Whittier

At the end of the tunnel, there is the lovely little town of Whittier.  It’s mainly a port town, altho there are several shops and little restaurants for visitors to check out!

 

 

Isn’t this a lovely sight?  I loved imagining that I was in that speed boat, racing to wherever it was racing to!  Wouldn’t it be nice to sit back and just enjoy the mountains, view of the town, ships coming into and leaving port – ah, I could go on and on!

 

There were seagulls galore!  I can’t tell you how many shots I took of this guy and his seagull cousins until I got one shot that captured the free feeling there was watching them soar and weave in the air!

 

A lovely dining spot in Whittier!  This was a seafood shack.  Now, those of you that know me well know I am not a fish or seafood person, except for shrimp.  I did have a shrimp basket, and it was incredibly tasty!  The shrimp had an interesting (good) taste to them.  When the cook walked around to check on how people liked their food, she told me that the shrimp was fresh, caught in the Whittier area, and she described their taste as “sweet”.  I would never associate that adjective with shrimp, but she was right!  That was exactly the taste – a very subtle sweet taste!

 

Here’s my favorite shot.  We had hot chocolate (me) and pop (Jeff) and shared a decadent brownie, and sat in these chairs enjoying the views.  In fact, this was where I was sitting when I took the first image of this blog post!

Enjoy!

Views from the Begich-Boggs Visitor Center

Before one enters the tunnel going to Whittier, there is the Begich-Boggs Visitor Center.  This visitor center is named after 2 politicians who were lost in an airplane crash in Alaska back in the 1970s.    Thomas Hale Boggs was a Democratic US House Representative from Louisiana and Nick Begich was a Democratic US House Representative from Alaska.  Their plane was never found.

 

This is a view from a viewpoint near the visitor center.  You can see a glacier in this view – many glaciers in Alaska – way more than I ever thought!

 

I did not think I’d see icebergs like this once we left Antarctica, back in 2009!  However, here was a very large one, just floating in the lake just outside the visitor center.  An interesting fact about icebergs – the ice area that is blue, is very, very old.  The older the ice is, the closer it gets to being transparent.  The last color that it is before becoming transparent is blue.

 

I had to include a close up of the iceberg.  I just love the ultra-blue color.  It looks so clean and fresh.

 

I included this image to give you an idea of how large things are – the mountain and the glacier.  Just check out the people at the bottom of the image!

Enjoy!

Alaska Railroad Train Ride!

While staying in the Whittier area, we took a day trip on a train operated by the Alaska Railroad, to see some glaciers and views that you can’t see from the road.  It was a fun day, with some very cool sights…

 

Here it is, coming into the station!  One cool thing about this train in particular is that the conductor on the train is a guy that we’ve seen on a cable TV show called “Railroad Alaska”!  He seemed quite pleased that I recognized him…..altho it was really Jeff who recognized him – I just had the nerve to go up and talk to him!

 

The image above and below are 2 of the glaciers that we saw on this trip.  The above glacier is called Spencer Glacier, and was called a “step glacier”.  If you look at how the glacier is flowing down (center of image), you’ll see what seem to be some peaks as the glacier has moved/grown downward.  Those are the steps.  In the image below, the Trail Glacier has a dark streak running thru it.  That streak is a moraine, of some natural occurring debris in the glacier that has risen to the top of the glacier and appears as a sort of trail down it.  I thought it was kind of cool.

 

Isn’t this guy cool?  As we moved along, this eagle sat perched on a dead tree (a favorite perch for eagles apparently), surveying his domain.  I really liked this image, because he’s in his natural environment, and truly looks majestic.  He was close to his nest, where there was an eaglet (I think that’s what a young eagle is called), so I think he was in protection mode.  I was also very lucky to get this shot, as we were in a moving train, and I was shooting thru a window, not generally conducive to a good image!

 

Another animal we were lucky enough to see was this black bear.  I applied a painting type effect to it, to make him appear a bit more like he did in reality.  He was moving, as were we, so this was the best it could be.  Still, I like it as a painting.

 

One of the neat things about this train ride was the series of tunnels we went thru.  What made it a bit different was that the tunnels were so close together.  This image captured that – we were coming out of one tunnel and would be entering and exiting another is just a few seconds.

 

This image is of a waterfall called Snow White Falls.  It got its name from the fact that there are 7 waterfalls make up this one waterfall.  What struck me about this waterfall is that it really sort of illustrates the vastness of the truly wild part of Alaska.  This is a waterfall that is invisible to you if you are driving in a car.  I couldn’t help but think about all the beauty that is out there that is invisible to just about everyone, except those intrepid explorers.

 

And, finally, one last image from the back window of the train.  A lovely day indeed!

Enjoy!