This morning was brilliant sunshine. Today’s aim was to drive the long trip back to Anchorage including some stops of interest before flying out late tonite and overnite for Denver then immediately onto Los Angeles where we are stationed for a whole day before the really long flight home. Today’s features included two wayside stops to see Mt McKinley and a chance black bear sighting. Both Denali viewing points were at either end of the Denali State Park which is another special area but run by the state of Alaska as opposed to the national park run by the federal government. Both viewing points were spectacular because we had a sunny day and clouds were almost non existent. The South site was interesting because we were high up on a cliff overlooking a vast wide river ... read more

Well last night’s sleep was interesting, it never got really dark and twilight was probably a better way to describe the 4 or so hours of night. This morning we caught the 10:30 am 6 hr return bus into the Denali Nat Park and almost immediately, critters started appearing. First a gray wolf (gray to white) trotted on the road just in front of our bus for about 50m before catching a small rodent and disappearing into the grassy undergrowth - we know wolf sightings are quite rare so what a start to today. Then we came across a mother grizzly with two 2 year old cubs (they are all light brown to cream coloured) and she also trotted along in front on the road for a while, soon after that we met up with a ... read more

Today is the start of the last leg of the trip. No problems all this morning, our pre arranged coach trip from the boat at Whittier to Anchorage.. 60 miles away went off without a hitch. We picked up the rental car, another Chevy Cobalt at the airport and off we went. Anchorage is about the size of Geelong 250,000 pop if that’s a fair comparison. Its pretty flat, has some big shopping centres. Although the temp is 11 degrees and sunny, many people are in T shirts (but not us). The traffic appears to be like Canada, that is, much less than the continental US. It doesn’t feel like we are in the US... but we are, the nearby FBI Building proves that! We saw Mt McKinley this afternoon from the bayfront, 250 miles away ... read more

This beautiful sunny morning we were 50 degrees north of the equator in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Glacier Bay is a deep narrow inlet where many millions of years ago, a giant glacier receded to let the sea come in. Usually two cruise ships enter this bay each day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. A National Parks Ranger boards the ship and gives a permit to enter and then makes a running commentary of the area from the ships bridge. We headed to the end of the inlet to Margarite Glacier and to Grand Pacific Glacier. As we sailed in, either side of us the mountains were snow capped to about half way down, then some scattered trees and some scrub before the stone covered shoreline. In the sea, a few small ice ... read more

We woke this morning to find the ship berthed here in Juneau, the capital of Alaska. The pop is 30,000 without cruise ships (4 in here today). The ships berth right close to town just as they do in Ketchikan. The main town difference here, is that Juneau is larger, looks more prosperous, has the usual tourist shops which seem to account for most of the city shops. Outside the immediate town limits is the suburbs that have the more usual shops and services. We took a ride on the Skyway Tram to the top of Mount Roberts, which offered a very scenic view looking back down over the harbour and the city. We saw our first up close bald eagle up there; she was in an aviary after being rescued after being shot. Otherwise, there ... read more