Alaska day 9 - Finally!!!

If you have read through my posts from day 1, you should know we have missed 2 opportunities of touching and walking on a glacier. The good thing is I read about the Matanuska Glacier that is about 60 miles from Palmer. So on our last day in Alaska, we got up early in the morning, and drove all the way from Seward to the Matanuska Glacier. Finally, we got to walk on a glacier, and we even have photos to prove it.

By the way, you have to pay $15/adult to get to the glacier.




Now that we have our wish fulfilled, we head back to Anchorage. We had out last king crab meal at Gwennie's, and head to the airport for our flight home.

Alaska day 8 - Exit Glacier

Before we came to Alaska, we made it a mission to get up close and personal with a glacier. We missed our glacier landing in Talkeetna, so we thought we will get a second chance at Exit Glacier. Unfortunately, the river was flooded, so we missed another opportunity of getting up close to a glacier.

Alaska day 7 - Seward & Kenai Fjords National Park

On the 7th day, we went on a full day cruise at Seward. The cruise took us to the Kenai Fjords National Park. Everyone was excited to see the Humpback whales.

Alaska day 6 - Whittier (Prince william Sound Tour part 2)

Here is where my patience paid off. I managed to take some photos of a glacier calving while on the cruise.

Alaska day 6 - Whittier (Prince William Sound Tour part 1)

We left Anchorage in the morning for a little town called Whittier. We need to get there before 11:30am for our Prince William Sound tour. There is only one way in and out of Whittier, which is a tunnel shared by cars and trains. Here is a photo taken while inside the tunnel.


As we were heading to the pier for our cruise, guess who we saw resting on its nest?


Here are some photos we took during the cruise.





Noticed how blue the glacier is. Apparently, glacier will absorbed all colors except blue.

Alaska day 5 - Denali National Park & Talkeetna

Here are some photos we took on our drive south to Talkeetna from the NP.

When we got to Talkeetna, it was still pretty cloudy. We waited till about 4pm before the sun finally came out. We got all our gear, put on special boots for the glacier landing and took off with our pilot, Coop.

It was a small plane, so space was a bit tight. Here is a photo of our co-pilot.


Coop took us up about 9000 feet, above the clouds, and I was able to take a couple photos of Mt McKinley. The view must have been excellent because even Coop took out his camera to take a few shots.


After that, everything just went downhill because I started to get air-sick. Coop told us we were not able to do the glacier landing because the clouds were too low and thick; that was a disappointment. But at that point, all I cared about was having my feet on solid land because I was feeling pretty queasy inside. Fortunately, we were able to land without incident. :-)

Favorite photo from Alaska

Man at the last frontier.....

Alaska day 3 - Denali National Park

We woke up at 4:30am to catch our 6:15am shuttle bus to Wonder Lake. It was a smaller-than-average group of people on the bus that morning. The morning started off cloudy, but the sun came out later and it turned out to be a beautiful day. On our drive to the Wonder Lake, we saw a bunch of wildlife. We got really excited when we saw mama bear and some cubs taking a nap on the mountain.

Ladies and gentlemen, *drumroll* the North peak of Mt. McKinley (the white peak that looks like a mirage). The South peak is slightly obscured on the left.


We considered ourselves lucky to get a glimpse of Mt. McKinley. The mountain is only visible ~20% of the time during summer.

Alaska day 2 - Denali Lakeview Inn

Sheri gave us the bad news when we went up for breakfast: forest fires caused by lightning the day before. We were not too thrilled to hear that because we were scheduled to take a flight tour at Talkeetna at 1pm. We were worried the smoke would ruin our plans but we went ahead and set out for Talkeetna after breakfast. Sure enough, the weather wasn’t that great, it was raining, and the smoke from the forest fire cast a shade of red on the sky, looks pretty scary actually. So our flight tour was canceled. We rescheduled for another flight/try Monday, on our return trip to Anchorage. We did stop for lunch at Talkeetna, at a little local place called Wildflower. Their seafood chowder was ok, a bit too creamy for me, but their halibut sandwich was delicious.

We continued with our drive to Denali NP after lunch. It was raining the whole drive, so we missed a lot of the scenic points along the way. I had reserved our bus shuttle tickets into the Denali NP, so we stopped at the Wildlife Access Center to pick up our tickets. We stayed at the Denali Lake View Inn, a great place. The Inn is in Healy, 14 miles from the NP entrance. I highly recommend this place, the room is nice and the beds are comfortable. But best of all is the excellent view you have from the room.

Alaska day 1 - Anchorage

The day has finally arrived for our trip to Alaska! I finished planning for this trip back in January, and we have been waiting for the past five months for today - you can imagine our excitement.

We got up early this morning to catch our flight at noon. We loaded all our bags into the car and drove to Micky D’s for breakfast. We then drove to the airport and checked-in our bags.

The flight was 6 hours 46 minutes from Houston, pretty long but it was a smooth flight. There was a marathon on Saturday in Anchorage, so the flight was quite full. We landed at the Anchorage airport at 4:20pm local time. The weather was in the mid 70s, which is higher than what we expected, but not as humid as in Houston, so we were ok with that. :-D After we collected our bags, we headed out to get a cab to go to Enterprise car rental. I rented from an Enterprise downtown because it is cheaper even with the cab fare to the rental place. The cab driver was extremely friendly; he pretty much gave us a guided tour from the airport to the rental car place. He even offered to drive us to the Ship Creek to see a salmon run. But we were in a hurry to get our rental car before the close of business, so we declined his offer.

After we picked up the car, we drove to the Coastal Trail B&B, where we are staying for the night. Sheri, the owner of the B&B, is friendly and helpful. Our room has two Queen-sized beds; the beds are comfortable and the room is very cozy.


We had dinner that evening at the Glacier Brew House. The food was good but the place is pretty busy, so reservation is recommended. Their halibut dinner and salmon special is great. It took a long time for our dinner to be served, so the manager gave us complimentary desserts, which was nice. After dinner, we headed back to the B&B. Even though we were tired (because of the time zone difference) we took a walk in the park in front of the B&B. Here are some pictures I took. These pictures were taken about 11pm, as you can see, the sun was still out at that time.

This evening...

I was out in the yard this evening and took some photos of the clouds. Here are the two I like best after some post processing. I thought they turned out pretty good, what do you think?

Nigara Falls

I've been to Niagara Falls twice. The first time was after more than 20 hour drive from Texas, I was dead tired by the time I got there. The second visit was in 2005 and was more fun because I don't have to drive that long. This place gave me the same feelings just like Grand Canyon. standing there looking at the falls, you can't help but feel that you are so small. Oh if you can, you should stop in Buffalo, NY for the buffalo wings.

Too bad we did not cross the border to Canada. I heard the view from Canada is even better. maybe next time...

Vacation shots

Throw in a couple of photos I took from past vacations...