Amazing Whales!

Since our tours have started up again, we've had the opportunity to see some pretty amazing whales! Thought I'd go ahead and post some of the pictures here.

Here are some orcas we saw a little while ago. The baby is sticking his head up out of the water!

Baby, female, and big male.

Lots of spray.

Just passing through.

A group of humpbacks bubblenet feeding!

These guys were very close to our boat!

Watching a nearby humpback dive.

Whale tail!

One of our boats caught in the spray.

Our boat is so small compared to these whales.

A nice tail closeup. You can see the water cascading off the top of the tail.

It's incredible that we get a chance to be so close to these amazing creatures. We're certainly very lucky!

My Alaskan Anniversary

I just recently celebrated my Alaskan Anniversary- the day I came to Juneau, Alaska! If you remember back to May 28, 2011, my first day was filled with excitement, anxiety, and even a little fear. You can read all about it HERE.

I must say that THIS May 28th was VERY different from my first. Jonny and I decided to rent out a Forest Service Cabin, hike to it, and spend the night! There are lots of Forest Service Cabins that dot the wilderness. If you come across one and you're dying, you can find shelter inside. Some of them are nice and elaborate, whereas others only have the bare essentials for survival. A cool thing you can do is to go online and reserve one of these cabins for yourself and camp out in the wilderness for a while. It's like camping, but you sleep in a wooden tent.

If you look at the map below, you can see all of Juneau. At the very northern end, there is a place called Point Bridget. We drove down the highway until we came across the mile 38 marker, parked our car, donned our heavy backpacks, and hiked all the way out to the point. The cabin is indicated on the map by the little red square.

Here we are at the beginning of the trail! We have our camping gear, backpacks and portable grill all ready to go!

Here's the trail sign.

The day was hot, the sky was clear, and the scenery was BEAUTIFUL! Here is the gorgeous meadow we crossed.

 Jonny and I looking out at the mountains across the sea.

We couldn't get enough of that sun!

Large trees like these sat in the boggy marsh.

These ponds reflected a vibrantly blue sky.

And here's the cabin!

The inside really wasn't anything special. Jonny sits at a wooden table. There are also some wooden bunks behind us.

But we made sure to sign the guest book!

I spent most of my time stacking driftwood and making a fire. We cooked hot dogs and made s'mores.

We also spent a lot of our time lounging in the sun and watching multiple Humpback Whales swim by. You can see them spouting in the distance.

And this was our view from the cabin! It was right on the rocky waterfront in its own private little cove.

We had a great time watching the rocks emerge as the tide went out.

It sure was a special day! We'll always remember it!

What We've Been Up To

Hi everybody! Sorry about not updating for a little while- guiding season has started once more and we're now in the full swing of things. Jonny and I are now "Lead Guides," so we're responsible for helping new guides out with the training process. It sure has been fun!

At the beginning, I was doing a lot of driving since many of the other guides had not yet obtained their commercial licenses yet.

But we DID get a very special new driver this year!! Isn 't Jonny just too cute behind the wheel?

Jonny driving one of the company buses.

We had some rather snowy beginnings this year. Here we are out in the storm doing our boat crew training. It was really coming down!

Watch the Voyager brave the storm HERE!

New guides climb up onto the boat to observe the life raft and emergency beacon.

And here's our rescue dummy! We had to fill him up with weight and practice rescuing him during the snow storm.

We also helped out at the Nature Center at the top of Mount Roberts. They sure had a lot of snow for us to shovel up there!

And what training isn't complete without a visit to the glacier? Here, guides experience the West Glacier Trail.

This is one of my favorite candid pictures of us on the trail. Our most experienced guide is trying to keep us all together as he points out something of interest. But what happens when you get a bunch of guides together on a trail? We talk about EVERYTHING!

We had another snow storm just as we were leading the group on the Moraine Ecology trail. There was so much snow at the end of April that we had to modify our route at the beginning of the season!

Here I am at the glacier a few weeks later. Thank goodness that snow melted!

Lately the weather has been very nice. Here's our view out at Auke Bay where we go whale watching.

We're having fun as we begin a brand new season and work on training our new guides. See you out on the trails!