5 posts tagged “alaska”

Smooth Sailing

One thing that can be said for Alaska is that the weather is truly unpredictable. From the time we set ashore in Juneau it had rained. Not a normal rain mind you, but almost a mist of sorts. What made the various stops majestic was how the clouds seemed to hug the mountain tops in almost a tropical manner. It wasn't an "Oh Shit" type of rain, more of a "it isn't that bad" type.

Of course it was cooler than what I had been used to prior to the trip but armed with my Nike ACG gear I was well protected from the elements and even had room to tuck the camera away into my rain jacket.

As you know by now, Ketchikan was the last stop in Alaska and we pulled out around 1pm. Wouldn't you know it, as soon as we cleared the port the skies parted and the sun returned. DOH!

For the most part this evening I have been playing a mean game of tag with the Whales and Dolphins that seem to crop up everytime I don't have my camera. For example. I came up to the deck from my room to find everyone looking towards the back of the ship. Off in the distance I could see the blows of a pod of whales that apparently had passed really close to the ship. So I stood there pissed because I missed it.

Shortly after that a shipboard announcement was made that another pod was approaching the Port (Left) side of the ship. I was on the 3rd deck and my room was on the first. Surley I could make it to the room to grab the camera and back up. NOT! I realized coming back up the steps that there was no entrance to the deck on the Portside from my part of the ship, so I had to quickly make my way to the 1/2 way point of the ship before I could get outside. They were gone. DAMN!

I hung out for about another hour and took various shots of the seabirds flying around as seen in this post, before giving up and going downstairs to get changed for dinner. It was, after all, Formal night. That meant slipping into the suit. What I forgot about was that we had slipped into an additional timezone in Alaska which meant that my presumed 8pm dinner was not for another hour. Imagine the embarrassment going into the dining room to only find my table fully occupied by strangers (the early dinner session). Of course I was on the late dinner session and looked like moron not knowing what time to eat. O.K., time for a drink and off to the sports bar to kill an hour.

While sitting in the sports bar getting caught up via ESPNHD, I glance out the window and what do I see? A freakin Pod of Whales going by!!!!! DAMN, DAMN, DAMN. Nothing I could do at that point but take another sip and let them go. 10 minutes later.... ANOTHER POD!!!!!! WTF!?!?!?! I swore they were screwing with me.

Well made it to dinner, on time this time, and quickly changed, to come up for a beer and to post this vent. Damn Whales!

Ms Jackson

Early this morning we docked at Ketchikan, Alaska. By the time I was up and came up for breakfast on the 9th Deck of the ship, I was eye level with some homes built on the hillside next to the dock. The one thing about most of these ports is that the homes are generally built close to the water. Pretty scarey if you think about how prone Alaska is to earthquakes. But hey, to each his/her own.

I downed my omlette, grabbed my gear and headded out because we were only here for a relatively short time. Whoever went ashore had to be back on the boat by 12:15pm or thier asses would get left. I was not going to be made an example of.

Ketchikan is a typically quaint Alaskan town. There is one thing that Ketchikan has thought that was quite fun was Creek Street. It is a little boardwalk strip of buildings that have obviously been around since the gold rush that various shops have set up in. Some of the buildings are painted bright colors and make for some good picture taking. I don't expect I got anything unique as it was the place to go for most of the ships that were in.

After walking about and taking random shots, I decided to make today about portraits of people. I grabbed some wood on one of the tables near the dock where it was the most busy and challenged myself to sit and wait for unique shots of people. This is where we get to the picture on this blog. I have to provide some background.

You see, I noticed some reflection out of the corner of my eye and saw this black man who had been there a while and was one of the locals trying to scalp some tours or what not. However, he was talking to the woman in this picture. I was dumbfounded when I saw her. Now I could fault her for wearing that get-up, but what disturbed me more was that security on the ship, who screens everyone leaving and returning, thought it would be fun to let her off of the ship dressed like this.

A damn gold glitterball with green pants and gold shoes. Sure the sunglasses work, but absolutely nothing else on her did. I was so much in shock that it took me a second to break away from being sucked into her outfit to grab my camera and fire off a couple of snaps as she got closer to me. Now I thought she would know how rediculous she looked and give me shit for taking her picture. But no, she quickened by me to her friend and I didn't dare turn around as she proclaimed to her friend "Girl, why did you leave me, that man was all over me!" Speechless is all I can say about that comment.

Off to Victoria Island next........

Totem Eyes

Well the sunrise brought us into the bay towards Sitka, Alaska. Now, I was pretty damn tired last night so I watched some TV and was passed the F*** out by around 9pm. I got up this morning at 7:30 and went straight for the food.

What I saw out of the window was amazing. It is a rainy, overcast day here and I saw low hanging clouds over the bay with small Islands sprinkled all around us. On some of these small islands were homes. Very nice, but if a Tsunami ever came around (which can happen), these things would be gone in a heartbeat. But for now, they were cute.

The plan for today was simple, head into town, take some pictures and head back. What I didn't remember was that this place was not a dock, but a tender, which means the boat never comes to shore and you have to ride one of the larger lifeboats to and from the ship. O.k. I can do that. I love anytype of water craft anyhow.

As with Juneau, Sitka was rainy, not a normal rain but more of a heavy mist type rain. I was dressed for the weather and mentally just sucked up the fact that I was going to get wet today. The only thing I needed to make sure was that the Camera was relatively dry. It is a Nikon D-100, so it is fairly water resistant as it is. Without knowing where I wanted to go, I took a quick lap around down town and took a couple snaps there. Then over to the old Russian Church that is famous here.

