Return to Mexico and to Altair

 Its been a little while and a lot has happened...
First, I went through Moss Landing on my way south and saw a bunch of sleepy sea otters with their eyes covered up.  They put their hands up to cover their eyes and sleep.  how cute.   And some nice ice plants

 The big sur coast fairly flew by, with some whales , (possibly a blue whale) and some Elk!

 San simeon at sunset.  We camped in the end of a old road.

 Then we went to Jeremy's place in LA and out to the desert south of Joshua Tree.  This is the Painted Canyon, and the stars were bright and crisp.  I took some long exposure shots of the clouds sliding by.

 This one looks like mars!

 And then to the Salton Sea, to find the dead fishes washed up by the wind!  There is a huge line of dead fish all along the coast, probably killed by an algae bloom.

 I got to see my favorite bird, the black-necked stilt.  There were lots of birds all along the sea, wading and dabbling.

 There was also an Owl!  This one hunkered down by the road and looked around with those keen yellow eyes.  I like them a lot too.

 And some Quail with their bobbly feathers on their heads.

 We crossed the border and into Mexico and spent the first night in San Felipe on the beach.  This is a look at the milky way.  The stars were booming.

 In the morning the sunrise over the ocean was magnificent.

 A little further south there were some more cactus, some of them look like they are ready to join the Beatles.

 At Santa Rosalia, the sunrise was heartbreaking,

 And I took off on the ferry over to Guyamas to get to Altair.  I am on my beloved Altair again, after long journeys all over.  From the ferry there was a large group of Spinner Dolphins that played with us.  I also saw a marlin jumping and chasing something.  It was a nice trip.

Altair is going back in the water tomorrow and I'll be getting underway soon after that to head back to Baja and down eventually to Puerto Vallarta again.

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Partial Migration

 I've been working my way south now, from the boreal forests of Alaska, to the northwestern parts of the contiguous states, then down through oregon territory and into California.  Its like a sigh of relief when you get south of the mountains that border Oregon and California.  The rain goes away and is replaced with a warming sunshine.  I've been driving down and looking for hotsprings, and finding lots of water and autumn colors to take pictures of.  Golden trees in the fields of evergreen.  The maples are especially glamorous, with their big leaves.



I took a few pictures using a technique where you zoom in on the subject while you are taking the picture, and you get something like this:

 While walking along rivers and pathways looking for hotsprings, there are lots of cool mosses to see and the water is pretty as it winds its way down the hills.

 Here was a great golden evergreen-ish tree.  I cannot remember the name.  Can you figure it out?  It is a conifir but sheds leaves in the fall, and turns a bright yellow, and lives in medium elevations in Oregon.  At the end of a rainbow.

 Here's a picture of one of the hot springs, where people had built up the walls to make nice hot pools, this one is south of Mt Shasta a little bit, along a lonely river.  There was a french guy in the pool who was hot boiling eggs in them.  He said you just put them in overnight and then they get like "Flubber" and are very tasty.  There were some interesting people in the hotsprings, Many of them very nice and meditative.

The trip is now taking a turn for the coast, so I hope to do some more surfing soon.  I went surfing yesterday and hopefully again tomorrow and on down the coast.  The water is cold but getting warmer the further south I get.

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2016 Alaska Season Ends!

 The season is over and all we have to do now is to shut the boat down.  But this last week was a great way to finish.  We went to a fish hatchery on Baranof island where there are TONS of bears.  I think we saw 12, but possibly more.  Its hard to keep track of them all.  They were super fat bears, eating salmon like there was no tomorrow.  The fish hatchery seems to be ok with them eating all the salmon they can, so that is cool.

 This was my first time seeing Coho salmon up close.  That is what is in the hatchery.

 Then we went to a waterfall in the dark and shone the lights on the falls.  Beautiful.

 And then we saw a huge pod of Orcas messing with a humpback whale.  They were really close to it and staying that way, but I don't think they were going to eat it.  Just bother it.

 I got a nice view of an eagle.  Always good to look for them...

