Day 240/365 - In Ketchikan, Alaska

Today we had the next-to-last port visit on our Alaskan cruise -- Ketchikan, Alaska. I went on a crab and beer feast/mountaintop flightseeing excurstion. The crab and beer feast part sounded much better until you realized it was at 7:15 in the morning. Still, it was pretty damn tasty. If you're drinking beer for breakfast then you're either on vacation or an alcoholic. Or both. After stuffing ourselves with dungeness crab, Alaska Amber ale, and blueberry cheesecake, we boarded a DeHavilland Beaver floatplane for our sightseeing flight over the mountains and waterways of Ketchikan. It was awesome. The views were excellent and the flight was a lot smoother than I expected, although landing on water is a bit bumpier than on land.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 239/365 - Cruising Glacier Bay

This was our second day at sea, and what a day at sea it was. We visited Glacier Bay and the scenery was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The mountains and the water and the clear blue sky were phenomenal, and then there were the glaciers. We stopped by three of them -- Reid, Margerie, and another one whose name I can't remember. Sheesh, not only am I bad with people's names, I'm also bad with glacier's names. The glaciers are miles-long, hundreds of feet thick tongues of blue ice that run from the end of narrow inlets up to the mountains. The ones we saw are called calving glaciers because chunks keep falling off of them into the sea, kinda like cows giving birth to calves.

Margerie was the best of the glaciers we saw. I saw a couple little landslide type calving incidents with it and then got to see one good-sized chunk splinter off and topple into the water with a boom. Glacier Bay is a U.S. National Park and we had a group of National Park Service rangers board our ship and narrate our tour of the park over the ship's public address system. It was like watching an Imax movie, but in person. The weather is still picture perfect. The ship's crew and everyone we talk to in the ports tells us that it normally isn't nearly this nice. Most of the time up here it's cloudy and cool and rainy, but it's been sunny and in the low 80s/high 70s for our whole cruise. And not only has it not rained, we haven't even seen hardly any clouds. So far we've hit the weather lottery. Here's hoping it holds for the rest of the cruise.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 237/365 - Moonrise over Alaska

We hit the first port on our Alaskan cruise today, the capital city of Juneau. I went for a six mile hike on a mountain alongside the Mendenhall glacier. The trail started out pretty easy and then got really steep. The views were great though and it was nice to be out in the woods. The weather was amazing. It's beginning to look like I packed the wrong sorts of clothes. I packed longsleeved shirts and turtleneck sweaters and jeans and I might have been better off packing shorts and t-shirts. It was sunny and in the 80s. Not what I expected from Alaska. I'm not complaining though. It was much better than hiking in the rain and the clear skies make for much better photos. This shot was of the moon rising over the mountains ringing the Inside Passage after we left Juneau to head further north to Skagway. The sun didn't set until 10 p.m. tonight. Now that is what I expected from Alaska.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)