Alaska Cruise - Skagway, Lone Eagle

...a bald eagle!  Actually they were everywhere.  This guy broke free of an overcast (seen below) to glide around in the sunshine for a while.  I of course was in burst mode snapping away at full zoom, and chose these two out of the 30+ captured.

Alaska Cruise - Skagway, Road Stop

This was on our way out to the boondocks, and when we stopped to take in the views we saw...

Alaska Cruise - Skagway, Colorful Houses

One commonality about the Alaska towns that we visited was the colorful houses and buildings.  Makes me wonder if there are municipal codes for the benefit of the tourist trade, or does this come about naturally to add life to an otherwise long, bleak and wet winter season?

At first glance the pavement that you see in the foreground looks like a road or highway, but is in fact a runway for the local airport.  Overall view below, captured in a 3-shot panorama:

 

Alaska Cruise - Skagway, First Disney Shot

A much more interesting ship to shoot from the outside is this Disney beauty.  The Disney folks just know how to do everything right.  There will be many posts of this guy in the series.

This image was captured while I was sitting in our tour guide's truck, before we got into the van.  I was the first to show up, and, so that I wouldn't have to stand out in the cold, she let me tag along while she went to pick up the other participants.

Alaska Cruise - Skagway, Docked Ships

We were able to tick one off of our bucket list with an Alaska cruise.  Yes, the proverbial Alaska cruise!  And it is everything that everyone says it is...and more for us, since we encountered very good weather during all but one day of the journey.  That is our ship on the far right; I didn't notice the airplane until touching it up in post-capture.

I normally would post in the order of our departure and stops, but am posting Skagway first because one of our tour guides - a very nice lady named Cindy - expressed an interest in seeing the results of what was captured on our excursion, so here it is for her.  We were a very small group, just four of us, that paid to go places that the larger buses could not.

A more contrasty shot of the ships below, though I wish I were standing a couple of feet to the right:

 

Backyard Shot - Hibiscus

Buffer shot between series, captured in our back yard...

Next up: ALASKA CRUISE!!

To the Zoo with Chenjean - Green Frog Camouflauged on Leaf

To the Zoo with Chenjean - Poison Dart Frogs

To the Zoo with Chenjean - Green Mamba

To the Zoo with Chenjean - Viper

To the Zoo with Chenjean - Blue Bird

To the Zoo with Chenjean - Stern Shoebill

How about a caption for this one?

To the Zoo with Chenjean - Empty Tables

I was thrilled when my wife expressed an interest in going to the zoo with me on one of my jaunts.  We got there early, so this greeted us upon entering the property.

Another Zoo Trip - Cedar Tree

Last to be posted in this series - this was captured in the parking lot on the way out to the car...

Another Zoo Trip - Building

Another Zoo Trip - Standing Ducks

Another Zoo Trip - Tarantula

Another Zoo Trip - Spider on Web

I don't like being around children unless they are from my own family, so when I'm by myself tend to stay away from the children's area of the zoo.  But after a number of visits decided that I'd like to get some bug shots, and they are in the children's section, so off I went.  Got a couple of good shots of spiders, but my favorite still is this one captured in rural Taiwan.

Another Zoo Trip - Bamboo Stand

Color balance skews toward the oranges and reds in this one, but corrected it and discovered that it looks better untouched.

Another Zoo Trip - Junior Gets Some Down Time

...and then Junior gets some time to himself to contemplate the things of life.

Won't be able to look at an orangutan again without thinking about a special on PBS that we saw of one raised from infancy in a home by a researcher at a university here in the U.S.  He learned to sign, and quite intelligently made his needs known to those who could interpret the signing.  And one of his favorite activities was to go to Dairy Queen and pay the cashier at the drive-through for his ice cream.  They gave him big washers as tokens to pay with, and the humans would fork over the cash a little later.

Well, the orangutan got big and, being a male, aggressive with some of the female students on campus at night after he'd broken out of his enclosure (which happened night after night...he was too smart to stay locked in).  Sadly, for the protection of the students they had to hand him over to the nearest suitable zoo, which was a couple of hours' drive away, to live with other orangutans.

He was at the zoo for a bit before the keepers observed that the hammocks set up in their habitat would be taken down.  Staff put them back up, but almost every night they'd be laying on the ground again.  The researcher, who visited frequently, was informed of this and asked if her orangutan could be the culprit.  She discover that of course he was!  The clue?  As part of the rigging to suspend the hammocks they used the same big washers that he'd used to pay for his ice cream...he was hording cash for his next trip to Dairy Queen!

Another Zoo Trip - Orangutan Grooming

...a little tender loving care was included in the mix, from both sides...

Another Zoo Trip - Like Mother Like Son

These two hung around together for quite a while, providing plenty of photo-ops.  Fortunately their movements were slow enough to keep pace with my lens.

It was here that I ran into another Nikon Photographer - a lady with a 500mm zoom on her rig, which was a bit older than the Bigger Cahoona.  She showed me one of her images.  Sure is nice to be able to get up close like that!  My 300mm did a fair job, though, which, coupled with the croppability of the high MP count, more than made up for it.

Another Zoo Trip - Orangutan Listening

Another Zoo Trip - White Bird

Another Zoo Trip - Brown Bird

Another Zoo Trip - Perched Bird

Think this bird has been featured in earlier posts, but wanted to get this one in because of the three "vines" leading up to it.

Another Zoo Trip - Colorful Reeds (taken from screen shot)

The collage above was saved as usual for posting, but simply couldn't get small enough for Blogspot to accept.  Turns out the JPEG of the bottom part (with the colors) was by itself 131 megabytes!  Could not compress enough - especially as part of a bigger collage - to fit.  Thus, cheated in a way and saved a screen shot of the pic showing in Photoshop.  Doesn't look quite as nice, but it's here...

Another Zoo Trip - Meercat

This little guy played quite the part, keeping watch on things while his companions frolicked below.  Pics below give a perspective of how big the enclosure was, and how much zoom was required to get these shots...

Another Zoo Trip - Green Snake (again)

Mentioned earlier in this post, had a visit with this green guy back in November of last year (2017).

Another Zoo Trip - Brown Viper Atop (fake) Log