Tuesday, March 15, 2016

The Long Day Coming Home

Got to take my granddaughter to the playground this morning before leaving.  We had a long discussion about schools - there's elementary school, middle school, and high school, then college I told her.  She told me she goes to pre-school, but when she's older she'll go to elementary school.

Then we walked her to pre-school and went on to catch the ferry.  I always marvel at the mental distance the 35 minute ferry ride takes me.






Bainbridge is heavily wooded and semi rural - though lots of houses are hidden behind the trees.  A fake wilderness.  But this was the view from the ferry leaving the island.











Half an hour later, the weather was different and we were pulling into downtown Seattle with its big buildings and homeless street people.

But crossing water is almost always good for the soul.



We scooted our suitcases up the hill to the train to the airport where we spent more time than we expected.  Our plane was an hour late leaving.  Our plane came into Seattle from San Francisco 45 minutes after we were supposed to take off.  Our flight out of San Francisco last week to Seattle was an hour late too.

But it was about five Seattle time when we took off and circled back over Puget Sound.








It was cloudy much of the way and I had stuff to work on.  But I looked out and big white mountains were peeking through the clouds.

It kept getting clearer.  This is a massive glacier with icebergs floating in the waterway in the middle.  If you click on the picture it will enlarge and focus.  I think this is the Malaspina glacier.   The Jet Propulsion Lab says

"Malaspina Glacier in southeastern Alaska is considered the classic example of a piedmont glacier. Piedmont glaciers occur where valley glaciers exit a mountain range onto broad lowlands, are no longer laterally confined, and spread to become wide lobes. Malaspina Glacier is actually a compound glacier, formed by the merger of several valley glaciers, the most prominent of which seen here are Agassiz Glacier (left) and Seward Glacier (right). In total, Malaspina Glacier is up to 65 kilometers (40 miles) wide and extends up to 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the mountain front nearly to the sea."
The picture they have shows it from further north (left).  In my picture you can't see the Seward glacier on the right




And finally the mudflats at low tide as we approach the Anchorage airport with the sun penetrating the veils of clouds.

The tug of home pulls one way and  the tug of our granddaughter (and grandson who we also got see on this trip) another.

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