Grandma and Mikey and Jessica Went To the Taku Inlet and All I Got Was This Digital Photo...

Jan, Mike and Jessica blessed us with a wonderful visit a week ago. Jess flew up a few days earlier, and then Jan and Mike for a week... a great chance to get out and do some touron things. Yeah, like shop at the end-o'-the-season sale at the Alaska T-Sirt Company... wandering around downtown with a big red plastic bag marks a touron as sure as a tattoo on the forehead.

Still, we did some cool stuff. I got to almost kill Mom (death by heart attack) on a hike at the top of the Mt. Roberts Tram...


The sun came out, and it was beautiful. We walked a half-mile loop, sorry that I forgot about the up-hill halfway thru, Mom. The Little One and I ran up a side trail to a large wooden cross, a memorial to a priest who, over a hundred years ago, hiked into the mountains to tend to the spiritual needs of the miners. Along the way, we ran into an 84-year old coot with a pair of binoculars... he pointed out a half-dozen mountain goats and some dall sheep on the opposite ridge of Mount Juneau, a couple miles distant. Days like that remind us how blessed we are to live here.

Back to the whale picture: Julie and I couldn't afford to take the entire time away from work (I mean, somebody's got to support this bunch), so they took a day and went on a tour boat south to the Taku Inlet. So that evening, Julie and I got treated to someone else's pictures of them having a great time in a beautiful place without us.


No, there was no digital manipulation of the picture, the blue of the floating berg-lets is real (there's another dozen pictures of the same). I guess the glacial ice has been so compressed that it attenuates all but the the blue end of the spectrum. After the ice breaks off and starts exposure to the air and water, it loses this optical quality.
So, I guess the three of them had to endure the mean, awful boat captain move the boat thru the floating ice and up to the face of the glacier... and then forced to look at seals lounging on the ice... and then have to watch orcas and humpbacks on the way back to town. How cruel. I am so glad that Julie and I got to go to work instead, and miss all that torture !!

They also went out the end of the road to take a look around. It was another sunny and glorious SE Alaska day, with the sea and the sky nearly the same color, and the snow on the Chilkat Mountains in the distance. They took this picture at Echo Cove. I think they are jealous, but they would never admit it.

We ate some great Thai food at our local world-class eatery, bbq'ed some marvelous red salmon, and had Danielle and John over for my home-cooked Indian curry-feast and Cranium. All in all, the weather cooperated, we had a great visit, and they all left with an appreciation of the beauty, nature and isolation that Julie and I signed up for when we moved here. No regrets.

Lord knows that everyone who visits Juneau takes THE picture of the Mendenhall Glacier, and here's Mikey's:

When is somebody local gonna get up there and sweep the dirt off the glacier and make it pretty for the tourons...

KML