As a matter of fact, I wasn't aware of this, but until the USA bought Alaska from the Russians for a little over 7 million in gold (DAMN THAT'S CHEAP), Sitka used to be the capital of the Russian Alaska Territory. So it isn't something that is completly without history. The town, mind you, is quite small and it took me about 15 minutes to walk around it.

From there it was past the marina and I took a detour down to the water front and decided to walk along the shoreline towards a location where I knew a river was. I wanted to catch some salmon trying to spawn upstream. On the way around i got some wildlife, carcasses of dead Salmon probably pulled from the water by Bald Eagles or Bear, and finally an actually Bald Eagle sitting on the shore waiting for some poor damn salmon to wander too close. I got a couple of shots of a lone salmon's back out of the water trying to get through a shallow spot, but nothing too exciting.

It was back through some wilderness reserve where I got a lot of good wooded shots and then to the Public Library where I am now for some free internet. There really isn't much more to this one pony town, so I may tender my ass back to the boat, buy some shorts and hit the sauna and hot tub to relax a bit while all of the people are still here in town.

Well catch up with everyone later. Shug... you might be better with this picture of a totem pole face as I think it suits you. lol! Thanks everyone for the comments and I might head over to Flickr now to put some pictures up on-line. Smooches everyone.....

Juneau Yellow and Blue

After a day and a half at sea our first port of call was Juneau, Alaska. Having spent 7.5 years as a kid growing up in Anchorage, Alaska I have always been very aware of the fact that Alaska is actually part of the United States. Apparently some of the people on this ship never got the memo. There was a comment about a person who was in the post office in town who asked how much it would be to mail a postcard to the States... DUH!

Well the group I am with on this cruise were all signed up for the excursion that would be held by the two pro-photographers who were the guest speakers for our cruise group. Now I could not justify a couple of things; 1. Spending $150 to have a couple of guys take me to a place that would cost me $12 bucks to go to on my own and 2. Begin in a group of people shooting the same things. Sure I might get some tips and tricks of the trade from these guys, but I really wanted to set off exploring on my own and try to get some unique shots.

We docked about 9 AM and rapidly people began streaming off of the ship. I fell in line to catch one of the shuttle busses to downtown Juneau. All in all it was painless to get there, about 5 minutes, and I was off. I set out walking through the town and snapping pictures along the way. All in all Juneau is a very picturesque town. Nothing what you would imagine a State Capital to look like. Its history is Gold plain and simple. However since the gold rush and mines pretty much closed down in the '40s it has turned its focus to tourism. And there is a lot of it.

Our ship was not the only one in port. There was a total of 4 large assed cruise boats. Now if you do the math of an average of about 900 people per boat, you can imagine the amount of cash that was dropped in town. Yes, even I bout the gifts to take home with me. Other than that, I was able to get alot of nice pictures of things and even manged to catch some Salmon trying their damndest to swim up stream to spawn (lay eggs). The only problem is, they were trying to do it not in a stream, but a man-made concrete run off that ran through town. Dumb assed fish.

At about that point the fine mist that was sprinkling on and off through the day started to thicken up and I had to seek refuge in a bar that happened to serve food. A good justification to stop for a nice Mushroom-Swiss burger. Yummy. Did a few more laps around town and then headed back to the ship where I passed the hell out for about 3 hours before getting up and meeting with some of the others in the group for drinks.

All in all, not a bad day, but I can now say "been there, done that."

Moody Seas

Well first night was a bit lame. Granted, everyone came in from many different places for this Cruise, but when I expected a festive first night, the ship was like a ghost town. Of course I had to ask the bartender at the Northern Lights what was really going on and his response was that everyone is always tired from travelling that first night so they crash.

Of course the crew was happy because he also explained to me that it was an equally long day for them. What I didn't know was that the ship came in that morning early and let the previous cruise people off then had the day to restock and clean the entire ship. That is not a small feat. Bartenders, and everyone are recruited for this massive logistical adventure. So they were pretty tired as well.

But what a life. They get to travel everywhere, see everything and of course work on days like today when we are at sea all day but people are generally happy to be here so it can't be that bad for them.

As for me today, well it is the start of the Geek Cruise seminars. This morning I got up a bit late and kind of freaked out because getting up at 8:30 am was kind of early for a vacation, but the group also scheduled a course at 8:30 am. I was awakened by my "Berthing-mate" (I'll get to that in a later post), who informed me that he was headding out to the course and that it was 8:30~! Idiot, did he not think to wake me up before he decided to leave? Whatever.

So I jumped up, into the shower then had to get up stairs to get something to eat and figure out how to get connected to the shipboard satellite internet connection, which I found out isn't really that bad at $40 for 100 minutes. Lets just say it is High-Speed dial-up where you can't leave it on all of the time so you have to connect then disconnect or your credit card get's raped at $.75 per minute.

Anyhow, had some food, checked mail and went to the course a bit late. They were covering camera controls today so I wasn't too worried about missing anything that would make me want to kick my own ass. Its noon now so we have broken for lunch. Oh, I didn't mention the other downside to cruising which is that you can eat yourself stupid as all of the food is included in your cruise. Drinks are cheaper than say, New York, but they do charge you for those (Alcoholic ones of course).

So today calls for another afternoon session as we are at sea all day making our way to Juneau, Alaska. Our instructor a guy by the name of Bill Durance and a professional photographer, showed some of the pictures he has taken on this trip in the various places we will be going and to say the least they are stunning so I can't wait. I am not signing up for their trips ashore as I am not going to pay to be a tour monkey, so I will be venturing out on my own which is when I have the most fun and don't capture the same thing 50 other people do. By the way, there are a total of 89 people on this Geek Cruise. That is a pretty good size considering it is 10% of the total population of people on this cruise. But including the crew, which is another 800, we have a good sized compliment of folks out here.