back to life, back to reality
We arrived home on Wednesday night and hit the ground running on Thursday. Dave and I have been singing THAT SONG for the last couple of days now.
I have enough photos and stories from our Alaskan adventures to fill days and days of blog posts – but of course, this IS a cooking/food blog, NOT a travel log – so this will be my last Alaskan entry. A pictorial really, which much to Dave’s dismay, is not necessarily in chronological order – I hope you enjoy it…
The photos above and below were taken in Ketchikan, and they just caught my fancy.
While in port in Ketchikan, Dave and I went on a “Cruise George Inlet and Crab Feast” excursion. I was one of the lucky two chosen to haul up a crab trap.
Here is Dave holding the largest Dungeness crab of the day.
And below is the pile of crab shells our table of four amassed at the feast! There was a competition between tables for the tallest tower.
August 24, 2012 5 Comments
where the heck are the photos?!?
So sorry! I was just informed that the last two posts had no photos. Without my knowledge, they were not uploaded while I was WiFi challenged in Alaska. Please go back to two posts and check out the missing pictures… they are awesome!
August 23, 2012 1 Comment
Amazing Alaska
I have very limited minutes of free internet while we are in Juneau… so I give you just a few of my amazing Alaska images. That is Sawyer Glacier behind us in the photo above.
It looks tiny compared to the fabulous Hubbard Glacier. We watched as it calved more than a dozen times. Spectacular!!!
August 21, 2012 3 Comments
end of land tour
We’ve seen and done some wonderful things… all prior to boarding the ship for the cruise portion of our trip. The final day and night were spent in at The Hotel Alyeska in Girdwood, surprisingly, one of the few ski resorts in Alaska.
Upon viewing the map of ski trails, I’ve never seen so many black double-diamond runs in one place before!
The best thing I did that last day?
August 20, 2012 3 Comments
caribou, moose, and bears… oh my!
For the first four days of our Alaskan trip, we have been in Denali National Park and Preserve. We stayed at the lovely Grande Denali Lodge, high on a hilltop over the town. The best day, by far, was when we were taken on the Tundra Wilderness Tour – a 53-mile, 8-hour tour, with a certified driver/naturalist. Our driver was Peter, and he was beyond amazing! Although we were riding on a “remodeled” school bus, it was one of the most enjoyable and informative tour-guided trips I’ve ever done.
And from what not only Peter said, but just about everyone else in Denali told us, it was one of the most perfect, beautiful, and fruitful sighting days seen in many a summer. Denali Mountain (also known as Mount McKinley – see the story and controversy over that name HERE) is most often shrouded in clouds. It was such a warm (warm for Alaska) and cloudless day, that the mountain was “Out” for what Peter told us was only the sixth day since May.
And although, we came with the expectations of seeing literal herds of caribou and moose, packs of wolves, and flocks of eagles – turns out, that no matter what we’ve all seen in movies, that is not how it “works” in Denali.
So when we not only saw the mountain in all its unclouded glory, but we saw just about every wild animal possible. First a small herd of Dall sheep on the mountainside. Then two male caribou, with full racks of antlers, on a ridge and a lone bear in the brush, quite far from the bus. Next, up, is a cow moose, also rather far from the bus, but viewable with the zoom lens on my camera. Plus the bus is equipped with a super-zoom video camera that Peter is an expert with and screens throughout the bus for all to see “up-close”.
Best of all, we saw four different sets of mama bears with their cubs – from new spring cubs to 3-year-olds (grizzly cubs stay with their mother for the first 3 years of their lives before heading out on their own) and oh my, are they adorable!
August 18, 2012 3 Comments
Anchorage
This is my first photo of Alaska, flying into Anchorage on Alaska Airlines – with glaciers below.
After checking into our hotel, we went exploring and found a huge open-air market. Love these license plate maps.
It was a beautiful 70+ degree day. Don’t know why these people have long pants and sleeves on – we were in shorts and t-shirts!
Kinda wish I would have bought some of these antler buttons. If I stumble upon them again, I will for sure.
Ulu knives with bone handles. An ulu is an all-purpose knife of the Yupik and Inuit Eskimo. It was traditionally used for everything from skinning and cleaning animals, to cutting food and, if necessary, trimming the blocks of snow and ice used to build an igloo.
August 17, 2012 5 Comments
Alaska, here we come!
By the time you read this, Dave and I will be on our way to Alaska for a trek through quintessential Alaska wilderness – Denali National Park & Preserve, and then an Alaskan cruise. Not sure if I am the cruising type or not, but I am super excited to go to Alaska, one of the only states I’ve not yet been to. And there is the added bonus of escaping the Arizona heat, the expected high temperature for Scottsdale today is 113 degrees. Bring on the cooler temps!
I recently read in Sunset Magazine that the state has 100,000 glaciers, thousands of brown and black bears (in parts of Alaska, bears outnumber people by a large margin), and 586,412 square miles—bigger than Arizona, California, Montana, and Oregon combined.
The excursion that I am most looking forward to is zip-lining in Klondike Adventure Park!
And, we are guaranteed to see whales on the whale watching excursion … now that will be worth the trip!
August 11, 2012 3 Comments