May 2014

Eager to see more wildlife Al recommanded us to drive to the Canadian Rockies and that was the best advice ever! Along the road to Jasper we saw our first black bear (quite far away) and could not believe our eyes. The next day just before entering the national park 2 coyotees crossed our way. This officialy was the beginning of our wildlife adventure!!

The Canadian Rockies are just breathtaking. They made it among our TOP3 highlights on our around the world trip. It is the combination of stunning scenery and the unbelievable wild wilderness. As we were there during the low season most of the lakes were still frozen and the mountains were covered with snow. In 2 days we saw 2 black, 1 brown and 1 grizzly bear. Besides that many elk, deer, mountain goats, squirrels and birds.

From the Canadian Rockies we drove south to the Yellowstone National Parks in the US. Spotting the wildlife there was very easy! Before entering Yellowstone we hoped to see one or two buffalo. Well, Yellowstone is full of bisons and they are liturally everywhere! We also did see 7 black bears and 2 grizzlies! A very special moment for us was watching a black bear mother with her 3 kubs. They were approx. 3 weeks old and very cute!! At one point a deer approached the bear mother and quickly she pushed the 3 little ones up a tree- just amazing!!! Besides animals Yellowstone offers greats waterfalls, canyons and geysers and is a great park to visit.

Below photograpah of the wildlife Emilie took and additional photographs under PORTFILIO I

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Unusual for our age (avarage is 95 :)) we have taken a cruise ship to visit a part of Alasaka. This one week journey was recommended to us by Carlos and Marcela who we have met in New-Zealand. It was a great experience and the few places we saw of Alaska make us want to come back one day.

The first place we visited was Juneau, the capital of Alaska which you can only access by boat or plane. We continued to Glacier Bay National Park which was our highlight. We were sailing through ice fields and came really close to the bluest glacier of Alaska. A unique experience to hear the ice cracking and crushing down into the sea called ice calving. We were surrounded by sea lions, seals, sea eagles and Humpback whales during most of the trip, pure nature!

One of the other stops was Sitka, a cute town where we decided to do a nice hike along the river. We were all alone and came very close to a sea eagle. Luckily a grizzly didn’t cross our way. At one point though we got very scared as a trunk fell down so we started making a lot of noise to scare away whatever was out there.

Kitchikan which is the raniest city in the south of Alaska was not that spectacular and very touristy so we very much enjoyed our last stop in Victoria, Vancouver Island, Canada. Victoria has a British touch and a very nice flair with the waterfront and its nice parliament building.
Before te cruise we were prepared to face a lot of rain and low temperatures but we were really lucky with the weather in Alaska making it a great trip!
Are we going to do another cruise soon? Probably not now as we prefer being on the road and having more adventure feel.
Right now we are back in Seattle staying with Al, a good travel friend who has shown us as much as possible in the area around Seattle. With him we did a very nice treck in the Olympics!

We are now ready to move on without knowing yet where next….

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We spent the last 10 days in Portland with Kim and Kjell where we were hosted. It was so nice catching up on old friendship and getting to know Portland really well. We appreciated staying at one place for longer and getting the home feeling, thank you very much to both of you!

The drive to Portland coming from South California (San Francisco) through Oregon was scenic, rainy and kind’a romantic :) We stopped at different towns on the way and went to the Sequoia and Redwood National Parks where we saw the tallest and largest trees in the world. They are also one of the oldest trees (3500years old) on the planet. We felt very little and nature is and remains impressive!

Here a few pictures we took: