A Full-time Life

Category: The Whole USA

  • KENAI FJORDS N.P. by boat

     

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    We went on a dinner cruise to see Kenai Fjords National Park from Resurrection Bay.   (You know you're boat people when you are ready for another cruise after only getting off the ferry three days earlier. )  

     

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    We saw this colony of stellar sea lions, whales, dolphins, and birds.  All of which (except these lazy guys) moved too fast for me to get pictures from a moving boat.  

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    But the salmon/prime-rib buffet dinner (prepared on board) was delicious and the scenery amazing.    

     

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    This is one of the isolated places in the bay where men were stationed during WWII to man radar or anti-submarine equipment.  Gives new meaning to living 'out in the middle-of-nowhere'.

     

    Several companies offer similar cruises.  The one we chose,  Major Marine,  has a National Park Ranger on board to provide narration and answer questions.

     

    LINKED (I hope) TO: SCENIC WEEKENDS  and  OUR WORLD TUESDAY.  Thank you to the hosts.

  • VIEWS ( and reviews) OF OUR INSIDE PASSAGE

     

     

    As usual when we are on a roadtrip, I am about a week behind on posts.  We are currently exploring the Kenai Peninsula in our camper-van, but this is about last week's journey to get from the "lower 48" to Alaska.  We traveled on  the Kennicott, part of the State's Ferry System.  

     

     

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    Boarding the Kennicott

      We loved this way to travel.  The spectacular views along the Inside Passage (from Bellingham Washington to Whittier Alaska) were the best part of the journey.  We had short  amounts of time to spend off the boat at each port of call (just while the crew unloaded and loaded cars and passengers).

     

    Bellingham to ketchikan

    Bellingham to Ketchikan 676 miles

    We also quite enjoyed just being on the ship.  This kind of travel is  casual and laid back … perfect for us.   Lots of sunny lounges with lovely windows for the view  (or to read …  some people played cards or did puzzles).     There's a walk deck all around the ship as well, with a couple of quieter reading lounges on the upper decks too.    

     

    Ketchikan to juneau

    Ketchikan to Juneau 338 miles

     

     

    The food on board was good, with way more fresh fruit and vegetables than we expected.  Lots of fish, salad bar, soups.  The cost of meals is not included in the fare (it's a ferry boat, not a cruise ship) and this actually suited us fine because we could choose what we wanted without the niggling feeling of not getting one's money's worth because everybody else is eating more.   A small bar/cocktail lounge was next to the dining room — no liquor was allowed anywhere else on the ship, including in the dining area.  

     

     

    Juneau to yakutat

    Juneau to Yakutat 269 miles

     Sleeping arrangements on the ferry were adequate, not luxurious.  You are not allowed to sleep in or use your RV or vehicle, but there are two or three time each day when you can go below for fifteen minutes if you need to get something out of it.   We had a stateroom with our own (small) bathroom.  I appreciated having our own   temperature control.   Some people just camp out on the upper deck, in tents or they sleep on lounge chairs or the floor (as if they were on a Greyhound bus or a train).     

     

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    Yakutat to Whittier 346 miles

     

    We had less than an hour in the remote fishing village of Yakutat, but were able to climb up a small hill to buy a latte from a shop that pretty much relies on twice weekly ferry visits for income.  We also found a (rare) sandy beach.   We wished we'd had more time here.  

    Shortly after we left port, our  Captain took a bit of a detour in order to move close to a glacier and ice field near Mt St Elias.   A scenic highlight in a trip filled with wonderful scenery!

    Linking to OUR WORLD  and MOSAIC MONDAY with thanks to the hosting team.  

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • HEADING NORTH

    North to Alaska! 

     

    Alaska state ferry(Alaska State Ferry System photo)

     

    On Saturday afternoon we boarded the Alaska Ferry in Bellingham Washington.  (We've  been planning this adventure since last winter —  unusual for us  to make RV reservations that far ahead of time — but these ferries fill up fast!)

    We'll be on the boat for five days; then camping and exploring throughout Alaska for as long as we can.    (As long as we can stand camping in the Roadtrek and/or as long as we don't get too cold.  Whichever comes first.)

     

    Roadtrek at FRS

     

     I would say we plan to stay until we've seen everything, but I know there is no chance of that.  We have spent months in  states much smaller than this one and still wish we could visit again because we missed so much.  But we will do our best.

    We are SO excited to have  this chance to visit this new (to us) State.   And can't wait to experience for ourselves the wonderful animals and scenery that we've read and heard so much about.   And can't wait to share our pictures.

