Grorter Gristers

Whipped Cream Addiction Is Genetic!!!

At Exit Glacier

We look miserable because we are wet and cold. It rained all day that day and the easy hike to the glacier left us (especially Sonora), rather chilled.

We stayed for two nights on a tiny island off the southern coast of Alaska. We slept in a houseboat for the first night (the constant rocking motion was somewhat unnerving), and in a yurt the second night. During our second day on the island, we went sea kayaking. We paddled into a little cove that houses a slender water fall that plummets into a small pool, which lets out to the ocean via a short, cascading stream. When we got there, there were thousands of salmon spawning, struggling up the stream by the hundreds, their fins and tails flopping out of the shallow water. They congregated in the pool where they spawned, then waited until they turned gray, their skin started pealing off, and they floated feebly back downstream to die gasping. It was a little eerie. But the scenery is beautiful.

In Seward, AK, where Joal's parents live, they have something called the Sea Life Center, which was built after the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. They take in injured sea life and rehabilitate them and then release them back into the wild. This sea lion seemed particularly smitten with Sonora. It hovered there, upside down, for a long time while she touched the glass near its neck; the sea lion behaved almost like a docile dog, wanting its belly scratched.