Alaska was inspiring. Truly inspiring! You forget how majestic and awesome real wilderness is, and how important it is to preserve, until you're standing in the midst of God's handiwork. It was hard to come back to the congested, polluted Bay Area. My mom had a wonderful time. I think watching her experience it was the better part of my experience. We were blessed with great weather, particularly our second day in Denali when we had the best views of Mt McKinley they've had in 30 years, or so out guides told us. Unfortunately, my camera batteries decided to die that morning and I wasn't able to get any good pictures of her. In fact, my pictures don't do any of what I saw justice. And it doesn't help that Target keeps fucking up the disks. I've taken them back once because the color is washed out, there are scratch-like marks in the digital photos that aren't on the negatives and there is a very noticeable purple line running down the middle of every picture. And I have to take them back a second time because the replacements they gave me aren't any better. The printed out pictures are fine so it is definitely something wrong with their scanning process. I will most likely be investing in a digital camera before too long. Based on my experiences recently, there has been a definite decline in the quality of developing in recent years. Anyway, I digress. We saw killer whales and humpback whales, harbor seals and sea lions. My mom swears she saw a sea otter and I was the only one of us to see a bald eagle. We also saw bears (a mama bear and her two cubs and then later a bear eating off a caribou carcass), a wolf, moose (a cow and her calf and then down the road a bit, two bulls), Dall Sheep and a herd of caribou. We were there during their very short autumn so the colors of the landscape were just gorgeous; greens, yellows, golds, reds, purples.

My favorite part of the trip was visiting a dog mushing camp. They had about 50 dogs in the yard and we were allowed to go up to every one of them and pet and love on them. Some of them had been lead dogs on winning Iditorod and Yukon Quest sled teams. They had some puppies too but they were too young for us hold.

My second favorite part of the trip was cruising into the Tracy Arm. For the most part, I could have taken or left the cruise part of our trip. It was nothing special. Except for waking up the morning of our third day at 5:30 AM and, feeling claustrophobic in our cabin, I went out onto the deck for some air and was surprised to see icebergs floating in the most vibrantly blue/green water I have ever seen. Because of the early hour I was completely alone and it was so quiet and serene and so beautiful. I'm lucky to get these great solitary moments on big trips like this. I was given the most beautiful sunrise on Mont St. Michel on a trip to Europe and the beauty of those moments has been one of my most treasured memories, just as this morning will be from this trip.

I won't continue to bore you with a complete recap of the trip. I'll have photos online soon (if I can ever get decent disks made) and I'll post a link so you can view them if you are so inclined.