|
Welcome friends and family! For 2012, our big trip was to Alaska. The trip was originally planned as a (somewhat belated) birthday present for Sharon's Mom, but took on the new purpose of celebrating her retirement as well. We traveled with Sharon's folks, Roger and MaryLou, and Sharon's brother David. We had a great time and were all surprised to find we can still travel as a family without going completely nuts (perhaps because we are already?). There were three main parts to the trip. The first was seeing bears in Katmai National Park, the second was to Seward and the Kenai Fjords National Park, and the final portion was to Denali National Park. Of the more than 3000 pictures we took, we managed to cull them down to our favorites, presented here. Many of the photos can be expanded by clicking on them. Enjoy, Sharon & Dan |
| Flying to Katmai (June 29-30, 2012)
After a brief night in Anchorage, we got up at the crack of dawn to get back on a plane - this time, a little propeller plane. We flew to Kiulik where we switched to a float plane for the next hop to Katmai. |
 |
|
 On our first plane, from Anchorage to Kiulik, we got amazing views of cloud banks. |
 In Kiulik we switched to the float plane. Our pilot, Amos, at the left, was really nice. He turned out to be our pilot again for the return flight. |
 Flying relatively close to the ground gave us a perspective we rarely experience. |
 This island looked other-wordly, like it was hovering over some sort of infinite space. |
| Bears at Katmai (June 29-30, 2012)
We had so many good bear pictures, it was difficult to trim them down to a manageable number. Since there are still quite a few, they are on their own page. Please click here to see the bears. |
| Katmai (June 29-30, 2012)
We saw some cool wildlife besides the bears while on our jaunt to Katmai. |
 We saw this cute snowshoe hare in Kiulik on our way to Katmai. |
 |
 We watched some beautiful bald eagles at Katmai. |
 |
 |
 |
 The magpies were beautiful when their blue feathers glinted in the sun. |
 |
 We were there early during salmon spawning, |
 so we only saw about one fish jump up the falls every minute. |
 Common Merganser female duck with chicks. |
 On the way back to Anchorage, we stopped in King Salmon instead of Kiulik. |
 Like clockwork, another float plane landed while ours took off. |
 We also saw some "wildlife" in King Salmon... Mom West ordered wine, which at this bar came in a box equivalent to half a bottle! Luckily, it was no problem for that party girl. |
 We took a larger plane from King Salmon to Anchorage and saw a lovely "late afternoon" sun at 7pm. |