Go Fish

We are in Seward, on the coast. In the early evening boats for visiting fishermen and women return to harbor and unload the day's catch. The crews clean and fillet it on the spot. It's flash frozen, vacuum sealed and shipped anywhere. We met a man from Arkansas who told us he had been to Seward more than 20 times. At the end of each visit, he ships home 50 pounds of salmon and 50 pounds of halibut.

I took about a zillion pictures of this process. There are lots more good ones I could edit in my spare time. Havent even started on the pix I took earlier Saturday in Seward (anyone want to see puffins?) or the long boat trip we took Sunday down Resurrection Bay and into the Gulf of Alaska, where we saw a glacier that empties right into the ocean, seals, whales and a pod of orcas. No rest on our holidays.                       

A Long Sunset

Summer sunsets in Alaska linger and linger. We did a walk around downtown Anchorage and a four hour evening van ride with Alaska Photo Treks, which I highly recommend if you are a shooter and find yourself up this way. The local photographer who took us around, Jody Overstreet, was wonderful. She knows the area and her photographic technique inside out. These pictures were all taken Friday evening.

From top to bottom:

Anchorage sunset from the Chugash Mountains east of the city. It is a popular hang gliding point.

The Alaska Railroad train that comes up Turnagain Arm from Seward every evening. Jody knows exactly the right time.

A mountain stream a bit uphill from the railroad tracks.

Sea planes going in and out of Lake Hood. This is the only means of transportation to many places in the bush.

So many more to edit. And wait till you see the pix I got Saturday evening at the fishing harbor in Seward.                      

It's So Late . . .

Midnight here in Anchorage, 3 AM at home, 9 AM in most of Europe. Just got back to the B&B after a 4+ hour evening photography tour. Hundreds of pix and no time to edit. I took this one around mid day of locals salmon fishing in Ship Creek in the middle of town.  We gotta get to bed but there will be lots more. Down to Seward on the coast today.                        

Anchorage

All right, enough teasing. We got to our B&B in Anchorage, Alaska, something after 1 AM local time (4 AM body time) on Thursday. Going from St. Louis to here via Los Angeles is like flying from London to Rome by way of Helsinki, but the flights are way, way longer. After an off-kilter night, we got up and poked around the town. The city has about 300,000 people, the metro area 400,000. The whole state, twice as big as Texas, has less than a  million people. St. Louis City and County have more than that.

Most of these pictures are around 4th Avenue, the main street downtown. The next to last is on the coastal trail, very near where we are staying.

We're doing a photography walking tour of the downtown area this morning. In the evening, there is a four hour van trip down Cook Inlet for the big lens crowd. Sunset isn't until 10:21 PM. 

Lots more stops after here.                            

En Route

The first leg of the trip is done. Obviously, we're heading west but about 90 degrees off course. 

Got some good pix of the Grand Canyon from the air, plus crop circles, I don't know what (space aliens tracings in the desert?), a big city and the next airline. A longer leg coming up.

These photos have lots of color distortion from the plane windows.                         

Black Helicopters

It's part of a wacko paranoid fantasy system in the United States: the federal government or the United nations or the Trilateral Commission or something will sweep the country, arrest freedom-loving citizens, confiscate their firearms and impose a new world order. It is well-known that they will arrive in black helicopters. This one, however, takes tourists for rides around the St. Louis riverfront.

Long travel day today, reaching our destination by an absurdly indirect route. I'll bend over backwards, though, for free frequent flyer air tickets, especially with an upgrade. Very late tonight we will lay down our heads in a city where ships may safely come to rest.

If A Tree Falls In A Forest . . .

. . . and there is no one around, can there be an image? A variation on an old philosophical teaser about the difference between an event and its perception. We have George Berkeley to thank for this.

Getting a little hard up for material. Tomorrow is a travel day. By late that night we will be in very different climes. Pix by Friday.