The second half of our trip to Alaska included stops to Juneau, Skagway, a view of Hubbard Glacier from the ship, and then Seward was the last port of call. In Juneau we did some real zip-lining where you don’t just sit in a seat and go down a line like the ZipRider; you wear a harness, gloves and helmet, and connect by climbing gear to a series of zip-lines on a canopy-top course. Here Chris is learning how to break, using his right hand to apply pressure to the line and slow your speed. We practiced one time on a tiny zip line close to the ground.
In between some of the zip-lines hung these long suspension bridges that were delightfully high and swingy. I admit it felt nice to make it across safely onto the platform.
Let’s see that zip-line action in motion (short video clip):
This is what each of the platforms looked like between the zip-lines. Just a few beams of wood high atop a skinny tree, that swayed around while people were standing on it. Kind of freaky, but so cool! At the end, we rappelled down off the last platform. SO FUN.
After zip-lining, we took a helicopter ride to land on Mendenhall Glacier and went dog-sledding! The helicopter ride was amazing, with views of the glacier from above. Pardon my hair – it’s very windy standing next to a helicopter. Those yellow things are life vests from the helicopter ride.
The dogs were all so sweet, and they LOVED pulling the sled. They got super excited when they were harnessed up and while they were pulling us, and seemed disappointed when we stopped the sled.
After sledding, we spent some time with the puppies at the camp. They were in the middle of a nap, and this one was so warm and snuggly.
At our next stop in Skagway, we were pretty adventured-out, so we just walked around and explored the town. We also took a short but beautiful hike to Yakutania Point.
Our last two days on the ship were at sea, and we spent most of that time relaxing on our balcony just watching the beautiful scenery and taking photos. Chris took this cool lighthouse photo, which was totally in the middle of nowhere (not close to any towns):
And on the last day we sailed right up close to Hubbard Glacier (brrr!). My favorite part was seeing all the ice chunks in the water on the way there. We got up pretty close to the glacier. The colors and textures were amazing! Those brown lines in the ice are markers of volcanic events. Cool, right?!
Off the ship in Seward, we took a really scenic drive to Anchorage. We stopped at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center so that we could see some moose and bears.
This one was either sleepy or doing bear yoga. (We were just about three feet from the bears so our 400mm was almost too long!)
There were other animals, but we were mainly there for the moose and bears since those were the ones we hadn’t seen in the wild on our trip. Oh and it was a good opportunity to get a better picture of an eagle:
So that’s our trip! (We took more images of course, but that would make for a very very long blog post.) We’re already itching to plan the next adventure, and we have some ideas in mind! I’ll post more details on that when we firm up some things. But for now it’s back to work! I have engagement and portrait sessions throughout July and August, so stay tuned for more photos. 🙂
