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Bear Attack Aaah!! |
Bear Statue Oh, wait, it's only a statue, nevermind. |
Bear Bust Made out of a tree stump. Just a whee bit expensive ($750) |
Rival Cruise Ship Carnival had a ship following us the whole time. |
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Beth and Moose She ignored the dangers, and touched the moose. |
Home of the Happy Bears Trust me, you want to look at this logo. |
Ketchikan Tunnel I'm not used to the idea of having to go through the land, as a flatlander. |
Map of Alaska Beth is helpfully pointing at Ketchikan. Note: it's in the south-east! |
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Our Tour This was the tour we were supposed to get on... but for whatever reason, the first one left without us. (We weren't amused.) |
Destroyed House Well, half-destroyed. |
Ketchikan's Books This is it. Well, everything they had at a thrift store we wandered into while waiting for the next tour to start. Grr. |
Tim The good part of waiting for the second tour was that we got to grab some pizza for lunch. Can you tell how happy I was about that? |
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Phil the Bus Driver The first Alaska native we encountered that wasn't actively thwarting us. Whee! |
Happy Hustling Huskie He got lots of donations and attention because he had to wear a license plate. I think he thought it was a good deal. |
Bald Eagle We got this shot from the bus, when the driver stopped. I think this is one of the best photos I've ever taken - good detail and depth of field, well framed, interesting subject. And hooray for Kirby's lens! |
Tour Guide The tour guide seemed to know what he was talking about, and enjoyed the area. That's enough. |
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Skunk Cabbage Apparently it's a bear delicacy! |
Tales of the Trees The rainforest trip was mostly discussion of the plants, and questions about the animals. |
Spanish Moss I took a lot of these pictures for Dad, who teaches horticulture and hasn't been to Alaska. |
Rainforest Unfortunately, I didn't do a good enough job of keeping track of what's what. |
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Forest Path This was a path, at least, that was pretty clear. |
Big Tree Writing down what this was would have helped. It was a big tree, and fairly common, and germinated in the rotting parts of a newly-dead log. |
Big Tree, II And obviously the kids could hide in it, climb in it, whatever. |
Inside the Big Tree Presumably, a wide variety of other wildlife could as well. |
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Fungus This was growing both horizontally and vertically. |
Shelf Mushrooms I don't think you could safely sit on it, though. |
Tree Hole This was shown off as how they used to stand on posts when they were sawing trees, pre-chainsaw. |
Old Bridge The new bridge was built on top of the old one; this was meant to show how quickly the forest will reclaim its land. |
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River Apparently, this would later be filled with salmon. |
Fallen Tree The winds were very bad in this area, at least in the winter, so all sorts of stuff collapsed on a regular basis. |
Mossy Branches This was apparently a large portion of why the trees fell - they were weighted down with the moss. |
Weary Beth If only there was a bear, she would be happy! |
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Bear Spoor If a bear craps on the trail, will the guide that's walking backwards notice? Apparently not soon enough. |
Cedar This was a cedar! I remember that, anyway. |
Free-Standing Moss Just for you, Dad. |
Swamp-Thing The sea would come up to this place at high-tide, and go well away for low tide. So it was definitely interesting to see. |
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Chinook Salmon Sign King Salmon are, apparently, quite large. |
Salmon Hatchery This was an interesting setup, and funded by the fishing industry. |
Tired Kids Wandering a forest is hard work. (They were fun kids!) |
Zipline There goes a victim^H^H^H^H^H^Hpassenger! |
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Zipline, II This was one of the other tours, that I wasn't going to go on. |
Zipline, III It was an interesting test of the lens' range, though. |
Baby Bald Eagle They don't start as pretty as they become. |
Baby Bald Eagle, II But they're still kindof neat, just standing there. |
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Reindeer As a surprise bonus, there was a reindeer farm near the end of the tour. |
Reindeer, II Of course, I had to switch to a smaller lens for the duration; they were close enough to touch. |
Reindeer, Close-Up This was a pretty good shot, if I do say so myself. |
Feeding the Reindeer Yes, were were allowed to do this, this wasn't all evil. |
