It’s been almost a year since our trip to Alaska, and it has me reminiscing a bit about the great time we all had.  At the end of September, 2022 I took a couple weeks off and headed to Anchorage, Alaska for my Mom’s 80th birthday. My youngest brother, Dan, lives in Anchorage, and he and his girlfriend were gracious enough to host all of us for the celebration.  For Mom’s birthday we had a big pancake breakfast with Mimosas and later in the evening we all took her out for dinner.  We also celebrated Dan’s birthday, which is just three days before Moms.  We stayed for 10 days and we had a lot of fun, some great family time, and saw some incredible scenery and wildlife. Of course, I returned with plenty of photos to go through and edit. It was a very rewarding trip!

The highlight of the trip (besides Mom’s birthday) was a boat tour that we took from Seward out to the Aialik Glacier and back. The rocky coast and the blue water were very different from what I’m used to seeing in Florida! Much of the wildlife was also very different from what we see in Florida.  In Alaska, even a large city like Anchorage, the people also seem to have a different attitude about nature, the environment, and wildlife.  They are much more proactive about recycling, keeping the environment clean, and sharing the environment with the wild things.  It’s not uncommon for moose and bears to end up in yards.  Dan’s girlfriend, Deb, has some fantastic photos of a female moose that gave birth to two calves in their backyard.  Instead of freaking out and immediately trying to find someone to “remove it”, people up there tend to live and let live.  We did get to see our own female moose who was grazing on rose hips in a church yard in Seward.  We also found her two calves stashed safely in a field a block away.  We weren’t the only ones who stopped to take photos, but everyone was very respectful of other photographers and the animals.

Besides moose there were also some other spectacular wildlife sightings including bald eagles, Dall’s porpoises, orcas, harbor seals, Steller’s sea lions, jellyfish, and sea otters.  Dan has a very active bird feeding station on his back deck (all food has to be kept up high so as not to attract bears), so there was some good birding right outside the back window.  I didn’t have the telephoto lens that I have now, and I wish I had since a lot of my bird photos were not as sharp and clean as I had hoped they would be.  I’m sure that lens would have been nice on the boat trip, too.  The disappointment I felt with some of those images is the main reason that I got the new lens.  I don’t know when I’ll get back to Alaska, but I don’t want to miss out on good photo opportunities ever again!

Needless to say, the trip was wonderful and I shared  many of the better photos on this wildlife blog. Some of the best of those images are also available as originals or prints on my art site as well (https://deeesler.com).  It was definitely a marvelous trip that I will always remember.  I’m not sure what is the next adventure for me, but I look forward to it!