ALASKA. Part 1.
Warning. SO not dial-up friendly. SO. NOT.
OK. So. Saturday (the - 9th?) we flew into Seattle and picked up our rental cars. I have a picture somewhere but I forgot to resize it - anyway we had NINE people and NINE people's worth of luggage and WHEELCHAIR and 2. SEDANS. (One was a GRAND PRIX) Dude, I swear to you guys. We got really, REALLY good at what we started calling 'travel Tetris'.
I was that curvey green piece. LOL.
Anyway, Seattle was gorgeous. We drove around it a lot and took pictures. We even got to see Mt. Ranier SMOKING. O_O Um. Scary.
There was a lot of construction. This reminded me of the Comedian, LOL.
I mean - WHAT EVEN IS THAT? Lol.
This made us laugh a lot, so of course I HAD to have a picture of it.
Sunday morning we boarded the Star Princess. This is the bay, heading out Puget Sound. It was cool, but as you can see, I only was wearing a t-shirt. ONLY TIME WHOLE TRIP, lol.
Our brood group. This is the balcony of the 'upgraded' family suite they stuck ALL NINE OF US IT. Yeah, no. We were supposed to have 3 rooms. CLUSTER. F***. It got sorted out eventually. *headdesk*
The balcony was nice, though. *shrug*
SEA DAYS
The scheduling on the trip was kind of fail. We had THREE Sea Days. The ship was nice, but there was not enough stuff going on to keep me from getting bored. Good thing there was a crap ton of scenery. And a really awesome salon. Where a lovely Irish woman gave me the best. massage. EVER. Hee. Anyway - here, have some around-the-ship pictures.
Cutest. Cheesecake. EVER.
Formal Night
The Fam.
The Boys.
The Old Ones. *g*
The 'rents.
I think my father in law looks like Alfred Hitchcock. "Good EVENING." LOL.
This is me trying to look like a girl. XP
This is my I-Just-Ate-Escargot face.
This is Chris and Timmy being SPAZOIDS.
Aaaand, this is me and Corey trying to pretend like we know how to dress up and go places, lol.
And this is the cruise ship's attempt and making us all look nice AT THE SAME TIME! \o/
Ketchikan
Pulling into the port at Ketchikan - first stop.
Me and Nathan found a polar bear to love.
Oh. And it was COLD.
One of the cool things we saw were the Bald Eagles, especially in Ketchikan. This is with my zoom lense, (EVERYTHING IS SO BIG THERE) and I mean it's MILES away. But Corey had binoculars, and we watched about 6 of them hunting and courting.
Bald Eagles mate in the air. There is a pair of them in the middle of this pic, and we actually saw them lock talons and fall - man, I don't know, forever. It was awesome. I've read about it but I've never seen it before.
This bird was right off the ship. I'm not sure what kind it is. COULD be a juvie bald eagle, but I actually think it was a different kind of eagle. ETA: Some super smart person just told me it is a Golden Eagle. And it is. So. ;)
We went on a walking tour of the rainforest. Alaska gets 122 inches of rain a year. It didn't rain at all while we were there, and the locals were all SHOCKED.
The Tongass rainforest is the 2nd largest rainforest in the world, only to the Amazon. It's a temparate rainforest, and it's NOTHING like the tropical ones. Well - except for the rain, lol.
This is a bear trail through the forest. They only need a very narrow space to move.
This is skunk cabbage. Bears, before they hibernate, eat a bunch of moss and stuff to stop themselves up so they don't defecate in their sleep, because if they let off a scent wolves can find their nests and come eat them. When they wake up, they eat the skunk cabbage as a laxative. There. Didn't you all want to know that?
Alaska in general only has about 3 inches of soil. So, in the forest, young plants grow on 'Nursery trees' or stumps - old trees that have fallen or whatever. It's really cool.
The main 4 trees there are Sitka Spruce, Hemlock, Alder, and Red Cedar. When a tree grows out of a nursery tree, the nursery tree eventually rots away and leaves a chamber like this, where bears and other animals can nest. The adult trees lock roots with each other for support because they can't go down into the rocks.
This tree was the victim of a red-bellied sap sucker bird.
And this was the victim of a bear.
Random pretty.
Salmon berries.
I forget the name of this fern, but if you eat it *right now*, before it blooms, it makes really good tea that tastes like licorice and heals fungal infections. O-o
Devil's Club. Venomous. Spines like woah. Now being used to diabetes and stomach cancer research. O_o
If you were to cut this knot (called a Burl) off of this cedar it would be worth THOUSANDS of dollars as furniture. No one knows how they form but they make an EXTREMELY rare swirling grain pattern.
The sanctuary is located on a hatchery they converted from an old saw mill. Hatcheries aren't like fish farms. Actually, farming the salmon is illegal in Alaska. What they do is place eggs at the hatchery, the salmon are born there, they leave when they please, go out in the ocean, do their thing, and then come back for spawning EVERY. YEAR. They jump up these little waterfalls through pvc pipes BACK INTO THE CAGES ON THEIR OWN. Trippy, huh?
They keep a couple raindeer.
They have a guy there that carves totems. I think his name was Manny. Or Larry. *ponders*
These are his.
After the rainforest - we went back to town and caught .... THE LUMBERJACK SHOW!!! \o/
Shutup. It was AWESOME.
Most of these dudes are actually Ironjacks from like, the discovery channel and stuff. Actually, I felt like over the trip everyone we MET was on it at one time or another, lol. But more on that later.
BUNNY!
This saw is called the Misery Whip, because if you hit a knot with it, one guy goes flying. And at 40 ft. high - that is ... not always fun. Or you know - compatible with life. *wince*
But they seem like happy dudes. :)
That's it for now! More sleep, TBC ....