A helicopter to a glacier, a creek full of salmon, and why the pictures never do it justice.
I just got back from a trip to Canada and Alaska, and I came home with a lot of pictures. Sixteen made the first cut.
To start, I'll say that an Alaskan cruise always felt like something you do in your Seventies. And it seemed to be true based on the passengers. I recommend it for folks of all ages and hope I get back to Alaska for more interior adventures. We did a ton of amazing things. In this article I'll share a few.
The big one was taking a helicopter out to Meade Glacier, in Skagway. It was really, really cool. We stood on top of 1,000 feet of ice. It takes 100 feet of snow, packed and compressed for years, to make one foot of glacier. It was awe-inspiring to stand there and get a glimpse of the vastness of this force of nature.
It was cold, of course, both from the elevation and all that ice. We drank some of the melt water. And there was a crazy Aussie in shorts and short sleeves.
We were all set for cold weather and expecting a Pacific Northwest rain-filled trip. Of course, compared to a Florida summer, everything is colder. The weather didn't fully cooperate. It was beautiful. Nearly everywhere we went was beautiful sunshine and warmer than expected. We saw three glaciers and many waterfalls.
We saw whales, and we saw seals. I don't think I got anything close to a good picture of either one, which brings me to pictures in general.
The pictures don't really do it justice. They never do, and that's true of everything in life. If I showed you a picture and you weren't there, you'd look at it and think, oh, that's what it looked like. But in my mind, I'm thinking, that's not what it looked like. And it sure isn't what it felt like!
If you're not familiar with the salmon run, here's the short version. Salmon live in the ocean, then swim up rivers to spawn. Typically, that's the end for them and they die. The babies hatch and swim out to the ocean and the cycle repeats. We got to see one of the places where they do that.
This was in Ketchikan, towards the end of our trip. We went to a creek that was flooded with them. Tons of salmon, jumping up the rocks to get upstream. It was very cool to see the salmon run up close.
Then it got even crazier. Upstream there was a pond, maybe one foot deep, and you could see salmon from one side to the other. You could walk across the salmon and never get your feet wet. That's how many fish were in the water.
And no, we didn't catch any. I imagine there must be some kind of restrictions, but weirdly, that never came up.
Here's the part I'd never thought about before:
When I lived in Washington, we would go fishing, and you'd see these big concrete salmon ladders built to help the fish get upstream. I'd seen the ladders plenty of times. I'd never actually seen the salmon jumping up them.
What I'd never considered is how many of them die along the way. They jump out of the water, hit a rock and kill themselves, and the body floats back downstream. It is harrowing to witness. And it is why they built the ladders in the first place. So more salmon survive the process.
Ketchikan is right out of the Old West. Of course, now it is all souvenir shops. What you don't get from a picture is the smell. The whole place reeks of dead fish.
In the town's history, a guy strung a net across the creek and caught salmon by the bushel. It is amazing there are any left after that!
Think about the people who live there. Granted, it's not all year round. There's a season for it. But during that season, you're living among rotting fish carcasses (and the cruise ship passengers!).
The animals show up for it too. Bears will come down and eat both the live and the dead fish, and bald eagles gather to feast on all the dead salmon. Ketchikan was our last place to see a bear, and sadly they were all at the mall or something. We didn't see any eagles there either, but it was very, very cool.
Trips like this are a little easier for us now. Since Luna passed, we have more freedom for planned and impromptu trips, and we're trying to live up to the ideal of being able to go out and do all that kind of stuff.
Before Alaska, I went up to Jacksonville to see my brother, my sister-in-law and my nephew. There was no real occasion. It was just some family time, and that's always a fun trip.
From left to right: my mom Kathy, my sister-in-law Shannon, my nephew Julian, my brother Scott, and my dad John.
We've been dog sitting too. We watched a friend's dog, which was a lot of fun, and I think it helped in a lot of ways with the transition. Then Tallulah came to stay with us. She's an American Bulldog, she belongs to my daughter, my son-in-law and my grandson, and she's a real sweetheart.
When they first got her, my grandson was very little. We would ask him all the time, "What kind of dog is Tallulah?" And he would say, "An American Bulldog." And where is she from? Dejectedly, "America." It was very cute.
We traveled all day Monday, and I was back at work on Tuesday.
While I was away, clients had been calling me up looking for more people. So I left with a flood of work, came back to a backlog, and then more got added to the mix.
It's been a very, very busy past few days of catching up with work, but I'm grateful for it.
Like I said, the pictures never really do it justice. Beautiful scenery is great, and I love seeing animals in the wild. But for me, the highlight was some amazing quality time with my lovely wife. I can only hope we are lucky enough to have even more adventures in the years to come.
