Adventurous Alaska! - v.2.0

I'm back to my mini-travelogue...! So, where was I....?

'Fjords'(pronounced as 'fee-ords') basically means a long, narrow, deep inlet of the sea between steep slopes. Here is a map of the entire Prince William sound, which is 3,000 miles of shoreline, surrounded by the Chugach Mountains to the east, west and north and on which, the towns of Whittier, Valdez, and Cordova are situated. Because the Sound was formed by millions of years of glaciation, its shorelines are heavily indented by deep fjords and many smaller bays. No roads connect these communities.The map gives a better idea of the sound and the fjords.
Our cruise took us to College & Harrimon Fjords through Passage Canals, Barry Arm & Port Wells. Here is a detailed tour map.
Hot turkey sandwich(for non-veggies) & vegetable stew(for the non-meat-but-chicken-eaters like TD!) was provided on the cruise with complimentary Tea & Coffee.
The cruise stopped at a few locations for picture ops. On one such occasion, we captured calving of a glacier on our camcorder! Must I say, one needs a lot of patience and steady hands to record such a phenomenon and take pictures. It was a spectacular cruise & I highly recommend it.

We rushed to catch the 6pm tunnel exit, leaving Whittier, as we banked on the shores 8 mins short of 6pm!

We then visited the Portage glacier and lake, which is just 6 miles off of the outbound tunnel from Whittier. Unfortunately, in the last few years, the glacier face has begun retreating from the lake it created. In winters though, the glacier face is still in the water and extends down more than 100 feet into Portage Lake. FYI, Glaciers that reach the sea are called tidewater glaciers and glaciers that end in lakes are freshwater glaciers.

On our drive back on hwy Seward, we saw a lot of cars parked on the shoulder to the right & as we passed them, I saw a little white baby goat atop a hill!
Eager to take a shot, we parked way ahead & walked back to where the baby goat was. & lo behold, as we got closer, we saw the entire white goat family! Ma & Pa goat on the hwy. side with there confused cubs/babies(2) atop the hill, trying to figure out their next move!
We got some excellent close-ups of the Ma & Pa goats. One of the baby goat did come down the hill but got frightenened by the presence of the human spicies that it ran back up!
The goats were so close to the road that there was a possibility of them being run-over by some fast driving car. Hence I asked TD to dial 911 and report the event and we left the spot.

We later dined at an Italian-Greek restaurant, Little Italy, which has an awesome menu!

The next day, we drove to North Anchorage to point Woronzof from where Mt.McKinley, Cook inlet & the Anchorage skyline are visible. Mt.McKinley looked tiny from here & it was hard to digest the fact that it was indeed Mt.McKinley!

Next, we drove to the Earthquake Park and took the 15 minute trail to the monument. When the "Good Friday" earthquake rocked Anchorage in March of 1964, the area that is now the park was an affluent residential area on the bluffs above Cook Inlet. The 9.2 earthquake dropped these homes into 30-foot crevasses and destroyed this entire area. Developed as a park years later, it carries monuments and reader boards with information on the great quake. On the way to the monument, we were greeted by a mama Moose, happily munching willow leaves! She was hardly a couple or more feets away from us. This is the closest you can get to a wild-horse-like-giant mama Moose!
At that moment, I heard our Denali Tundra wilderness tour guide Becky's voice...'when you see a Moose, slowly retreat....'! I was walking backwards & TD was moving towards the Moose for some closeups!
I think mama Moose was uninterested in TD that she made a huffing sound, walked across the trail & dissappeared into the wilderness! What a relief!

On our way to drop our car, we visited the World's busiest floatplane base at Lake Hood.
Funny, the dual purpose road strips were ment for driving and were also the runways! There were warning signs, to watch-out for a taking-off or a landing plane!
The planes were parked just like cars.
It looked as if flying is not a big deal here. It did struck me that people were allowed to visit such a high activity base, as many as 800 per day, without a ticket or a pass thru a security gate! & this base is feets away from the Ted Stevens international airport!
We saw a couple of floatplanes doing the landing & take-off action. It was amazing to see this from such a short distance.

Well, our 'adventure' had not yet ended! After reaching the Airport, we found that we were not assigned seats. Our boarding passes carried seat numbers that were atleast 12-13 rows apart. TD tried to get us seats together but as the flight was full, we had no chance but to request fellow passengers sitting next to us to switch. I had two ladies sitting next to me & I enquired if they were together. One of the lady said no & the other lady, without taking a second asked her if she could switch to another seat where currently her daughter was seated. The lady agreed & I lost a chance there! & TDs seat-neighbours were just hostile. Both didnt want to move!
By now, the entire aircraft knew our story and some were sympathetically looking at me.... a poor pregnant gal who will be seperated from her darling husband for 5 long flight hours.....sob...sob....sob!

& later, when we arrived at SFO around 8pm, to our horror, my 'friend' who was supposed to pick us up had completely forgotton about our return journey! He was still in his office and wasnt willing to drive up to SFO at such a short notice.
Not that I didnt try to call him before departing Anchorage, but his cell phone was acting wierd. He later told us, when he came to pick us up from the Bart station, at approx. 10pm, that he had forgotten to pay his cell-phone bill & so had his cell disconnected!

In the meantime, we had requested him to pick up some food for us as we were approaching the 10 o' clock mark. For some reason, the restaurants had closed at 9:40pm that night!
So here we were...Tweetu, TD & I were famished as on the flight, all we were served, were Pretzels! & we had our lunch @2pm!

I cried as my legs were swollen & aching, and that poor TD had to make a trip to a closest pizza & because Tweetu had gone without food for the last 4-6 hours...I had been such an irresponsible mom...

We finally ended our day and our adventurous Alaskan baby moon @11:40pm!

Thats my short travelouge right there!

Now to some updates from my side:
--The question is back to the table:should I go(read 'see') with a nurse midwife (who I think might be present during my delivery) or stick to my Family Practitioner who transitions between FP & OB depts. & whose chances of being during my delivery are non...
-- I am all bloated! I dont like the way I look...our Alaskan baby mooning snaps are upsetting....I look 4-5 yrs older than TD & this upsets me even more. I always thought I would look like this sweet pg momma & look at me, I am all swollen...
--A Disclaimer is in effect ...take a look at the footer. Yes! Some baby room designer wrote rather a harsh and threatning email, ordering me to remove the pictures from Tweetu's bedroom ideas posting as they belonged to her or her 'lawyer would get in touch' with me!