Solo Trip to Alaska - Accomplishing my Bald Eagle Dream
- Thread starter devilry
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The first thing that greeted me at the bear viewing area is a Husky dog instead of the bears - with interesting brown and blue eyes!
And before the start of the bear viewing, I headed for the toilet, which is another "interesting" experience. The tap over there is where you use to wash ur hands... the water is pumped from the lake
The interior of the toilet. Below the seat is a huge hole, which is literally full of shiiit!!! and stinks like shiiit!!!! Luckily I only had to peee and not to shiiit!
This is the small motorboat which we rode on around the lake for bear hunting - low class version.
The way the rich ones do it. Charter the plane and run around the lake in the plane - high class version. I must admit, he has nuts of steel to dare to shoot in this manner! He seems to be using the canon 100-400mm lens.
And before the start of the bear viewing, I headed for the toilet, which is another "interesting" experience. The tap over there is where you use to wash ur hands... the water is pumped from the lake
The interior of the toilet. Below the seat is a huge hole, which is literally full of shiiit!!! and stinks like shiiit!!!! Luckily I only had to peee and not to shiiit!
This is the small motorboat which we rode on around the lake for bear hunting - low class version.
The way the rich ones do it. Charter the plane and run around the lake in the plane - high class version. I must admit, he has nuts of steel to dare to shoot in this manner! He seems to be using the canon 100-400mm lens.
Basically the bear viewing is a full day trip, and I was on the boat for nearly 6 hours. The boat just take us around the whole lake to search for bears ... but the lake is very huge! It takes hours just to navigate the circumference of the lake... Surprisingly the bears don't care about the boat at all, and at times we can get very close.. however, shooting pictures from the small boat is a challenge as it's very very bouncy and jerky, and tripod is again useless. All shots of the bears were taken handheld.
The following is a series of pics of a brown bear which is fishing near the edge of the lake. He waits patiently and stroll slowly along the edge of the lake, then really really slowly walks into the the lake. Once the yummy salmon is spotted, he immediately makes a run and dives onto it, using the teeth and claws as the main weapon to nail the salmon. The salmon that the bear is feeding here is the red sockeye salmon. The body of the salmon is bright red and the head is green! Really awesome coloured salmon, and trust me, this salmon is really nice to eat!
eleveninth
Senior Member
the salmon catching series.
This reminds me so much of my own travels. Looking forward to the rest of your adventure
Thanks for liking guys! I will update more in due course!
Haha.. Now not a good time to see wildlife though, it's the winter, unless you wan to see the northern lights, immediately book it now!
No worries guys, it's definitely do-able... I had many screw ups as u can see (and btw, i read less than 15mins of the lonely planet & I m still able to run around the place! It's easier than expected. Gears, clothing preparation is a chore though... Luckily I have some knowledge of gearing up for cold places, it helps in getting the right stuffs fast...
Your Hokkaido and Nepal stories have inspired me tonnes too! I hope to have much fun as you in Japan when I go there next week! I would also love to go Nepal trekking too but think my knees would not be able to take the days and long hours of trekking due to old injuries...
I will not post photos of the anchorage central business area, as to me it's a rather developed city area - most of things such as buildings, roads, shops are all man-made, don't think anyone would be interested in them...
fast forward, and soon my one approx.. one week self travel ended, and it's time to start the 14D camping trip!
All of us gathered early in the morning, and to my surpise, there were people of all nationalities on the trip.. French, Swiss, Italian, American, Chinese, Taiwanese, Colombia, Dutch. This is again an eye-opener for me, never for once in my life have I interacted with people from so many countries before!! Besides, I actually slept with 2 other guys (both Swiss) in the tents for 14D!! I learnt plenty from these guys, and is something I would not have gained had I travelled on the Princess/Royal Carribean cruises..
This is how the trailer looked like after we loaded our stuff onto the vehicle trailer.
The first stop the vehicle took us to, is the food mart to stock up on raw ingredients such as bread, milk, fruits, veges, meat etc. (during the entire trip, we ate less than 5 times in restaurants/food centers - we bought and cooked our own food mainly..)
fast forward, and soon my one approx.. one week self travel ended, and it's time to start the 14D camping trip!
All of us gathered early in the morning, and to my surpise, there were people of all nationalities on the trip.. French, Swiss, Italian, American, Chinese, Taiwanese, Colombia, Dutch. This is again an eye-opener for me, never for once in my life have I interacted with people from so many countries before!! Besides, I actually slept with 2 other guys (both Swiss) in the tents for 14D!! I learnt plenty from these guys, and is something I would not have gained had I travelled on the Princess/Royal Carribean cruises..
This is how the trailer looked like after we loaded our stuff onto the vehicle trailer.
The first stop the vehicle took us to, is the food mart to stock up on raw ingredients such as bread, milk, fruits, veges, meat etc. (during the entire trip, we ate less than 5 times in restaurants/food centers - we bought and cooked our own food mainly..)
The first stop was to head towards the Denali National Park camping ground. I am sure many would have heard of Denali National Park as one of the greatest park in the world to see wildlife such as bears, foxes, caribou, lynx, moose (imagine an even larger version of the Yellowstone National Park), and I am super excited that the first site would actually be Denali parks - I will post what creatures/monsters/beasts I saw there.. stay tuned! Muhahahaha
Along the way to the camping ground, the guide stopped at several points/whenever there are nice sceneries for us to snap snap. Here's some of them!
Yes... those are real reflections, not photoshopped...
An ice mountain between 2 grassland mountains..
Like mentioned earlier, the weather changes erratically - it was quite sunny earlier and within an hour, this is what we got.
At one point, the driver stopped, and he shouted out "There's a moose in front of us!!!" All of us took out our cameras and rushed out of the vehicle.. Slowly, the moose moved away from the road and into the bushes! This is the first wildlife the group encountered, and we were all ecstatic!
Along the way to the camping ground, the guide stopped at several points/whenever there are nice sceneries for us to snap snap. Here's some of them!
Yes... those are real reflections, not photoshopped...
An ice mountain between 2 grassland mountains..
Like mentioned earlier, the weather changes erratically - it was quite sunny earlier and within an hour, this is what we got.
At one point, the driver stopped, and he shouted out "There's a moose in front of us!!!" All of us took out our cameras and rushed out of the vehicle.. Slowly, the moose moved away from the road and into the bushes! This is the first wildlife the group encountered, and we were all ecstatic!
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Reaching our camp ground, all of us proceeded to unload from the van, pitch tents and cook our food.
Our camping site is just beside this turquoise lake (btw, it's close to 8pm but it looks like day!)
Unloading of stuff in the shelter... there are several shelters such as this, and we setup our tent under this shelter. It's only later then I realize we only have sheltered area to pitch tents on our first day... On the subsequent days, we slept in open areas. If you are sharp, you would have noticed one suitcase.. it was brought by a Swiss, and everyone of us were laughing at him! it was really funny to see him lugging the luggage everywhere when camping..
The food that we made that day, some hand wraps with chicken and sauces.
This is the toilet and laundry facility.
Close-up of laundry facility - both the washing machine and dryer are inside.
Our camping site is just beside this turquoise lake (btw, it's close to 8pm but it looks like day!)
Unloading of stuff in the shelter... there are several shelters such as this, and we setup our tent under this shelter. It's only later then I realize we only have sheltered area to pitch tents on our first day... On the subsequent days, we slept in open areas. If you are sharp, you would have noticed one suitcase.. it was brought by a Swiss, and everyone of us were laughing at him! it was really funny to see him lugging the luggage everywhere when camping..
The food that we made that day, some hand wraps with chicken and sauces.
This is the toilet and laundry facility.
Close-up of laundry facility - both the washing machine and dryer are inside.
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The shower facility
The toilet - I always love to shoot the toilets. To me toilets are a sign of the "class" of a place. And this toilet is the best in the entire trip, because it's the only one with flushing toilets!!!! The rest of the toilets are those with a huge hole underneath, and full of shiiiit!!!! I was a bit uncomfortable shittttting in those "hole-ly" toilets the first time (some of them I visited really stinks!!!), but after 14D it's no big deal and I got used to it...
This is where we get water from... I think it's river water.
The electricity point - there's only 1 such point in front of every shelter. So everyone had to take turns to charge their devices. If you charge overnight, you gota leave your battery to charge outside, and who knows what will happen to it? Eaten by a moose? Not joking, because several camp mates spotted a moose in the campsite (The campsite is in the forest afterall), and they were running like mad back to the shelter... This is another unique inconvenience of camping in Alaska..
The next day early in the morning after breakfast, we proceeded to pack our lunch/tea-break/snack for the trip to denali national park - the drive to the main entrance is about 2 hours away, and we would be spending around 6 hours inside, before another 2 hrs return trip back to the campsite.
Speaking of sandwiches... the number of sandwiches I packed in this trip is greater than what I had packed in total since I was born in Singapore... The ang mohs are really pro and they pack very fast!!
The toilet - I always love to shoot the toilets. To me toilets are a sign of the "class" of a place. And this toilet is the best in the entire trip, because it's the only one with flushing toilets!!!! The rest of the toilets are those with a huge hole underneath, and full of shiiiit!!!! I was a bit uncomfortable shittttting in those "hole-ly" toilets the first time (some of them I visited really stinks!!!), but after 14D it's no big deal and I got used to it...
This is where we get water from... I think it's river water.
The electricity point - there's only 1 such point in front of every shelter. So everyone had to take turns to charge their devices. If you charge overnight, you gota leave your battery to charge outside, and who knows what will happen to it? Eaten by a moose? Not joking, because several camp mates spotted a moose in the campsite (The campsite is in the forest afterall), and they were running like mad back to the shelter... This is another unique inconvenience of camping in Alaska..
The next day early in the morning after breakfast, we proceeded to pack our lunch/tea-break/snack for the trip to denali national park - the drive to the main entrance is about 2 hours away, and we would be spending around 6 hours inside, before another 2 hrs return trip back to the campsite.
Speaking of sandwiches... the number of sandwiches I packed in this trip is greater than what I had packed in total since I was born in Singapore... The ang mohs are really pro and they pack very fast!!
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The main entrance of Denali National Park
The best way to tour Denali National Park is by the Park Bus, the bus just make a single one way trip to another park station further in.. it's impossible to walk by yourself, it's probably the size of 100 Singapore? Maybe more, as the national park occupy a visible "area" on the world map, while Singapore cannot even be seen..
Interior of bus
The best way to tour Denali National Park is by the Park Bus, the bus just make a single one way trip to another park station further in.. it's impossible to walk by yourself, it's probably the size of 100 Singapore? Maybe more, as the national park occupy a visible "area" on the world map, while Singapore cannot even be seen..
Interior of bus
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