Home from Alaska!

Yeah Bo!

You were so generous with your knowledge! I loved it how you pulled out your bird book to show me WHAT we were seeing. Then a lovely explaination about what made that bird unique. (sadly all I can remember is that my favorites were fat little water types that liked to nest way inland. They were so CUTE). Anyway, you are someone that is rare. A person that is willing to take time out of their own passion (which seems to be nature) and to pass that passion on to others.

I have now left my binoculars out to view the birds in my own yard. And I'm ordering a pair of those wonderful backpack type suspenders (?) for them. I didn't take them on the cruise as they are just too heavy. But not anymore!
 
Hey Kitty........where's my lumberjack? Didn't somebody else put in a request for one too?
 
And for the record, Jami and I were marginally on speaking terms near the end of the week. Sunday at SeaTac I went off to grab a soda near my time to catch my flight and when I got back to where I left her she was gone off to the AA section of the airport.

We sat with her at SeaTac for a little while, and she was certain that a little space was needed, but not too much. It's probably better to have space than to irritate each other. That leaves less air to clear...
 
ohhh Matt, we found one. We found FOUR!

as hcmom says, "he's a lumberjack and he's MORE than OK!"

Stay tuned ...special lumber jack photo going up for bid soon!


 
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Kitty!
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I'll take one of the end fellers! One in the middle is sweet, but I can tell he's way too young!
 
I just wanted to tell everyone what a great time I had on the cruise and how much fun I had meeting all of you.

Also, to make up for not ironing or dry cleaning my clothes on the ship, I wanted to submit this post-factum alteration:

bluharmony.com/pic/nomorestains.jpg (you'll have to paste the link into your browser to see the pic, since I don't yet have the posting privileges to include URL links.)

Kitty, I have lots of pics of you and me getting ready for the zipline -- I'll post them on my site if you don't mind (and I have a pic of you on the ride that I'll email shortly). I also have lots of scenery photos, but most didn't turn out very well. So for the most part, I'm just enjoying looking at all of yours...

Any change of seeing the husky dog videos? Due to one of the dogs eating my camera, the documentation of that part of my trip seems to be forever lost.

Once again, I had the time of my life. Thanks to everyone for making a complete stranger feel right at home.

And a special thanks to Jerry, Tracy, David, and Jeff -- for always looking out for me.
 
Any change of seeing the husky dog videos? Due to one of the dogs eating my camera, the documentation of that part of my trip seems to be forever lost.

Absolutely. I am currently in S.F. with the camera, while the necessary software to extract videos from the camera is safe in Atlanta. But we will be reunited on Sunday, and my primary goal is laundry. (But one of my secondary goals is to get those videos up on YouTube.)

You should have access to them by early next week at the latest :)
 
Welcome Bluharmony!

To say she was the perfect person to convince me to go on the zip line is an understatement.

She was hilarious.

And really, that was tomato juice those kind people gave to us to drink before the ride. (honestly, people on cruise ships are very happy)
 
Kitty (and anyone else who might care to look): My photos from our tomato juice-laced zipline adventure can be found here: bluharmony.com/zipline.

I want to go back and do it again...and again...and again...
 
Bluharmony, your Icy Straits scenery pics are so good I cropped and added them my group (and gave you credit); you can almost feel the cool swirling mist and Hoonah's wild isolation, in spite of the tacky ship stuff. (PM me if I need to remove them). Now that I know the URL trick for newbies, they are at

flickr.com/photos/13376382@N02/show/

Kitty, thanks for the nice words. (BTW, I want to see your work.) The seriously cute puffin cousin you mentioned is the marbled murrelet. It bizarrely forages far out at sea then flies inland to nest in the deep forest, something completely unknown until 1974 when a treeclimber discovered it! Here are pics of it:

at sea: sitkanature.org/wordpress/category/marine/
on tree: physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=89909167
 
Finally got my pictures loaded up. I organized them by location (Ketchikan, on the ship, etc). There will be a lot of my son, of course :). I also copied a few good ones that I liked from some of you, since I seldom ever have pictures of myself on a trip, and wanted some evidence....

www.ngener.smugmug.com/vacation

On the 'vacation' page, there are several galleries corresponding to the different places we went.
 
Goddess:
I loved meeting your son. He was wonderful to speak to. Obviously, you raised him to be the wonderful, intelligent human being that he is.

He also made me feel better for being on the cruise alone, since he also came on board knowing very few JREF people (and no one in his age group).

Bo:
I can provide more Alaska scenery pics if you want them. I didn't post links because no one in the group was with me on many of the excursions, and I used a very poor-quality camera. But the pics will be up on my site in a directory named /alaska, eventually. You should also check out the /zoo and /northwest scenery directories. I think you might enjoy them. They're not up yet but should be within the next couple of days.
 
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I'm kinda depressed over the cruise. I spent 8 and 1/2 months anticipating it and I don't currently have any vacation plans (TAM6 is a possibility, but until I start making reservations it won't be "real") and now I feel like there's nothing for me to look foreward to.

Great pictures everyone! I'll try and have mine posted as soon as I get them back from the developer.
 
Does anyone mind if I post links to the pix on my blog? I have no clue if my readers will pummel your sites or not, but I just want to make sure it's OK.
 
Finally got my pictures loaded up. I organized them by location (Ketchikan, on the ship, etc). There will be a lot of my son, of course :). I also copied a few good ones that I liked from some of you, since I seldom ever have pictures of myself on a trip, and wanted some evidence....

www.ngener.smugmug.com/vacation

On the 'vacation' page, there are several galleries corresponding to the different places we went.

Great photos! I forgot about the "chat group" photo . . . super cute!
 

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