Juneau and the Glaciers

Ok So we are slowly catching up on everything. The next lot of photos comes from Juneau. Its the capital of Alaska, but it too is only accessable by boat and plane. The population is about 30,000.
Unfortunatley the weather was really bad the day we were there.

We did a city tour and went out to the Mendenhall Glacier, it was quite spectacular.
This is the ice that has melted and broken off


For any one that doesn't know, a glacier is a frozen river. They are thousands of years old and flow really slow, like a couple of metres per year.

The water is the purest in the world because it was frozen before there was any pollution. There are also huge valleys left behind once the ice melts, this is how the inside passage in alaska was formed.

In the afternoon we went to a salmon hatchery. Fish farms are illegal in alaska, but to keep stocks up they hatch the salmon here and relase them into the wild. They even have a fake freshwater river for them to swim into and spawn. They also had the best collection of native alaskan fish. it was like a tropical tank!


They also had this critter.
In the afternoon we sailed down Tracey's arm and to the Sawyer Glacier. Sawyer is melting into saltwater so its melting even quicker, but it was cool to see ice in the ocean, unfortunatly we couldn't get too close because of the ice.

Tracey's arm was formed by sawyer glacier carving it out of the ice, now that its melted and filled with water you can sail down there, but its a tight squeeze.




But the Glaceier was amazing!




We couldn't stop taking photos, it was awesome.

Sarah's Birthday

Hi guys, Just a quick note, its Sarah's 26th birthday today!
Happy Birthday baby, have a great day and I love you very much!

Ketchikan!

So the first place the boat actually stopped was Ketchikan, this town has about 9,000 people. Its totally isolated, there is only 32miles of road. The only way in is by plane or boat.

The town is really nice, its also know as the salmon capital of the world. There is a little creek where the Salmon swim upstream to spawn. Part of the town is built on boardwalks along the creek.I tried to blend in with the locals as best as I could.
It was the best day we had weather wise, very clear and sunny But still super cold. We spent the afternoon in one of the local establishments. It was called KJ's and had plenty of charm, I was drinking a beer called moose drool and it was great. The bartender was really great, her name was Trixie.
We got back on the boat at about 3pm, the sun doesn't set up here until at 10pm, it was a beautiful day we got some great shots.



This is my favourite
I really liked this town, was great although I think the weather helped. We didn't get another day like that for the rest of the trip.

Cruisin'

Here are some photos from the cruise to Alaska, there are tons so have to break it down into a couple of posts.

The first few days were spent cruising the inside passage from Vancouver. Vancouver is a really nice city, the mountains are pretty spectacular. The town in built right on them too.




We were pretty excited when we got to our room, it was like paradise after sleeping in backpackers for the last few weeks.

The inside passage is really cool, its a gap between the mainland and the islands and it goes pretty much all the way up to the coast of Canada and Alaska. Because it was all formed by Glaciers the water is really deep but the islands and mainland is all really steep, and all of the peaks are snowcapped. Its really cool to sail past and see.




The scenery was really amazing, but to be honest I think there was more whitecaps inside the boat, the average age of the cruisers was about 65. We did feel a little out of place for sure. But it was still nice and there was plenty to do and see.

Stay tuned for part 2, Ketchikan

Last Days in the lower 48

Hey everybody, I got tons to catch up on so I am going to do it over a couple of posts. The first will be our last few days in LA before we flew up here to Canada. We Did a LA city tour that took us to the hollywood hills to see some stars homes.

Lawrence Fishburn
Vinnie Jones
This one is the best, the front orange house was Marlon Brando's and the back cream one belongs to Jack Nicholson.

Here are some photos of the view from the Hollywood Hills.

Not very good, the cloud and pollution was sreally bad that day.

The tour also took us to other places around the city, we went to Santa Monica and Venice beach.

We went through Beverley Hills, the richest part of LA where there are no fast food restaurants and each street was lined with a different tree.
Our favourite place was Olvera St. This is the old Mexican part of LA. For anybody that didn't know, California was once part of Mexico, it was declared independant after a war in the 1800's and then later became part of the USA. This street was built when LA was still Mexican, its really cool and filled with stalls selling mexican souveniers like wrestling masks and day of the dead stuff.


It was good to see some more of LA but we were definately ready to leave and see something new. It really is a strange place, really ugly kind of city but there is a lot going on there. On the plus side I was able to drink plenty of these. Anybody that has had them will know what I mean, these beers rule.

No posts

Hi everyone,
We just arrived back in Vancouver today after our trip on the cruise. We didn't have internet so I couldn't post. We did take tons of photos and its going to take me a while to sort it all out but hopefully you will see some new stuff on here tomorrow.

We are all well and good and I hope you guys are too.