#alaskainjuly

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Sabbatical Essay #Day 33: Last Day of Trek America

This was last day of our Trek America package.

We’ve all became attached to each other and it was sad to see it end. 

We visited the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.

It is not a zoo, this is place where rescued wild animals - who cannot return to the wild (for the various of reasons) stay.  

We had some amazing viewing of the animals up close.  

We finished our 2 weeks of traveling and our van brought us back to the hotel we started from.  Most of us were to stay one last night in the hotel before leaving Alaska.  We all had very different flying schedules out to all different places so there were multiple good byes and one last dinner at the hotel. 

It was an amazing - life changing experience I had in Alaska with Trek America.  I was so sad when Trek America went out of business during Covid.  

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Sabbatical Essay #Day 32: Hope Alaska

On this day, I believe we were somewhere in the area of Hope, Alaska.  

We relaxed, had some drinks and camped for the very last time in our tents.

We did stop to see some views on our way to camp.

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Sabbatical Essay #Day 31: An Amazing Day in Homer

It was a lovely day.

We went kayaking, jumped into iceberg cold water in our swimsuits, and the sun never sat.

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Sabbatical Essay #Day 30: Bear Watching

On this day, I paid the most money to do bear viewing tour where we flew on a small plane to .. I think it was Lake Clark (I am not totally sure). It was an extraordinary experience that one of us described as being in a Jurassic Park movie because there were bears everywhere when our plane was landing (bears instead of dinosaurs)

It was crazy!  I am glad I did this- it was worth the money. 

The weather was super depressing and this photo represents the mood very well.

Look how tanned I was. 

Also it was my birthday that day, and I got from the group :) It was such a special birthday!

And then we all went out to this weird bar at night ha ha

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Sabbatical Essay #Day 29: Salmon Fishing at Seward

Weather was miserable on day 29. 

We were set out to go fishing in the sea and it was raining cats and dogs.  I’ve survived so far without water proof pants but I gave in that day.  Sadly... the pants did not save me from getting all my socks completely wet ... which was the thing I was desperately trying to avoid.

We were at Seward and our boated parted from here. 

It was my first time fishing ever and I somehow ended up being the luckiest person on the boat - I caught like... 3 salmons and one little fish when most of my friends didn’t get anything at all.  

Even worse, it just would not stop raining while we were fishing out in the sea..... it rained all day without stopping... and everyone was all wet and miserable.  We also smelled really bad when we got off the boat. 

We had to somehow consume all the salmon I caught that day... we tried but couldn’t there just was too much fish ha ha but it was a wonderful experience to cook and eat Alaskan salmon that I caught my with hands. 

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Sabbatical Essay #Day 28: Kenai Fjords National Park

We went on a boat in Kenai Fjords National Park.

Everyone got seasick and was miserable for a while but the icebergs were amazing and we did see a tiny part of a whale.  I was also super happy to be having an indoor meal!!! 

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Sabbatical Essay #Day 27: Corndog and Bad Shakshuka

There are not that many photos from day 27.  I think this was the day when we were on the road for the most of the day.  

We had our usual lunch where we made wraps on this parking lot and had opportunity to buy a corndog- it was amazing.  After all those days out in the wild, it felt really good to have some sort of store bought food.  

The dinner team made shakshuka on this day and I do remember it was horrible and everybody was miserable.  The eggs are supposed to go on top but were just put in with everything else and everything sort of turned into a big gooey soup. 

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Sabbatical Essay #Day 26: More Denali

Not that anyone cares ... but my blogging of my 2018 sabbatical adventure is taking too long - because I am just lazy and upload once in a while and it has been taking years and I really do need to finish this.  So I decided to keep posts short!

On day 26, we spent more time in Denali.

I did not know these girls were posing behind me at that time ;)

We went hiking on Triple Lakes Trail.

Visited 49 State Brewing place in Denali where they had the prop bus for the movie “Into the Wild”

Also I passed my test to become a junior ranger at the Denali National Park.