Spearfish Canyon, SD

Alaska

These are a few pictures from the Alaskan Cruise I took back in 2010, many pictures were taken, only a few made it to the post.

Here we are going through one of the passes/straights which I found crazy. At times shore was only 100 yards or so from either side of the ship, to think that skinny channel could be deep enough to allow a large cruise ship boggled my mind.

A port view of Ketchikan, AK.

There is a huge Salmon run either in the spring or fall, I don't remember which, but I guess the town fills up with tourists and fishermen to see/catch fresh salmon.

One of the excursions I took part is was a Zip-Line tour through the Alaskan Rain Forest. I don't think most people realize that Alaska is considered to be part of a rain forest, the amount of rain they receive each year is crazy. I remember the dandelions and a few other plants looked like they had been fed a mutagen they were so big.

Suspension bridge you had to cross to get from one plat form to the next.

I was also lucky enough to take a Heli tour onto a local glacier to walk around and explore. We were able to drink out of a free flowing ice stream, the water was so cold it hurt my face but tasted like nothing I had ever had before, it was so crisp, clean and pure.

Enjoying some rock climbing at one of our port stops.

Sunny Orlando

My wife and I visited Orlando, FL for Valentines Day back in 2012, here are a few pictures from our trip.

 T-800 at Universal Studios

 Visiting Harry Potter land

 Got to see some aliens and the noisy cricket that Will Smith gets to use in the first movie

 How Universal brings these things to life is beyond me but had a great time. Sorting Hat from Harry Potter was busy telling everyone which House they would belong in.

 Yay for Universal Studios

My wife and I spent a day out shopping around at the different outlet malls. I couldn't pass up a quote from the movie Dumb and Dumber. Swimmy, Swammy, Swenson.......Samsonite I was way off

 I wanted to experience first hand what it was like to run from Raptors and go face to face with a T-Rex. Jurassic park had some great props, they had the Jeep's used in the film, one of their water rides was amazing with dinosaurs popping out from the dark at different turns.

Islands of Adventure for some of the funnest roller coasters I've ever been on. The Hulk and Rockin RollerCoaster.

Bora Bora 2013

Left for Bora Bora (French Polynesia) during their rainy season, it was the only way the pocketbook would allow this trip to happen. I'm not sure what time Bora Bora's rainy season is but was there end of Jan. first part of Feb.

To help with jet lag, after traveling from LAX to Tahiti, we spend 2 nights at the Intercontinental Resort. The staff was very friendly, since we were there during the "off" season there were not many other guests at the resort. The pool was nice but most of my time was spend snorkeling in the lagoon looking at all sorts of fish and sea life. Make sure you get a meal plan while traveling to FP as food is expensive, even if you just get breakfast included.

After our two days in Tahiti we boarded a puddle jumper and took the one hour flight to Bora Bora. Fresh pineapple juice was served during the flight. The airport in Bora Bora is on a north motu(island) and you take a boat from the airport to your resort.

It was about a 15 min boat ride to the Intercontinental La Moana. We were greeted by very friendly crew and given cold towels and even colder drinks to cool us down from the humid weather.

 

After having a quick tour of the resort we were escorted to our Over the Water Bungalow (owb). Ours had a small office space, living area with sliding glass coffee table so you could feed the fish under the owb, california king sized bed, large bathroom and private sun deck.

more to come later...

Manny the Sting Ray that hung out by our OWA the entire trip

 Gecko on some tropical plant

 Snorkeling and checking out the coral and fish around our OWA