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After having taken the photo tour apart from my wife and friends, I was by myself and able to take time to shoot at leisure on my way back to the ship. As can be seen, everyone here is bundled up against the cold. The temperature in fact wasn't that bad (mid 50's), but a fierce wind was howling from the north all day. In fact, on the photo tour Cindy initially had planned to take us into Canada for some mountaintop views, but nixed that for fear that we'd be swept right off the peak.
On the right you can see a train...one of the ones they use to tour into the interior; the shot below is of same looking in the other direction. About midway down the boardwalk I stopped and captured a 9-shot panorama of the train that turned out very well. As can be imagined, with the huge file sizes of every single one of those shots from the Bigger Cahoona, we ended up with a Photoshop file of almost 500 megabytes. At that size the program won't even let you save as a JPEG, so it'll be locked into that format for now...
Probably my favorite of the Skagway shoot...different perspective of same below:
...so easy to travel up to these places and romanticize about what it must be like to live among the mountains, breathing some of the cleanest air on the planet and taking in the beautiful vistas every time you step outside. But in reality it was a hardscrabble living that left a person beyond exhaustion and constantly in angst about whether a dollar could be made from day to day. I once flew to a remote area of Colorado, outside of Durango, and made a comment to our host that it must be incredible to live in such a place. He commented that he'd give me about a week to get tired of it.
These two shots were captured from about the same position down either side of the street. Must be interesting to see these magnificent ships coming in to park at this end:
Cindy told us this building is the most photographed in all of Alaska, and it's easy to see why. It's all driftwood, and in their many thousands frame a mosaic unlike any other...
It appears this one died almost a month later, obviously not in the avalanche.
As stated in a post from a few days ago, what got us here in the first place was my penchant for shooting cemeteries. But that didn't start with a camera...ever since a young age I've enjoyed strolling around in a cemetery. Not only do they offer great insight into local history, but occasionally there is a surprise by way of an unusual marker, or the way they may be grouped by ethnicity. Fascinating way to learn a culture.
They also are quiet places that often offer shade in the warmer months. Because of that, when I used to go to Austin on business several times a year and would be sleepy on the drive home, I would stop at the cemetery at Giddings to take a little nap under the shade of a lone oak tree right in the middle of it. That became a habit not only at Giddings but in other places whenever I might be traveling alone.
Not only are they great places to take a nap, due to the very nature of what cemeteries are they make for great practical jokes. At Scout camp Urland, outside of Woodville, there was an old abandoned cemetery adjacent to the property. As an initiation it was a tradition for the older scouts to take Tenderfoots on a midnight hike to that cemetery, where others would be waiting behind the gravestones. Using our flashlight along the path, on the way we would tell them scary ghost stories. Naturally, by the time we got to the place the youngsters were already on edge, but the guys jumping out from behind the markers with sheets on absolutely scared the bejeezus out of them. It was great fun, but don't suppose they do that kind of thing any more.
This was captured alongside the roadway at the entrance to the cemetery. The following half-dozen or so posts will be of the graves and markers within the cemetery itself...
As stated in an earlier post, our guide Cindy was open to suggestions, and I spoke up and said I like shooting cemeteries. Before you know it we turned down this narrow road and ended up in what they call the Slide Cemetery. A very interesting side trip, and the group seemed to all enjoy it.
According to this commemorative sign, about 70 died in a single avalanche incident, and most were buried at this place.
I really, really do not understand this thing about kilts...have a coworker that tries hard to educate me, and I'm sure he does a good job of explaining it all, but they still just look like skirts to me.
Very similar post here captured in Lucerne.
Easy to see where they get the name for these guys, looking at the stems...
This is the actual trail head that the Klondike gold rushers used on their way to the fields. It's 33 miles long, and still hiked by adventurous types that take several days to make the trek, stopping to camp each night. We were told that it's in the original condition, virtually unchanged in the century that has passed.
Black and white of same below:
3-shot Panorama below. A family was drifting down the river in a rubber raft, but they were cut out in the stitching process:
We stopped next to this bridge that traverses the river. After the truck went through I stepped inside for the proverbial pic of something through something:
Even though it was late May, new growth was very tender and light green on many of the conifers. Zoomed-out shot below and belower:
While on a road directly across the Taiya river from the now-extinct mining town of Dyea we saw several seals, who were just as curious about us as we were of them...
I knew going into this Alaska thing that one of the biggest draws would be the wonderful panoramic scenery. Frankly that kind of photography bores me a bit, but who can go there without doing some of these?
3-shot panorama of the same scene below:
For this kind of photography our guide, Cindy, was great, stopping in all the right places and making suggestions on where we might get situated for the best outcome. Very fortunately she was also flexible and great at responding to our suggestions, the results of which you'll see later in this series.
