Sunday, September 14, 2008

Not in Texas Anymore

So we were driving down the road and stopped when we spotted this near the side of the road:

And later, this:



Obviously, I was nowhere near home. Steve and I took a cruise to Alaska in late August, and we saw these bears on a day we rented a car and drove to the Yukon Territory in Canada. Nothing but beautiful scenery hour after hour, and five unexpected black bears along the way.

Speaking of unexpected, who knew that in the midst of all the lushness, lakes, and waterfalls we'd come across "World's Smallest Desert," originally covered by a glacial lake:

This was one day of our three-week trip, and I'm not usually one to take landscape shots, but the scenery was so beautiful I had to try to capture some of it. Of course the pictures don't compare to being there, but I just had to keep snapping. The cruise was excellent, and we also explored the interior for ten days after that. Here are a few shots. First, Mt. McKinley from Denali Park on what we heard was "the clearest viewing day all season."

"Glacier landing" near Mt. McKinley

Speaking of glaciers, I have to post at least a couple of my hundreds of shots of the many glaciers we saw on the cruise and afterwards.



The Roadhouse in Talkeetna, where we spent a night and enjoyed sourdough wildberry pancakes after our flight.

Did I mention the gorgeous scenery? By the time we arrived in Denali National Park, fall had arrived.


And we saw lots of moose, a few grizzlies, caribou, dall sheep, a wolf,and other critters in Denali. This was a particularly large bull moose we saw.

I'll try to post more later. I haven't even mentioned the beautful flowers we saw throughout the trip. Hanging baskets and planters with larger flower blossoms than I've ever seen, such as here, for starters:

Alaska is beautiful!

2 comments:

Aurora Guy said...

You make travel in the Far North look easy, Carol. Like it's an everyday occurrence you'll be driving down the road and see a huge bull moose and an itchy black bear and Denali clear as a bell. OK, those are every-other-day occurrences, right? Maybe twice weekly? Well, the truth is, you just never know what to expect, and it looks like everything lined up for you guys. Glad you had a nice visit to my neighborhood. Now come on back in the winter and show us your mettle. :-)

donna joy said...

gorgeous! only in alaska could you drive down the road and see bear and moose huh? between the pictures you and randy have shown me, might just want to go there someday!