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Feeding the Reindeer, II Beth really got into the whole thing. |
Feeding the Reindeer, III But she never got into a good spot where I could see her doing it well. |
Hungry Reindeer Munch munch, Mr. Herbivore! |
Free-Standing Reindeer Waiting for more lunch, no doubt. |
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Leaving the Reindeer Back into the barn for another nap, I guess. |
Driftwood Eaten up by a variety of sea animals, it was still a cool piece of wood. |
Lumberyard Bits After the reindeer, we got to see a recently-closed lumberyard. |
Big Saws For whatever reason, not all of the cool machinery was shipped out when the place closed. |
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Old Lumber I could understand leaving behind a few 2x4s though. |
Old Electrical System A separate box for each piece of machinery, I assume. Cool! |
Leftover Television This old-style projector television was also not worth shipping, I guess. |
Yellow Cedar They had a few old tree trunks cut down for our education. |
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Red Cedar What I learned: red cedar is larger than yellow cedar. |
Making a Totem Pole The final step in the tour was to see a totem pole under construction, which was also cool. |
Making a Totem Pole, II I should have paid more attention to where this totem pole was going to go up. |
Raven and Tide Woman That's what the name of the new totem pole would be. |
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Previous Totem Pole For Alaska Air, as I recall. |
Previous Totem Pole, II The kid offered a good sense of scale. |
Stuffed Birds The gift shop had a variety of stuffed animals. |
Moose Head Beth was excited to finally see a moose, even of the dead variety. |
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Stuffed Otter Get that salmon, Mr. Otter! |
Stuffed Beaver Posed as if to say "WHO STOLE MY TREE!" |
Stuffed Deer and Mink I think at this point I was just going for completeness. |
Beth and Moose Yes, Beth, it is large. |
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Beth and Moose, II She was still happy to be near the huge thing. I should try to find her one for home! |
Stuffed Salmon As opposed to 'smoked', I guess. |
Stuffed Bear This was as close as we got to a bear during the entire trip. Sadly. |
Dam It Excellent boxers. I should have gotten some. |
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No Sign All it says is "NO", and it was in front of a door. I guess it got its point across. |
Standing Totem Pole This would be a good addition to our house, I think. |
Bell Flowers Or something like that. They were pretty. |
Sitka Spruce A recently cut-down tree that had survived for hundreds of years. Too bad the text didn't really come out. |
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Cutting Machinery I really do need a lumberyard when I grow up. |
Return from Zipline Trip It looks like they had fun... |
Please Don't Feed The Bears ...but other stuff's okay. |
Tender Ship For whatever reason, I figured it was a good idea to take lots of pictures of the travel between the ship and the shore. |
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Tender Line There were a lot of people waiting to return to the ship at this point. |
Distant Mountains With fog and a foreground of the walkway to the dock. |
Distance Mountains, II We just don't see these kinds of things in Central Illinois very often. |
Broken Tender Ship Okay, it's only a handrail, but still. |
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Another Tender Ship Going back and forth to grab all of the passengers. |
Industrial Dock Or at least that's what it looks like. I couldn't tell you what they do. |
Celebrity Ship We were never the only ship in dock. |
Rusty Ship It's not doing so good... |
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Back to the Ship You can see where at least one of our tender ships came from. |
Life Rafts I'd imagine they do their jobs. |
No Tug If I'd been able to go belowdecks, I would have checked out things like "what's behind this panel". Sadly... |
Re-Boarding One of the entrances back into our temporary home. |
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Loading Dock Almost back... |
Ketchikan Homes I liked the colors and the irregularity. |
Eagle Point Someone pointed out that there were a bunch of Eagles back on shore. Too bad they were too far away for even my good lens! |
Snow Yep, that's snow alright. (I was probably less excited by the prospect than the Californians on board.) |
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Speedboat He's out of the water. Whee! |
Yacht He's not out of the water. Still, the ocean looks cool. |
Landing Seaplane Coming in right near the land. |
Landing Seaplane, II Taking pictures of vehicles in flight fascinates me, I guess. I hadn't noticed before this... |
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