Overview of Summer Vacation 2013

I'm going to try to tell stories from our trip before I forget too much. If Doug has more to add we'll get to that. Hopefully it won't be too disjointed.

I think there were four outstanding parts of our trip. There were many more adventures that were wonderful and stories to be told. However, these four stand out because of how interesting and fun they were at the time and how much we learned by doing them.

The four are: 1. Mount St. Helens Museum and view; 2. the salmon hatchery in Juneau; 3. the bald eagle up top the tram in Juneau; and 4. the glacier at the end of Tracy Arm Fjord.

Other top things to write about are: 1. the fruit loop; 2. the snow boarders up top Mt. Hood.; 3. the Museum of Flight; 4. the potential to see whales everywhere; 5. the white pass railroad; 6. the musher's camp; 7. cruising in the fog; and how clean and pretty Victoria was - with such interesting architecture.

Tracy Arm Fjord

The whole trip we had been hearing how it was unseasonably warm. We certainly felt it when we wanted to be wearing shorts! Sometimes we had advantages because of it. The Tracy Arm Fjord was one place we had advantages because of the warm weather. If it would have been cooler there would have been more snow and more ice in the water. At least that's what I got from listening to the captain. There was a bunch of ice in the water in the fjord but not much that was very big. Here's a picture of one of the bigger pieces I saw.

I learned that a fjord is a path carved by a glacier. We took this path to see the glacier at the end. Here's where we came through and then left by. (You can see some of the ice in the water.)

We went into the fjord before breakfast. We went down to breakfast so we could get a seat and see the glacier as we ate. It worked. Here was our view for breakfast. (We have very few decent pictures with Ben in them. He was either moving or hiding his face.)

Here are some pictures that show how close we were to the land and the glacier.

The ice is blue because it's really old snow and doesn't have any air bubbles in it. The black is from snow melt.

Lastly a bunch of cool pictures from that morning. Notice the nice waterfalls. Supposedly they were better because of the warm temperatures and the ice melt.

Bald Eagle

We had seen some bald eagles from afar. For example, on a tree top on the shore when we were on the whale watching cruise. The way we knew it was a bald eagle was because the guide told us and because we could see the white head. We actually supposedly saw a younger one, whose head was not yet white, but we didn't know what to look for. (The bald eagles heads turn white when they are 6 or 7 years old.)

I had always known that they were big birds. But in my mind that meant something different than the reality. My idea of a big bird was something like a big parrot that you see at the zoo. I don't think I even envisioned a flying bird as big as a peacock. That was definitely an error on my part. Bald eagle are huge. There was a visual about their wing span. I know that they far exceed Doug's wing span but I think it said they can have a wing span in excess of 8 feet!

There was a bald eagle in a cabin display at the top of the tram in Juneau. The forest rangers had been notified that there was a wounded eagle. When they found her she had a gun shot wound in her beak. She survived the (serious) injury but she was left blind in one eye. Therefore she could not be released into captivity. They built her a small cabin to show her off and let people learn from her. The front of the cabin was just bars. If you were dumb enough to, you could reach through the bars and try to touch her! There was a forest ranger there to watch and only about a dozen people could fit on the porch at a time, but it was still extra amazing to be able to be so close to her. You can see how big she was in these pictures.

This is a picture of the tram station where she was (plus a nice sea plane in the foreground). The tram top is about a third of the way from the left edge at the top of the trees.

Salmon Hatchery

We had done our research before getting on the cruise ship. We had decided that we wanted to go see the salmon hatchery but not any of the other stuff they package with it. We thought we'd just take a taxi to the hatchery and tour it ourselves, like some of the reviews recommended. Turned out that even though it was a state capital there were only a few cabs. To be fair, there might have been a few more than that (but not many) but they were overwhelmed when FIVE huge cruise ships docked at the same time! We did get to the hatchery but not as easily as we anticipated.

The hatchery was really interesting. The first picture to show is the one where you can see the salmon lining up in the river to get to the ladders (and get sliced open for their eggs, but they don't know that, of course).

In this first picture, you can see dark swirls in the water. While some might be from the clouds, most of that is the salmon lining up! You can also see one jumping and what looks like a disturbance in the water. That's exactly what it is - so many salmon fighting for the same place they break the surface of the water there!

In this next picture you can see the river and the ladders. Yes, those are all salmon trying to get to the ladders! Close up coming next.

Here's the close-up.

This next one shows the ladders.

Here's a window to see the salmon at the top of the ladder. The most interesting thing about this window was that when we came out (notice not too many people) someone had shattered the glass and they were trying to figure out how to replace it without hurting any of the salmon!!!

The next picture is of the salmon at the top of the run before they went down the shoot to have their eggs harvested.

They were amazing. There were so many of them - they were so thick and jumping everywhere to try to get to the shoots. 

This last one you can even see one of the salmon's teeth! Yikes! Who knew they had teeth like this. For that matter - who knew they were this big?

Inside there was an aquarium and a tank where you could touch and hold some sea creatures. Ben was the only one brave enough. Check out the sea cucumber! YUCK! Even Ben wanted no part of touching or holding it!

Mount St. Helens

The drive up to the Mount St. Helens museum and viewpoint was interesting. We left the highway and drove through the countryside. It appeared to be the kind of road that only the people who lived off of it would drive. Yet it was one of only two roads up to the museum. While this was interesting heading up, it was more interesting coming down after we saw how many people were at the top.

I think it started getting foggy as soon as we started climbing in elevation (which was quite a while after leaving the highway). When we got to rest stop/reception hall/playground it was pretty dense fog. Since this was our only chance to see Mount St. Helens we were very disappointed. Even Lincoln had learned about Mount St. Helens (mostly by watching shows with his daddy) and was a bit disappointed.

Here are some pictures from the stop. This first one is just one I really like.

 This next one shows all the fog at higher elevations.

 These next two show show Ben playing and burning some energy. Note that he's smushed into the baby swing and loving it.

 Here's another one that I really like from this day.

The museum was decently interesting. They boys liked some of the interactive things to do like pretend to be helicopter pilots.

Doug asked the people who worked at the center and they had just talked to the people up top who said the top was perfectly clear. So we headed up. A few turns above the center the fog was gone.

Here's a picture when we got above the fog.

The museum and viewing center were fine. There was one cool display using itty bitty LED lights showing Mount St. Helens and the surround miles (maybe 30 miles - Doug will probably know this detail). It showed where lava flowed and when. The rest of the inside stuff was mostly boring to a non-history-lover like me and the kids. Outside, we could see the peak - really interesting to see the one side completely blown away, but only the one side. It was also interesting to know that there were people standing where we that thought they'd be safe to watch! It was a beautiful, if fly covered, walk around. The stuff of this wasn't as impressive as being there when we all had learned about the last eruption there.

Fruit Loop and Mount Hood

May 2011 - New Pics - finally

Here are some pictures from the last couple weeks.

He does happen to be teething and sometimes grumpy but he doesn't usually look quite this devilish!

They chose to sit this close together and were happy about it :)

There were workers spraying cement for a pool in the neighbors' yard. The boys were entranced.

Daddy and L taking a late afternoon nap.

Look at what a big boy he is!