Kenai Fjords - Boat Time and the Beginning of the Rocks...

Today we took Honey, Chase, and Cheyenne out on a boat tour of the Kenai Fjords National Park. Grayson had been excited for days about riding the boat. We had an exceptional boat captain you gave great narrations and even gave the kids an opportunity to sit at the helm. We

spotted mountain goats, sea otters, stellar sea lions, puffins, fin whales, Dahl's porpoise, lion's mane jelly fish, and a humpback whale. We ended our tour with a salmon and prime rib feast on Fox Island. This is where the rock throwing adventure began. In Seward, there is never a shortage of rocks. The highlight of every cruise for me is always listening to the sounds of the glacier. This trip we went to Aialik Glacier, which is about a mile wide at the point where it egresses into the sea. There were several harbor seals at its base, some were hauled out and others were playing in the water. Chase and Landon studied while on the boat and then were "sworn in" as junior rangers at the National Park Service in Seward. I recommend the Junior Ranger Program to anyone with little ones who has the opportunity to visit any National Park. The kids get a big thrill out of it.

Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center -

This is always a great stop to let everyone see wildlife upclose. Although it is a "zoo" type habitat and you are taking pictures through fences it is still a lot of fun. We even got a bit of excitement when one of the bison charged the fence at the people standing next to us. Grayson decided to have a seat on the brush used by the musk ox on our way out. The entrance area was filled with beautiful irises. I wish I had taken more photos of them growing in their wild habitat. There aren't too many up our way because it (until recently) has been extremely dry.

Video tour for Daddy

Daddy requested that Landon make a video tour of the yard because he hasn't had a chance to see it. For those of you that are prone to motion sickness you might want to consider Dramamine before watching. He did a good job but didn't know the names of the items that Pappy has planted. Everything is "Pappy's stuff" or "flowers." I guess we need to work on our horticulture;)

Sorry Folks, Beach Closed

Pensacola beach is closed again. Sounds like it will be closed for quite a while this time. Workers are spending each day out on the beach carrying out some cleanup efforts. But just the other day, when I took the pictures of the lighthouse posted above, I didn't see any sign of oil or effects of the spill on the beach, but something must have washed ashore since then. The heat and humidity is still fairly extreme here. "Oppressive" is the word most often heard when describing it. We've had a couple of record hot days with the heat index over 115. If we cool off a little bit one of these nights I'll take a walk over to Fort Barrancas (local fort originally built as a Spanish Fort in 1698, and rebuilt in 1787 and again in 1839) and will post some pictures of the fort.