Alaska, Wow!

Last week I went to a magical place -- Alaska.  Or, to be more precise, a cruise up the Alaskan Panhandle.  This is a wonderous natural wonderland chock full of bears, whales, glaciers, and even cute little critters like sea otters!  There's salmon running in rivers, totem poles, quaint little towns, and other awesome sights.  

Here is a shot of a humongous piece of ice breaking off of a glacier in Glacier Bay National Park!  They call it calving!  It was cold there, in the high thirties, in early August.

I like these little guys, sea otters taking their leisure by swimming on their backs:

This was near Sitka, a community with a fantastic Russian Orthodox church there.  It was kind of tucked away, so getting a good composition was not possible.

 We walked on a bridge over a stream that was filled with salmon swimming upstream.

Juneau was a cruise port.  It's the state capital, and the capitol is rather plain or nondescript.  Jewelry is sold at many places; and I guess it's de rigeur to buy some on a trip to the Last Frontier.  Nothing about gold rushes nowadays.  Juneau is unique among state capitals; it has no roads connecting it to other places.  As a person there put it, "There are three ways you can get to Juneau: by plane, by boat, or by birth canal."  They also tell of an Alaska Airways jet that collided with a salmon dropped by an eagle!

Ketchikan is quaint, with lots of totem poles plus a lot of rain.  It's the wettest town in the fifty states.

I'll write some more after I get everything back on an even keel.