Onward and upward to part 3 of our year in review. We’re going to get right on into this time.
First up, a photo I completely skipped over in part 2. This was a must, so I am including it in the start of this one. When my mom was up, we visited the salmon hatchery one day and they had a full size salmon out giving tours and shaking hands. How could we pass up the opportunity to get my mom’s photo with a 6-foot salmon???
If you recall in part 2, I mentioned that the bear we saw at the Taku Lodge was our second closest bear encounter. Well, here number one. This guy got in our trash at around 11pm one night. Michele walked by the kitchen window and saw something moving. We scurried over to the front window, and there was this black bear chowing down…
Not enough wildlife for you yet? We decided to go fishing one day off the rocks near the salmon hatchery. This eagle was just sitting and waiting on the grass near where everyone was fishing. It did not move for about 10 minutes, allowing us to get a really close shot…
Here’s Tom unsuccessfully fishing on that same day…
While not the same day as above, Michele had the best luck fishing out of the two of us. One night after work, her former co-worker Joe was nice enough to take Jim, Michele, and me out for some fishing. Michele managed to reel in this very nice king salmon…
Continuing with our boat trips, Jay and Jessica organized two pretty awesome camping weekends for us this summer. The first occurred on July 1st and 2nd. We all met up at Amalga Harbor, then cruise on the boat to Shelter Island. I think everyone would agree that these were two of the more fun weekends we had this summer. This is a cool little shot of the Alaskan White bottle with Jay’s boat in the background…
And Tom fishing again, this time with Kelly by his side…
Is that an eagle?
Michele took an awesome group of sunset photos during the camping event. I think this one is my favorite. Jim climbed some rocks for a better look, and then this photo happened…
This one probably was taken by Michele as well, as she certainly has a shoe/foot fetish when she’s behind the camera. I really like this one because it kinda reminds me of a Corona commercial…
Here’s Jim and me waiting for our boat trip back to civilization…
Once we got back from Shelter Island, we all took quick naps before heading to Karen’s for the 4th of July celebration. In Juneau, we have our July 4th fireworks at midnight on July3rd (technically the 4th). Jim had always said he was patriotic. At the party, he proved it…
Our big trip of the summer, as you may have gathered from the 47 posts I put up on it, was to Katmai National Park. I won’t go into detail, as I could write about 5,000 words on the trip. Just know that if you ever have the opportunity to go to Katmai, you take advantage of it…
Yes, you can get this close…
And see this…
Or see cubs…
This was from our day trip we took to the Valley of 10,000 Smokes…
Michele next to some serious rapids…
There we are on the right…
After getting back to Anchorage from Katmai, we hit up the creepiest town in Alaska – Whittier…
Here’s a shot in the mountain tunnel you have to drive through to get to Whittier…
After Whittier, we went to the more relaxing destination of Seward. The sea life center there was very cool…
I was able to convince Michele that this looked like she really caught that huge fish…
Then I just leaned on the rental car and was proud of myself for pulling that one over on her…
As we like to do, we hit up a glacier on our trip – this one is the Exit Glacier in Whittier. In our personal opinions, not as cool as the Mendenhall, but it was still a nice little hike to it…
This one was Michele’s idea. Apparently she hit an artistic hot streak in July…
Ah ha – but I took this one. This is the reflection of a parking garage in another glass building in downtown Anchorage…
This is Alaska’s 50th year of statehood. Yes!
The second of our Jay and Jessica camping trips occurred in August. Again, the weather was spectacular. Below, you can see exactly what Tom and I did for about 7 consecutive hours on this Friday…
Michele went for a swim in the gulf. Oh no, not the Gulf of Mexico – the Gulf of Alaska!
Here’s Jay trying his hand at some fishing off the rocks…
Nice sunset, of course…
Michele was so worried about getting her face sunburned. Then she could not find any sunscreen, so she tried an alternate method…
Jim brought a game called lasso golf for the camping trip. It was really fun, but did lead to some trash talking. Here’s me trying to get inside Karen’s head during a game of lasso golf. “You’ve got nothing – Nothing!!!”
On the second night camping, it was a little cloudy except for this one ray of light shining through…
And that’s it from Part 3. I’m going to do my best to wrap things up with Part 4, but who knows? We’ll have to see how many activities we undertook from September through December. But the next installment will hopefully be posted Friday.
The AlasKane Blog 