     

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    computer station in the RoadTrek

    BUT there is no WiFI on board the ferry.  So I will  not be able to link or post (or visit any blogs)  until we disembark and reach our first campspot.  

     

       

     REVISED MONDAY morning.  I may be able to link this post to OUR WORLD TUESDAY.  We are in Ketchikan for a couple of hours  and have cell service and can use our personal hotspot. I will try to link  up as Alaska  is four hours earlier than Eastern time, so this week's OW might be up before we hit open water and lose our phone connection.  We've already seen some beautiful scenery and the boat has everything we need!

    At any rate, we have now set foot  on Alaska soil — walked an hour after we docked — but  had to be back on the boat an hour before we're scheduled to take off again.  

  • (not exactly a) MEMORY of FOXES*

     

    * (Our memories, but not my pictures.)    These are guest photos by our son Geoff, who said it was OK to  blog them.    

     

    Whenever we visit Geoff and Lisa we always look forward to watching the fox den in the vacant lot next-door to their home. 

    From the  picture window or the side yard,  we have watched the fox family  – two adults and (in different years) different numbers of kits.    But I have never been able to get good pictures.

     

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    So we were delighted to get these pictures (taken early last month) by e-mail.   Geoff says that they are now seeing a litter of six emerging from the den.   

     

    Fox play

     

     

    Bittersweet memories, because the lot (which has been vacant for as long as  G&L have lived there) is now slated for development.  There's a nearby greenbelt where we've also seen foxes,  so this den will probably relocate somewhere there.   I hope.

     

    Sharing with Eileen's SATURDAY CRITTERS.  Thank you Eileen.

        

  • WORKING ON THE WATER

    We like work (we could watch it all day, as the bumper sticker says).  And we like water.  So it is great fun when we can combine our two interests — watching people work on the water.

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    Back when we were traveling full-time, we spent a very interesting morning talking to these men who were setting and retrieving crawfish traps in a Louisiana Bayou.   They make their living this way.  This trip was three or four years after Hurricane Katrina and the men told us their business was just beginning to recover.  

    Earlier on this trip, we had seen gunny-bags full of crawfish being dumped on the scale at receiving stations.  And we had eaten some of them at restaurants.  I'm sorry not to have pictures of those.  It was interesting to learn how those little waterbugs get from water to  plate (actually they are usually served on a table lined with newspaper).

     

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    This is a more recent memory.   We didn't get to talk to to this window-washer, but we waved at him.   We were eating breakfast on the deck of our boat, docked across from the one he's working on — it is the casino boat moored at Fort Myers Beach.   He finished his job before the day's gamblers boarded the boat.  (I'm guessing that most of the passengers on this boat don't spend a whole lot of time gazing out the windows, but I guess they want it to look spiffy just in case.)

     

     

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    A different kind of Florida working boat —  we waved at the guys on this tugboat as we boated past it on the Caloosahatchie.  That's  a big load of pipe they are pushing to a construction project somewhere down the river.   

      

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    BOTTOM CLEANERThis guy has an interesting job.  He's a diver hired to clean the bottoms of boats docked for the season — here at Fort Myers Yacht Basin.  

    I always thought about divers as having romantic jobs (finding treasure or learning about sealife), but we've learned that there are quite a few (slightly more ordinary) jobs around here that require their services.  

    This post is shared with all the wonderful photo bloggers at OUR WORLD TUESDAY.   Thanks to the team of hosts who bring us this opportunity each week.

  • QUAIL QUOSSING

     

           Thank you to Lesley for hosting SIGNS SIGNS.  

     

    A couple of explanations — or disclaimers — or something — are in order.    

     

    I found these lost pictures this week  – in the process of doing a massive file cleanup (AKA photo dump).    The pictures only go together in my mind… they weren't taken at the same time or in the same place.  

    The sign was in Ajo Arizona where we stayed  on our Fall  2011 roadtrip.   The birds (and they are quail) were taken in a different year — through our window the last time we had snow in our backyard .  This was in Oregon  in November 2010 — the last time we spent a winter there).  

     

     

    Quail quossing sign ajo rv pk (2013_11_11 18_33_27 UTC)

     

    The second explanation… for my dear blogging friends in France, Japan, and other countries:  there is a deliberate misspelling on the sign, just for fun.  

