Alaska, Day Eleven-C

As we neared the end of our ferry ride, we passed this beautiful lighthouse.  My favorite.

We finally arrived at Gustavus.  A small bus was waiting for us to drive us to the Glacier Bay Lodge where we would be staying two nights.

Glacier Bay Lodge

The Lodge is inside Glacier Bay National Park.  It is a beautiful place situated on the edge of Bartlett Cove. 

The Tlingit and Hoonah Indians lived on this bay for centuries.  Recently, the Huna Tribal Hut was built as a place to celebrate the history of these people.  

Craftsmen have created artworks around the area.

What a beautiful place to spend two nights!

Alaska, Day Eleven-B

 Whales!

As we were traveling through the various channels around islands towards Gustavus, we encountered a pod of Orca whales.  They were frolicking in the waters near our ferry boat.

First, someone who was standing outside on the deck noticed the spouts and yelled, "Whales!"

Can you see the spouts on the left, way out in the distance?

You can barely see the black spot of one whale's back.

More appeared, showing off their breaching and diving skills.  This area of Southeast Alaska is home to many orca whales.  They live near the coastlines and feed from the many fish (mostly salmon) that also call this area home.

Then the ferry drove closer to them.

As the ferry moved on up the bay, one popped up to say goodbye.

Too many photos... but I couldn't never tire of watching the whales.

Alaska, Days Ten and Eleven

After we returned to Juneau, we decided to just relax the next day.  Evidently, we really relaxed because I don't have photos of our wanderings around Juneau that day.  I know we returned to Heritage Coffee and enjoyed our morning brews.  We walked around downtown and revisited some shops and restaurants.

But the next morning we were up and out of our hotel bright and early to catch another ferry ride.  This time our destination was Glacier Bay.  I have to say that the four hour ferry trip was one of my favorites.  Why?  We saw fishing boats and whales!

I snapped forty (yes, I wrote FORTY) pictures of the whales.  No, I won't bore you with all forty photos... in fact, I am still working through to organize them.  So sorry, today all you get are fishing boat photos.

The weather was cloudy and that made for some great pictures; they almost look like old fashioned black and white photos.

And a lighthouse!

Third Friday Fave Fives of October

 Another week of busy days.  But also another week of many blessings.  Friday Fave Fives gives me an opportunity to share five events or thoughts or actions that made me grateful this week.  Use the link to join in and share yours or just read what others have written. Here are my five blessings:

1.  Do you ever wake up in the morning and just go about your day as usual?  Normally, I do too.  But this morning as I woke up, I noticed the sun beginning to shine through the windows.  It struck me that I just accept that the sun will rise every morning and move across the sky in its usual way every day.  But today I stopped to just be amazed that sun does that.  God created an amazing world for us to live in.  Let's not take our sun, moon and stars for granted.

2.  Autumn is such a fun season.  Everyone mentions pumpkins, Halloween, pumpkin spice lattes, and sweater weather.  Me?  I love the leaves on the ground.  I love to walk through them and toss them around.  And I love watching them fall from the trees as the wind blows.  On our walk today, Mia (nurse daughter) turned around and grinned at me as I happily shuffled through the leaves.

3. On that walk today with the dogs, we passed a deer.  It was calmly sitting on the other side of the creek along our path.  As we walked past with two loud crazy dogs, it just lounged in the grass under the trees and watched.  It never moved or pranced away.  Wild life animals never fail to amuse me.

4. Last night, The Professor and I spent the evening (total of five hours) volunteering at the Nightbirde Foundation Night of Hope.  Did you ever watch America's Got Talent?  Nightbirde is the name of a young woman who won a gold bell ring on AGT.  Her actual name was Jane but she went by Nightbirde.  Not long after being on the show, Jane died of recurring breast cancer.  Her brothers attend the same church as we do, and our church hosts the annual event Night of Hope in our building which helps raise funds to provide women with what they need as they go through chemo and surgery for breast cancer.

5.  Our weather has been sunny and warmish.  That means I have been outside in my garden every day.  The garden beds are starting to look a bit more organized and cleaned up.  It is so satisfying to get the fall garden chores done.  Still have lots to do, but I am making progress.

Just a picture of a tree we passed on our walk to make you smile...

Blogtober, Day 22

 Another summer blossom that showed up in autumn.  Cosmos.  As I was driving away from home this morning, I noticed that a cosmos was blooming in our front garden, so this afternoon I went out and took a photo of it before it wilted.

Now I am wondering if a rhododendron or a sunflower will suddenly bloom tomorrow.

Blogtober, Day 21

 When I was outside this afternoon cutting away more tomato plants which had died in the recent freeze, I happened to glance over at the hibiscus bush.  Imagine my surprise when I noticed a bloom.  In mid October.  Crazy weather.  Hibiscus flowers bloom for only one or two days, so I think this one will be wilted by tomorrow morning.  But it was a treat for it to bloom so late in the season.

There were a few ripe red raspberries, but I didn't take a photo of them before I picked them off the bush and popped them in my mouth.  Yum!

We are supposed to have a bit of a freeze again tonight, so it will be interesting to check tomorrow for what plants have died and which ones have bloomed.

Blogtober, Day 20

 Today I spent many hours outside in my back garden.  I pulled a couple of buckets of feral borage, a few dandelions and some unknown plants from the vegetable garden.  Sadly, the tomato plants have died, so I began cutting them down.  Not much is left except for kale, parsley, rosemary and lemon balm.

And two zinnia blooms.

Alaska, Day Nine

 On your last day in a lovely Alaskan town, what do you do?  You go for a hike!  (Isn't that normal?  Doesn't everyone do that?)

A word about the hiking sticks we used.  Evidently, people find the sticks in the woods and fix them up as hiking sticks and leave them at trail heads for whoever needs a pole for their hike.  We found these two sticks and used them as we hiked.  Then at the end of trail, we left them where we found them for the next hikers to use.

Truthfully, if we had known just how steep and rugged this trail was, we might not have done this hike.

Can you see the cruise ships down in the harbor?  Yes, we were that high up the mountain.

But it was worth it to be able to hike around this beautiful serene lake.

Even the spider web was beautiful.

After we descended back into Skagway, we wandered around the streets a bit and then joined a couple from Israel that we had met on the ferry on the way up to Skagway for a delicious dinner of fish and chips and a couple of hours of great conversation.   All in all, it was a good day.