Beautiful Alaska...can I go back tonight?

Guess what these pictures are of...



So we were laughing with friends last night about something I would post on my blog if I had one. I was griping about how I've had a lot on my mind lately and creating a blog wasn't at the top of my list. Funny that less than 24 hours later, I have a blog and the time I spent creating it was much more fun than doing whatever I should have been doing today!

Anyway, a few weeks after dental school graduation, Mike and I bit the big one and went on the most amazing cruise, just the two of us! We had no difficulty occupying our time without children, work and school! The boat was a blast, our balcony room was a must, and Alaska was incredible! Eating at the restaurants was like having three fancy dates a day! We ate too much, took naps when we wanted to and went on some amazing shore excursions. The two most memorable were the whale watching in Juneau, and the sea plane ride in Prince Rupert, Canada. During our whale watching excursion we saw three orcas, right after our guide said they don't usually see orcas. Then we happened upon a group of 10-12 humpback whales (again something our guides was very unusual). Soon after we discovered the whales, our captain stopped the boat and turned on some speakers that allowed us to hear the whales under water. As we were standing around waiting to see where the whales would surface, Mike notices a cool bird and zoomed in to take a picture. The next thing we new, all ten or so whales surfaced about 10 feet away from our boat! Mike pointed the camera at the whales and took as many pictures as our slow camera would capture in the few seconds before the whales disappeared again. Mike was confident he got some excellent pictures that were sure to get a lot of oohs and aahs from everyone at home. However, upon review of the pictures, much to Mike's dismay, and thanks to the stupid bird that flew by, we caught about 3 square inches of the whales that we could almost touch! Hence the picture posted above!

The other amazing excursion we went on was the sea plane ride. Mike got to ride co-pilot and I sat behind the pilot. The pilot was telling everyone that he often sees grizzly bears! I was really excited, I really wanted to go home and tell everyone I had seen a grizzly bear too! Well, sure enough as we approached our landing on the lake by the waterfall, the pilot spotted the bears (a mama and a baby) on his side of the plane. As soon as the bears heard the plane they headed for the trees. Mike had the camera and was sure he was getting an awesome shot (across the pilot) of our furry friends. So let me direct you to the top right corner of the second picture above. Those two brown spots that look like boulders are really big bears. No really!

So the moral of this long story is, when you go to Alaska, bring two cameras with a fast shutter speed! Alaska was better than I imagined it would be. If anyone gets the chance to go, jump on it. I would run away to Alaska tonight if I could! Here are a few more of my favorite Alaska pictures.

A shot from our balcony!

Sawyer Glacier is right around the corner, but because of all the ice, this is as close as we got. So our 1000 ft ship flipped a U and we were off to Skagway!

That's right, Mike was reading Twilight on our balcony! I read the book in three days on the cruise (which is unbelievable for me) and then told Mike he had to read it so we could talk about it. After all, what else did we have to do with our time!

A view of our boat from the sea plane!