My birthday presentation from the Oosterdam Cast is now posted on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L993kTnGrc

To finish off the educational week I went on a wine tour where we paired wine and chocolate...yummy!

The sun setting on the ship:)

In Sitka I visited the Raptor Center where they heal raptors (meat eating birds). Of course the biggest attraction is the bald eagles.

Beautiful and educational (what can I say, it was an educational week!)

Last week in Juneau I went on a very educational shore excursion to a closed gold mine. I learned all about mining for gold and mining in general...all new info for a Georgia girl. At the end I got to pan for some gold and ended up with a few flakes:)

They had a railroad to get the guys up to the top and here's the superintendent's house...they haven't touched it in a few years.
Above is the after picture and below is the before:
This is what the guy's in the mine used...interesting:
Here's the huge ore rock that they dump on the conveyor belt to take to the crusher to get some gold!

Here's some beautiful nature pictures from Juneau, Alaska:

This is my room on the ship and what it looks like after Irawan has straightened and cleaned:)
To the direct left is the closets and bathroom..the room extends only about 7 more feet to the left!
These are the magician's, James Cielen, dogs...two french poodles. Look familiar?
This is me and Shadow hanging out in the room (the white one is Koda).
Here's some of us eating at the Pinnacle Restaurant on board...I try to eat here once a week!

Victoria, British Columbia

A great city...

These are some of the float houses in the harbor
A cattamaran ride through  the fjords at sunset.

Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau. It's the largest glacier that you can drive to in Alaska. This picture was taken from the visitor center, a pretty site, but I wanted to get closer. So I trekked to the waterfall...had to climb over some crazy rock formations to get there.

Did I mention on this beautiful Memorial Day the Alaskan kids swam in the water!?!?!?!

The Great Alaska Lumberjack Show in Ketchikan (yep, it's just like the stuff you watch on ESPN). We had a blast even in the cold (but at least it wasn't raining). I plan to go see another show before I leave Alaska!

In Sitka I went on a Sea Otter and Wildlife Quest where we saw bald eagles...

humpback whales...
and sea otters...
and more sea otters...
and more whales....
Wow!

In Juneau I had the opportunity to go on a three hour cattamaran ride through the waters. It's one of the best tours I've ever done...here are some of my favortie pictures out of the hundreds that I took...

This is the head of a humpback whale that was hanging out on the water...notice all of his nobbins:)

Our tour was extremely lucky and came across a pod of about 15 orca whales. They put on quite a show for us for about 30 minutes.
I was able to take so many pictures of not just the whales, but of the whales against a beautiful back drop!
The pod had one bull (head male), some females, some juveniles, and even some babies.
Like I said, the orcas put on quite a show of breeching (jumping out of the water), tail slaps (like above), and pec slaps (side fins). I'll try to put a video up on youtube.