Alaska

As most of you are aware, while I was in Lake Tahoe, J was in Alaska with his parents and brother. Here are some highlights from their trip! They had over 2,000 pictures, so I picked the ones that I loved the most (or had the best stories behind them)! Because they all have fancy cameras, they shot the pictures in raw format, which means that I had to convert every picture to JPEG so blogger could read the pictures, otherwise I would post a whole lot more pictures--it is time consuming to change the format!

J had a great time on the trip! He said that the hardest adjustment was the 20 hours of daylight every day! The sun didn't go down until after 12:30 AM and rose again by 4:00 AM. He loved it because they could get so much done in a day and not feel rushed!

The picture above was taken in Ninilchik. On the hill is a lighthouse (which they have pictures of up close, but I liked this one more--if you squint you can just make out the lighthouse ;-) ).

Below is a picture of fireweed and Josh standing in a field of fireweed; gives you an idea of how tall it is!

Along their trip, they saw many animals. Most of the animals have grown so accustomed to human presence they have no fear or ignore people.

In Denali, they took a tour bus through Denali National Park. Because J, Robert, and Cory are hunters, they were able to spot animals that the other people on the bus just wouldn't have seen otherwise. They were the ones spotting the animals--there was a lady on the bus who got all excited because she spotted a "bear" but the bus driver said that the "bear" was the best "rock bear" he had ever seen.

Along the side of the road came the wolf in the picture below. J stuck his head out of the bus window to get this (and other) great shot. Obviously, the bus driver was not too happy about J hanging half-way out of the bus to get pictures, but J was so excited he didn't even realize he was being told to get back inside! The wolf has three ground squirrels in her mouth (we have closer shots but for the faint of heart, I didn't include those shots).

An arctic fox in Denali National Park.

A doll ram in Anchorage. What a great picture!

Bears were one of the focuses of the trip! They saw many bears--mostly grizzly and black bear. They got much too close for my liking at times, but they also got some fun bear shots from the Kenai river!

Black bear...

This gives you an idea of how close the were to the bears, and how much the bears really didn't seem to pay attention to the people!

Grizzly with fish...

Two grizzly cubs playing....

Here is a view of Mt. McKinley. It can only be seen about 20% of the time because clouds usually cover the peaks! They were lucky enough to be able to see most of it!

Lots of fishing! They brought back over 100 pounds of halibut! It is so yummy!

Here is J with a red sockeye salmon at Bryers Creek.

Robert caught a 73 pound Halibut! Catch of the day! J also caught a surprise--an octopus! The boat kept it for bait but he got some pictures first! If you look in the picture it is by Cory's feet on the right side of the picture.

Glaciers cover parts of Alaska! Here are some glacier pictures:

This picture is really cool because it shows some of the glacier falling into the water below.

Whale watching in Seward:

Humpback whale

Sea otters playing in Revolutionary Bay

Seals

Awesome capture of a starfish!