. It was originally a US Air Force base during the early Cold War era. You can still see the barracks. Our first day, we walked around Keflavik.

We went on the Golden Circle Tour (a tourist standard). An unexpected delight was the hydroponic tomato farm. It is heated by geothermal and most of the electricity in Iceland comes from geothermal and hydro. Two thirds of the tomatoes eaten in Iceland are grown here. None are exported.

We had some of their tomato soup and bread at the greenhouse. It was delicious!

The second stop was the Geysir area. You now know where the word "geyser" came from. This one goes off about every 12 minutes. It is actually quite dangerous.

Here you can see why it is dangerous. The water is boiling hot (literally!). The signs warn that the closest medical help is about 60 kilometers away (35 miles).

This is the Gullfoss Waterfall. The people you see in the picture will give you an idea of how large it is. The name mean "golden" and refers to either the legend of the guy who threw all his gold into the falls or the colors of the rainbows.

Here you can see part of Þingvellir National Park (the weird letter is the way they spell it!). This park is situated exactly on the fault line between the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates. The black cliff with the waterfall is the fault line.

We walked along this trail which goes down between the plates.

This is looking out from the fault line towards the park landscape.

This is Lake Kerið in the National Park.

For our last day, we took a walking tour of Rejkavik. They have a labor shortage if you are looking for a place to move! This is the port. Cruise boats do stop here. Tourism is a major industry!

After Iceland, we flew to Glasgow, Scotland to begin our six-day bus tour of Scotland. Our first day in Scotland, we were taken on a tour of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian).

The next morning, we started seeing the countryside in the Lakes Region of Scotland.

There were sheep everywhere. They had black-face and white-face sheep and they had all just had lambs.

Since the climate is cool, they use polyethylene tubes to cover a lot of their crops. If they didn't, the growing season would start too late and be too short.

The most famous lake is Loch Lomond (of course). Everyone hears the song about it.

We didn't go out on Loch Lomond, but we DID go out on Loch Ness and caught the monster next to the boat! Play the video and you can see Nessie!

This is Inverness Castle up in the Highlands. We stayed near here at the village of Nairn at the Newton Hotel.

They gave us the Charlie Chaplin suite. He apparently vacationed here every summer and took the entire second floor for his family at this hotel.

If you tour Scotland, they WILL take you to a mandatory distillery tour. This is a large one and had eight people making whiskey. Everyone else was involved in tourism, tours and sales. No pictures were allowed during the tour. The storage buildings and trees were blackened by the alcohol fumes that come out of the barrels. They lose about 7% of the whiskey through evaporation every year. Single malt whiskey is the fancy stuff, but most of it is blended. If you drink mixed whiskey drinks, don't buy the expensive single-malt whiskey!

The tour continued to Saint Andrews. This is the beach where part of "Chariots of Fire" was filmed.

This is a foursome on the first hole of the Old Course at St. Andrews. Both of the men hooked to the left and both of the ladies went straight down the fairway. It was pretty windy. If you want to play this course, you have to show up and put your name in the lottery to see if you will get a tee time. No one is allowed to play in less than a foursome.

This is the remnants of the cathedral at the other end of town.

The last stop on the tour was Edinburgh. The major sight in Edinburgh is Edinburgh castle. It hangs over the entire city.

This is looking down over the city from the castle wall.

Here we are in front of the entrance.

This is the upper part of the Royal Mile which stretches between the castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse. This is where the Queen stays when she is in Edinburgh.

We visited the Royal Yacht Britannia. The ship has been taken out of service since Royalty travels by plane and the ship was incredibly expensive. The ship's name appears no where on the hull!

This is the sitting room on the ship.

One of the highlights of the tour was an evening of dinner and entertainment. Bruce Davies, a Scottish singer/songwriter/musician MC'ed the show. 

The show included traditional Highland dancing.

Since this is Scotland, they had bagpipes, too.

We travelled by train north past Inverness to visit the Johnsons, our friends from teaching overseas. We went for a hike and caught some gorgeous weather.

We stopped by Carbisdale Castle which was part of a divorce settlement from the Duke of Sutherland early in the 1900's. Left to right: Alonda, Lauryn, Scott, Nicola and Iona the dog.

This is Iona hiding in the heather.

Across the road from the Johnsons is the Balblair Distillery. The copper thing in the picture used to be used to distill the whisky.

Just down the road from the Johnsons, in Edderton, is a piece of Scottish history. This is a standing stone from many hundreds of years ago.

  Our trip took us through a lot of Scotland. The fields of yellow in the spring are the Canola oil plant flowers. The scenery was gorgeous, the weather was perfect, the people very friendly and we would highly recommend visiting Scotland. 

Birds at the feeder in January

After we moved into our new home, we put up a bird-feeder in the green belt outside our living room. We are enjoying bird watching. January was particularly cold this year, so we have lots of visitors at our feeder.

 Black cap chickadee

 Chestnut backed chickadee

 Dark eyed junco

 Downy woodpecker

 Song sparrow

 Northern flicker

 Pacific slope flycatcher

 Pileated woodpecker

 Spotted towhee

In addition to the birds, the squirrels come for their share of treats every day. It took us a few tries to get a squirrel-proof bird feeder.