Kenai Fjords Wildlife and Glacier tour

I have been slack on keeping everyone updated. I have been getting out and trying to explore AK. I have explore campbell creek, kincaid park, and thunderbird falls. For my birthday last weekend, I went out to dinner, went to 3-D blacklight minigolf, and then hung out with friends. So now that I got the condensed summary of everything now, I will get on with my main topic, the cruise.
I drove down to Seward. I left about 6am so there was not very many people on the road. The scenery was gorgeous. My favorite part was placing the random small waterfalls off of the moutians were the snow was melting down to the inlet. I also found a lake, that I think is Trail lake that I had to stop by on my way home and take pictures. I got to Seward in about 2 hours. I checked-in at the office and waited until the boat loaded about 9am. I got a few good pictures of the harbor of Seward.

We headed out about 930a. Before we made it completely out of the habor we saw a humpback whale.

       I was not able to get a really good picture of that whale because it was going in the opposite direction than we were. Then we continued on and not too long we saw a couple of sea otters

They did not stick around very long but I got a good picture of them. Soon after that we saw a mama and a baby humpback whale feeding so we stopped for a little while and watched them.

I got some good shots of them too. Then we went on to further down and we were joined with some dall's porpoises who saw right next to the boat

They have to same colorings as orcas(killer whales). They were really fun to watch. Then we passed by bear glacier. We then toured porcupine cove where we were able to view arbor seals.

                                                      

Then we passed pilot island.

Hologate glacier came next right before we entered into the Kenai Fjords, Fjord is as the captian explained is a bay that was created by a glacier and then was filled up by sea water

We passed a whole flock of sea otters as we entered in the fjords.

As we drove into the fjords, the tour provided us with lunch which was a delicous chicken ceaser salad wrap, carrots, and a nature valley bar. We headed for the aialik glacier which we came about 1/4 mile from. The captian explained that glacier was 1 mile wide at its base.



The crew fished out a piece of drifting ice(aka iceberg) to let us it up close. We head out of the fjords and passed secert window and three hole point.



The the captian got a call oer the radio  and we headed over to see some orcas. The captian said that is pretty hard to see orcas so I felt pretty luck to see them.

We made our way slowly to Fox Island, we passed one small set of sea lions, puffins, and then a larger set of sea lions hanging out. We watched as two sea lions were fighting and the small one got pushed off the rock, allowing the larger one to take his prized spot on the rock.



We docked at Fox Island where we were feed a buffet of salmon and prime rib for dinner. It was really good. We got to here a short presentation by Forest Ranger Jim about some of the history of Fox Island. It was really interesting.

We then headed back to Seward, but we made one more stop to look at a mama bald eagle wo has sitting in her nest with her two chicks.







We docked back in the harbor around 615p. I headed back home to Anchorage, but I did have to stop at what I believe is Trail lake and take a few pictures.



I got back around 9pm. It took me alittle longer to get back because there was more traffic and I made the one "photo" stop. I had a great time. I was a perfect day all around. Perfect weather, seas, everything.





One year since school

It has been a year since I graduated from Bel-Rea. On april 1st, it will be a year since I moved up here to AK. I have a great job, a nice apartment, but still looking for more friends. Finding young single, career aged people is kinda difficult here. This seaons snowfall has almost met the record of 132inches set in 1954-1955. We are at about 129inches. Several roofs have collapsed under the weight of the snow including a a church building right up the road from us. As our spring is nearing and the temperature is rising to a warm 30s degrees. The snow and ice are begining to melt and we can almost see the ground(grass) again. This time next week i will be in Valdosta to see the family and remember what the color green looks like:)

Iditarod

So, I am about three weeks late on this post but heres the psot about the Iditarod.

On saturday march 3, was the official start of the Iditarod 2012. So Graham and woke up and went to downtown to watch them set-off.

After watching them for a while, we decided to walk around in the crowds, and we went to go grab a free poster.

After our friends showed up downtown, we watched a few more teams take off. Then we went off to Willow to watch the Re-start of the race. We stayed in our pastors cabin. We got to Willow about 3-4pm on saturday. We were greeted alot of snow so much we waded through waist high snow to get to the door of the cabin. The cabin is in front of a lake which was covered with about 10 feet of snow. Here are some pictures of everyone trying the dig out paths in the snow with shovels and the snowmobiles.

Once we woke up on sunday, we hung out until the re-start at 2pm. More people came and joined us at the cabin. I drove a snow mobile around! It was very fun, unfortunately i dont have any pictures because I was driving it to the gas station and back. I did pretty well for my first time, I got stuck twice and fell off once. I was going up a hill and I was not straight and I pushed the nose into the snowbank. I just kinda gently rolled off onto the snow. A kind gentleman saw me in trouble and got me out. I got back to the cabin in one piece.

Then it was time to go out onto the lake, which was more wading in knee-waist high snow to get to the race track.

It was really cool to sit on a frozen lake and watch the racers go by. Here are some pictures of the re-start.

We stayed out there until about 4ish or so. We came back into the cabin and ate some food and packed up to head back here to Anchorage. We got back around 8ish or so. I washed up and went to bed since I had work on monday.

On tuesday march 13 about 7:30pm the first person crossed the finished line in the city of Nome. about 945mile race. The guy was the youngest person ever to win, at 25 years old.

He finished in 10days, but the record is 8days.





FUR RONDY

I am getting worse and worse at keeping this blog up to date.  I ahve alot to blog about since the last two weekends were filled with fun Alaskan adventures. Graham and I went downtown during Fur Rondy on feb 5 and then last weekend was the Iditarod. I still have get to upload the hundreds of pictures from last weekend. Yesterday, I had to work and run errands.

So lets back up to the FUR RONDY. It is an annual 10-day festival with the it ending with the start of the Iditarod(more on that later). So the festival started on a thrusday and we went on the first saturday. We got to watch the start of the Frost-bite run which has a costume contest. By the time the race started it was a balming 6-7 degrees outside. So once we got tired of watching, we had to go warm up. It was fun to watch all the costumes go by. Then we watched the parade, by the time the parade started it had warmed up to 10 degrees Farenheit. It lasted until about lunch time. We got lunch inside and warmed up again. Next on the schedule was going to check out some of the dog racing. Then, we headed down to the snow sculture/ carving contest. After that, it started to get cold again so we decided to head home even though there was going to be more activities in the afternoon. Heres some of the pictures from that day.

It was a really fun day! Now, I am off to go through last weekend photos.