Our first attempt at fly fishing. No luck, but beautiful setting. That's Barometer mountain in the background. 

One of our last days of vacation. We had to see the Musk Ox farm. The Musk Ox is Alex Trebeck's favorite animal. He "adopted" (like sponsored) two of them. Their under hair is call Quiviut. Its several times warmer than wool for its weight. Some people started up a co-op with native women in the villages. They were taught to knit intricate traditional patterns for scarves, hats, and other garments. Pricey stuff... i think a scarf goes for $200. Warm and cozy though. (for more info see out archive blog dated September 26).

Pretty Glacier and lake on the drive back towards Anchorage. 

 

Lots of incredible mountain flowers. 

Hard to appreciate the vastness of this area, but its huge and we're right on up there with the mountains. If you look hard you can see a couple of people. 

Left over Chinese for lunch on the way out from Valdez. We're just about to cross over Thompson's Pass, one of the most beautiful drives ever. 

 

 

Yeah, finally made it to Shoup Glacier. We happened to meet out water taxi guy here. He was taking another group out to see the glacier. We had a bit of a struggle in getting here because the tide was pushing water out since it was low tide. We had to hike our kayak in by foot along the river. The last bit we kayaked, but the water taxi guy helped us stabilize our boat so we could get in. Lucky he was around.

See, we really are paddlng. 

Last day of kayaking and lots of water to cross. Cool clouds, maybe they won't rain on us today. 

This campsite had a wood platform for the tents, a fire pit and a bear box. It was nice to have the platform on this particular day since it rained most of the day. Its always strange while kayaking when your stuff gets more wet from rain than from kayaking. 

Karina getting ready for bed after a long day of kayaking. 

Sunset at 9:30pm at our beach camp site. This was after our first real day of kayaking. We were both pretty happy to get the break. 

Campsite, Day 1. We hung our bear-proof food canister up in a tree a ways back behind me, near where we ate. We also carried bear spray with us everywhere. Never saw a single one. 

 

 

We came across a rookery and scared some birds off their nests, so we tried to explore quickly so the little eggs wouldn't get too cold. We think this is a kittiwake or maybe seagull nest. Our friend Sven said his family used to collect seagull eggs to eat. Yum Seagull egg! 

 

 

I'm touching an iceberg! It was interesting to see how this ice was clear whereas the larger 'bergs were opaque. 

This was a beautiful time of day. After eating an early dinner we went back out during high tide. That meant more of the ice was floating. It's 7:40pm here. The sun set around 9:30. 

Here's Chris. He really was on this trip - in the back of the boat behind me. He usually takes all the pictures (and writes most of the blog) but every now and again I have to do my share. 

Columbia Glacier is in the center there. It looks like a snow covered road that has been driven on a few times. Actually, not the most pretty image, but consider that it's much, much, much bigger than any road you've driven.