Alaska: Part 2 (Day Cruise to Kenai Fjords National Park )

June 15, 2017

One of the favorite things we did while we were in Alaska, was to take a 9-hour cruise with Kenai Fjord Day Cruise Tours.   

It was freezing cold on the boat, but worth every bit of discomfort to have had the opportunity to see the raw beauty of Alaska from the perspective of the water!  

 

Through the course of the day we meandered through Kenai Fjords National Park for over 150 miles.   The turnaround point of the cruise is this gorgeous bluish glacier that's part of the Harding Ice Field, Northwestern Glacier (named after Northwestern University).  

We stayed there for over 30 minutes just to watch the glacier.   That might sound a little boring, but it was actually quite interesting to watch the glacier calf (that's what they call it when pieces of ice fall off the glacier into the water).  It happens pretty frequently and it was a cool way to see how light waves travel faster than sound waves.   We could see a piece falling, then a few seconds later hear the roar of it.  

The beauty we encountered through the day was absolutely stunning! 

 

Additionally, we saw abundant wildlife, a fact which absolutely delighted everyone in our family!  

The mammals we saw were sea otters (shown in picture above), harbor seals (shown in picture below), orcas (part of the AD8 pod), humpback whales, Dall's porpoises, coastal mountain goat, and Steller sea lions (shown sitting on the rock on a picture below). 

We also saw some awesome birds, including puffins, bald eagles, gulls,  and a variety of species,  that attracted some serious birders onto the cruise who'd come just to see these specific types of bird which live in these isolated waters away from land (the ancient murrelet, rhinoceros auklet, common murre, white winged scoter, red faced cormorant, marbled murrelet, parakeet auklet, northwestern crow, black legged kittiwake, double breasted cormorant, pelagic cormorant, black oystercatcher, pigeon guillemot, Kittlitz's murrelet)! 

The cruise was one of the highlights of our trip  and I highly recommend it to anyone planning a trip to Alaska anytime soon!   

And this concludes the record of our family trip to Alaska!  

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Rainy Day in Venice

Next on our itinerary was VENICE!!!! 

Venice has been on my shortlist of dream places I want to visit for a long time,  and I was a tad disappointed that,  despite my best efforts to fit it in,  it never did end up making sense to squeeze into our itinerary in May, especially since the rest of my family was more keen on seeing Rome.   I reluctantly gave up on trying to add it in only with the promise that Glen would try to get me there someday.  

Little did I know that I  would have the opportunity a mere  six months later.  

I was so excited when Kristina and I were making plans for this trip and I realized that Venice could actually happen.    We ended up with barely 24-hours there, but it was 24-hours of a dream come true for me!    

Friday, November 4, 2016

   

To maximize our time there, we went on a gondola ride around town...

I could gush and gush about how much I loved it, but I think I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Saturday, November 5, 2016 

(my journal entry) 

Our train from Venice was leaving at 11:30am, so we woke up, got a quick breakfast at a bakery (it wasn't very good), and traipsed over to the Basilica San Marco.  It was a tad chilly (low 50's) and pouring rain, but it was a fun adventure getting there.  It was such a cool place and we enjoyed all the friendly pigeons which would land on our outstretched arms.   After that minor distraction we were crunched for time and had to run back to our place, get our luggage and book it to the train station.  We made it there in the nick of time and now we are on our way to La Spezia (Cinque Terre).  Somewhere in there I also found a real deal Italian post office where I bought stamps and sent some postcards.  Here's hoping the rain will subside enough for us to get some hiking in at Cinque Terre.

Basilica de San Marco (Saint Mark's)

It was rainy, beautiful,  and I LOVED it!   

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Blast Off!

One of the best parts about driving downtown every single day in a week for the kids' genealogy camp,  is that I'm suddenly becoming a lot more familiar with the lay of the land in DC.  While we've come downtown countless times over the course of the 18-years we've lived in the East, but  normally we are there to do one thing and one thing only.    I go straight from parking to a museum, then home again.   Last week, though, I got to experience the city more as a feast than a nibble.   I parked by the National Archives every day, then had to figure out our way to all over the Mall and back again.

On Thursday while the kids were at the camp, Ellie and I trekked over to the Tidal Basin and tried out the pedal boats!  

Our legs were burning with the effort, but it was cool to see the city from a new vantage point on the water!

After camp we all went over to the Air and Space Museum where Ellie got to be the honorary astronaut for the day during a presentation on the International Space Station.  

She made a cute little astronaut, but I must say that I'm glad she didn't blast off into space...

because I've been rather enjoying all the time we've been spending together and waiting for her to return from a trip to outer space would have been a pain!  

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Spencer Steals a Girl's Lollipop in Saint John

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Once upon a time a family made plans for a vacation.

There was a little mix-up in the name of the city they were going to, 

but luckily it was all squared away before they left home

and lucky them, they were still able to find a last minute 

vacancy in this fine looking establishment. 

And the luck continued when  the next morning dawned bright and clear--

 perfect weather for a boat ride. 

They were a tad surprised (and worried) when they arrived to the boat launching site 

and saw this not-so-lovely paper factory directly across the river. 

But their hope was renewed when they saw that this was the view looking the other way...

They ended up going on a leisurely harbor tour where they relaxed... 

and got to hear all about the fascinating way that the Bay of Fundy and the Saint John River

interact with each other.

It was on the boat ride that they fell in love with the quaintness 

of the small New Brunswickian city 

and decided that they wanted to explore a little more than they'd originally planned 

before driving onto their next destination. 

But first they took a wild-and-crazy jet boat ride that took them 

spinning and splashing 

through the rapids and in process traumatizing a whole flock of cormorants

(and their youngest child).

After they dried off and stopped their knees from shaking, 

they drove to the thriving metropolis of downtown Saint John to eat some lunch.  

I don't know if there was something fishy in that bag of Bugles, 

or if the jetboat ride damaged their noggins,

but from lunch on after things went downhill pretty quickly. 

First Emma started reading the newspaper over some random guy's shoulder.

Then Cami and Adam started fraternizing with a creepy looking dude holding a pinwheel

and even Ellie started trying to share her lunch with a well buxomed lady waiting for a bus.

Even Glen broke out of his normally reserved personality and 

got all chummy with homeless guy feeding the birds. 

As shocking as all of their behavior was, 

Spencer's actions really took the cake.

Or should I say "took the lollipop"? 

It was shortly after he made the little girl cry

that they declared that Saint John had gotten a little too odd for them

and that it was time to move onto greener isles.

The end. 

Stay tuned for more Canadian adventures coming soon...