 And some Aurora to fill in the nighttime

 And a sea otter came swimming over to check me out in the Inian Islands, just boldly swam up.  It was eating an octopus and then swam over to check us out, and got about 10 ft away.

 This is a picture of some of the folks.  I really liked these guests.  It was a bit hard to say goodbye.  I'm also saying goodbye to Alaska soon, and getting ready to head south.  I'm looking into taking a road trip down the coast and that should be fun.

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WEX videos

A few videos of the WEX from 2016
The first one is about the ship and the toys...




And this one is about the animals and things we saw...

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Orca Predation!

 We saw a pod of Orcas hunt down and kill a Dall's Porpoise!  WHOA!  We went over to Five Fingers Lighthouse to look for whales, saw a bunch of them, and then spotted the tall fins of the black and whites.  They cruised past us and we turned and followed from a distance and then a bunch of Dall's Porpoise scattered and fled, but the Orcas were in hot pursuit.  They chased it around in a few directions and then pounced on it and threw it in the air a few times until it was too tired to fight, then took it down under water and that was the end of the little guy.  Just after that, a Humpback whale came over and planted itself in the middle of the fray.  I think the Whale was slow in arriving, since they aren't fast, but once the scene stopped moving, got in and tried to keep the whales from eating the kill.  I've read about this happening a few times, where a humpback is defending a kill from the killers, and so we might have seen it happen ourselves.  Watching the power of the Orcas and the size difference between them and the Dall's Porpoise is impressive.  I got a bit of video as well, one part where the Orcas throw the porpoise in the air.  That will come out later, I assure you.
The next day we had great close encounters with humpbacks from a skiff.  I got this picture of one fluking next to the other skiff.

 We also got to see Otters, I'll miss these little guys in Mexico...

 And We went into Red Bluff Bay and did skiff tours there, going up a river that I have been dreaming about going up for years now.  The river was full of salmon and there were a few Brown Bears around.  One looked up from a fish to watch us as we went by...

But it was the Orca that made the week, no doubt.  I have two more weeks left of the season, then southbound to Mexico...

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Journeys around Juneau

 My brother and I spent the last week in Juneau.  It was sunny, then rainy, then clear again, but I only have the pictures from when it was sunny.  Our first task was to climb the heights of Mt Juneau, right above downtown.  We took to the hill shortly after Abe landed, and marched our way up as my legs burned.  Mountain goats looked at us, Marmots whistled, and blueberries held up their bounty for us to munch on.  It was a nice hike.  When we got to the top, I was stunned to find that this mountain is very pointy on top, and you can see the top from the bottom, or very nearly so.  There isn't a false summit and rounding up in the high areas, or at least not as much as I figured.

 A marmot whistling at us...

 A look down the valley towards Auk Bay.

 Then we took the bus up to the Mendenhall Glacier, where we wandered around the touristy side of things and found a cooperative dragonfly.

 We also found some Sockeye salmon in the stream, in spawning colors.  This was the first time for me to see these guys in this color, and I like it.  Hopefully I'll get a few moments next year to get some video of them in the river, this time, I was only able to take shots from above.

 And a Porcupine!  This little guy was chomping on the branches of a cottonwood tree and happily ignoring the world, but I got a few looks at him from below.

 We also found the elusive Land Anemone!  This is actually a kind of fungus, but I like the way it looks like sea anemone tentacles.

 The next day we went to the Ice caves, on the west side of Mendenhall.  These ones are carved by a river flowing down and melting the ice from under the glacier.  Sadly, they won't be around for too much longer, as the glacier is retreating quickly.  We didn't go in very far because it didn't look very safe, but the view of a blue frozen wave was quite enticing.

 It makes me yearn for to go surfing.

 We climbed up the side of the glacier until we couldn't go any further and found many neat spots of the miracle blue peeking out.  I like when you can see how it is flowing over the rocks...

 As we backed away, we took a farewell look at the glacier.  It is retreating very quickly, so this view will change when I come back to this place again.

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