     

     

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     I'll be dumping the quail because  it's a  rather horrifyingly bad picture, but I'll probably keep the sign for a while just because I think it's so funny.  Here's another sign from the same Arizona town.  It tells you a lot about that area:

     

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  • LOVELAND MEMORIES

     

     

    A Friday Flashback for Valentine's Day  from the romantically-named city of Loveland Colorado.

     

     

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    Make a Wish!

     

    May all your days be filled with joy.

     

      

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    Both pictures are from Benson Sculpture Park in Loveland.

     

     

     

    Linked to SKYWATCH FRIDAY because beautiful blue Colorado skies are ALWAYS worth remembering and always worth linking to that lovely meme.  Thanks to Yogi, Sylvia, and Sandy for hosting.

  • FRIDAY FLASHBACK – YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK

     

    No, we have not decamped back to the other side of the country.  We're still happy here in sunny Florida.   But sometimes along about this time of year I start to miss the mountains a little bit.  And so it is  fun to look through the archives for some pictures with a little elevation.   

     So these pictures are from Yosemite, a National Park that we visited way back in 2004.   We made many family  trips to California when we lived in the Pacific Northwest (Washington and Oregon) but because we'd always heard how crowded the park was in the summer we had never gone there.  

     

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     So it was just the two of us on this RV trip and  of course by that time, we were traveling in all seasons (all the time).  We went to Yosemite in April of that year.   

     We were told that the waterfalls dry up in the summer, so we were very fortunate to be there in early spring.  They were spectacular.

     

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     We had to park our RV miles and miles away from the park — it is a good thing that diesel was cheaper back then — we made several hundred-mile round trips from our camping spot into the park.  Once we got there, we were able to ride our bikes around … the park had great bike trails.    We probably wouldn't be able to do that now … the only bike riding we've done for years now is around a flat RV Park.

     

     

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    This is El Capitan — probably the most photgraphed feature of Yosemite.

     

    I am linking to Gemma's SCENIC WEEKENDS  (a favorite meme I've missed way too often lately) and  to MOSAIC MONDAY.  

  • FACES OF SOUTH DAKOTA

     

     We visited Chief Crazy Horse while we were in South Dakota  last month.  I wrote about this favorite place after the third time we were there in  June, 2008.  The massive monument has been a work in progress since 1948.      

    Click here to  link to my earlier post, which tells more of the story and here to visit the  official Crazy Horse website.  

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     It was very cold and icy this time.   I took the above picture through a window inside the visitor center.

    The view below is from my 2008 archives and it was taken from the outside deck.  A scale model of what the finished statue will look like stands at the edge with the statue beyond.  This time, the scale model had been put away out of the weather and the porch was slick with frost.

      

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     The sculptors are focusing now on the horse's head and the hand.   It was a little difficult to see what progress has been made over the past five years.   It is slow going and I doubt if we'll ever see it completed.  

    Finished or not, I still find the stories of Crazy Horse and of the sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, fascinating.    Korczak died in 1982 but he left detailed plans for the rest of the work.  His widow Ruth and seven of his twelve children are still directly involved in the project which receives no public funding.

     We paid our brief respects to the Chief on our way to spend time in beautiful Custer State Park (shown in several previous posts).    We had decided not to go to Mount Rushmore, which is in the same area.   We'd seen it before and so had Geoff (and we knew it hadn't changed). 

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    But we were in for a surprise.    After we explored Custer Park, we decided to take the "long-cut" back to our Rapid City motel by driving the scenic Peter Norbeck National Scenic Byway.    

    As we drove along admiring the Black Hills in the distance, we suddenly realized we were looking at Mount Rushmore from the "backdoor."  

    There were no signs here pointing to the monument (and no background information about it's history or meaning).    But we thought it was actually more fun to discover this "secret" viewpoint for ourselves than it had been to go in at the front door in earlier years.  

    Click here for the link to the National Park Service official Mt. Rushmore website.

     

    Here is a view of these four famous faces with a close-up lens:

     

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     Linking this last view of our roadtrip visit to South Dakota with OUR WORLD.   

    Thanks to Lady Fi and the team.  

     

     

  • FINE DINING

     

    A selection of funny signs on the walls of  yet another of the" fine dining" establishments that we seem to frequent.  (It might have something to do with the fact that we don't much like to dress up any more …. restaurants with signs on the walls definitely tend to  have a  relaxed atmosphere.)

     

     

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    This was in Clarkston Washington during one of our summer side trips and, in spite of the silliness (or maybe because of it), the food was good and so was the service.

     

    Linked to Lesley's SIGNS SIGNS (of course).  Thank you!!!