Happy Birthday to Me. The Lord blessed me with a day filled with sunshine, so we spent it outside.
Downtown Ketchikan. The crossing guards are on duty whenever there are cruise ships in town. They help with the congestion in the downtown area. They get VERY upset and yell at anyone who tries to cross between the crosswalks.
We headed south out of Ketchikan.
We were early for our reservation at the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary. So we went to see if the bears were out. There were no bears, but plenty of eagles.
At 1:00 we went to the Sanctuary...
This is our ride to the top...
We went up and UP into the beautiful rainforest.
The view out the window of our ride, looking down where we came from...
They took a group of us into this room to get our harnesses, hard hats, and gloves on.
This will be our first zip. It is a short one and we are on the lowest platform...85 feet in the air.
This is another view from the first platform. This looks to the spot where we watch the bears.
I am getting hooked to the zipline.
Off I go....
and go...
and go....almost there. It was so much fun. Juel didn't enjoy it like I did. She realized she is not thrilled with heights...the platforms made her nervous, so these are the only pictures she took of me. I do have one of me finishing the course that the company took, but I will have to wait to get home and scan it.
I did get a nasty cable burn on my arm on the longest zip. I got twisted and my arm rubbed along the cable. I worried that it would happen again and it did, but just a little twisted and a little burn on the next one. But then I seemed to get better control and did fine. I loved the zipping!
This is Juel making a zip. She did a great job, except that she came in a bit too fast on one of the platforms.
View from another platform.
The rainforest canopy....interesting to be looking out into the tops of the trees. Even though we were very high in the trees, one of the guides said we still had more tree above us than below us.
From one of the platforms we can see a black bear below us. I told Juel to look, but she said, "I have seen lots of black bears." She is nervous of the heights and looking over the edge was not something she wanted to do.
We had three of these rope bridges to cross. It was a great opportunity to really see the view!
At the end with our two guides. They were awesome, so patient with all of us.
Juel took me out for steak dinner at the Salmon Falls Resort. This is the view we had out our window. Wow! We watched for whales while we ate. No whales, but we enjoyed the relaxing scene and many passing boats.
My dessert...Snicker pie. Of course I had already taken a bite out of it before I thought to take a picture of it. It was delicious.
Juel's dessert...strawberry cheesecake. She said it was yummy.
The resort's harbor. I love harbor pictures.
Leaving the resort we noticed this large eagle's nest high in the trees.
Trying to show some of the majesty of these tall trees.
Ward Cove - I stopped and got a picture of this "sunken" boat. At high tide just the very top corner shows above the water. Today the tide was low so I got a good picture.
Can't end my birthday without going to Herring Cove to check on the eagles and the bears.
There was not much bear action, so we decided to go to the other side of the bridge and see what was going on.
The tide is out so this area (which otherwise is water covered) was now occupied by fishermen.
We had to climb down those rocks to get to the area below. At high tide this area is all under water.
The creek is so low the salmon are easy to spot as they struggle to get upstream.
This shows how far out we were able to walk.
The salmon eggs. The eagles go crazy for this. The eagles are perched and swooping all around. As the fishermen clean their catch, the eagles come it to clean it up and feast.
All the trees are loaded with eagles. Many eagles are also sitting along the shore.
This guy was so intent on his feast, he allowed us to get quite close for pictures. He kept his eye on us and we didn't get too close as we could see those talons and respect them.
More of the beauty of the eagles. I just love watching them.
Heading back in.
That is a salmon zipping through the water. The eagles don't bother to go after them as the fishermen keep the eagles well supplied with plenty to eat.
One last look at the bears.
The day was filled with sunshine and now ends with a gorgeous sunset. The Lord really blessed me on my birthday!
When the tide is in this is not attached and looks like an island.
Another eagle's nest.
White roses in the most unlikely spot...
at a McDonald's drive-up. We stopped to get some french fries as we were both a little hungry, but really tired.
It has been a long, but wonderful day.
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