Getting to the Big Island If you remember, the original plan was three nights in Waikiki, but just before we left, we decided to change that to three nights on the Big Island for some night sky photography. Then, thanks to our cancelled expedition, this turned into six nights. We scrambled a bit, canceled our […]
Getting to San Juan Island We caught an Uber to Renton Airport, at the south end of Lake Washington. I’d never even heard of it before, but there were planes everywhere—none of which I recognised. It turns out they were Boeing planes, still waiting for their airline branding. It was pretty cool to see them […]
Wild Alaska on the National Geographic Sea Lion with Lindblad Expditions Our six-day expedition started in Sitka and ended in Juneau, offering activities such as hiking, kayaking, paddleboarding, and fly fishing. We planned to explore glaciers and fjords, and hope to spot wildlife including moose, bears, bald eagles, puffins, sea lions, orcas, otters, and humpbacks. […]
Getting to Sikta The flight to Sitka was stunningly beautiful. We flew over countless small islands, each with just a home or two and a dock. Exiting the plane was a bit unusual because there were about 20 state troopers waiting. Apparently, Sitka is a training facility, and there were 50 new recruits on our […]
Brooks Camp – The Densest Concentration of Brown Bears in the World (Here’s a link if you want to skip the section about how we got to Brooks Camp, including an epic moose sighting in Anchorage, and get straight to the bears) Getting to Anchorage Our journey from Australia included a brief stopover in Southern […]
Seventeen Years of Dreaming of Returning to Brooks Lodge Brooks Lodge is pure magic—our first visit was back in 2007. It was such an amazing trip that it earned a spot on our website home page. Deep down, we knew we’d be back eventually. Fast forward 15 years to December 1, 2022. I stumbled upon […]
Oops! This page appears to be part of the 2014 website migration crisis. Not to worry; we’ve got the text and images safe and sound, just waiting for their triumphant repost when we find the time.
(There’s a long preamble for this trip, so click here if you just want to read about Kona). We’d been isolated in Australia for 26 months. TWENTY SIX MONTHS! To be fair, there are far worse places to be confined. When the Australian border reopening was announced, we immediately booked flights to visit my mom […]
Sea lions are one of my favourite subjects to photograph. They have adorable faces and genuinely seem to like interacting with humans. La Paz, in the Sea of Cortez, is known for its colony of 200 California sea lions and is an easy side trip from the United States. Getting There We flew from Sydney […]
Every few years, a rare condition occurs in Australia where the Easter holidays and Anzac Day line up. This means that you can take 10 days of leave (vacation) and get a whopping 19 day holiday. The last time this happened was 2014, when we visited New Zealand (though we were amateurs back then and thought […]