Alaska trip, Summer Solstice 1999, page three

Before leaving Seward we took a wildlife cruise and then headed back to Anchorage for the 12:30am red-eye to Seattle.

We watched this humpback surface many times over the course of 20 minutes or so. They are capable of remaining submerged for up to 30 minutes but this one came up about every minute.

Here s/he is again. (hmmmm...how does one tell the sex of a humpback without investigating closely. If you know... email us)

Spent awhile up close to a glacier that was calving huge ice blocks into the ocean. The sounds were as impressive as the sights. This was the type of boat we were on.

Also saw otters, sea-lions, seals, puffins (and many other types of seabirds), eagles, a bear from a distance, some mountain goats.

We took off for Homer that night at around 7pm. Got to Homer at about 10:30pm; only saw one moose on the drive. It was huge. The next day we took a little walk along the beach in Homer and saw dozens of bald eagles. Found a very cool bakery/coffee shop (Sisters). Left town about 5pm for the Russian River to see if we could see any salmon jumping up the falls.

Here are the falls. We saw many salmon in the water and quite a few jumping up. There is a fish ladder there but it takes them a while to figure that out. The dumb, strong ones actually make it up these falls.

We were still at the falls at 8pm and we had a flight from Anchorage at 12:30am. Drove back to the city; it was light the whole time...and when our plane took off.

The End. (thanks for stopping by)