Going out with a bang (the summer, that is..)

We started out the summer (Memorial weekend) with a fantastic camping trip with Nathan, Amanda, and Adam on Portland Island (track down the blog entry).  The 2008 summer went out in a similarly fantastic style–a weekend in Tenakee Springs (with Nathan, Amanda, and Adam–we need to hang out with those guys more often, if the weekends keep turning out like these did… 🙂

The above panorama does an ok job of capturing it.. You can click on either the image or this link to get a “.mov” which should fire up in quicktime and let you pan and zoom and navigate around the panoramo.  Use the arrows to navigate and shift/control to zoom in and out.

Carrie and Torsten flew out on Ward Air direct to Tenakee on Thursday.  Matt stuck around Juneau to get the “SEAMONSTER 2” proposal in, and teach the first class of the semester (both worked out well, I think..).

On Friday, Matt went out on Alaska Seaplanes and went through Angoon.  Our introduction to Tenakee was fantastic.  First, we all had a good soak in the hot springs.  We enjoyed walking down main street.  Carrie loved the store and the cash register:

 

We walked about a mile to the cabin that Nathan had just helped put up..

What a location!  We had a delicious crab meal on Friday night. Nathan pulled ’em up, with the help of the boys.  After the boys examined the crabs, the crabs got their revenge by chasing the boys around (with Nathan’s help…), and then we got our revenge (and dinner)–yum!

 

We loved our Tenakee visit for many reasons–I (Matt) was happy to relax in preparation for the upcoming semester–I really needed it!  Here’s a few photos from main street and the public restroom (below high tide line!)

 

 Part of the amazing experience was whales (humpback) swimming by at least once a day, along with seals, sea lions, lots of birds, fish jumping, etc. etc…  The final day, we had at least 17 whales (we decided it was either about 20 hyperventalating whales or 40 normally-breathing whales!) and we had three whales breach at one time–fantastic!  And the berries were at their prime and the bushes were full..  The hike back out to catch the ferry home was long, and the whole weekend was phenomenal but tiring:

 More pictures are at the gallery, as usual.  The ferry ride was long (with a stop off in Hoonah), but the whales followed us, and we got another nice breach.  We’re scheming on finding some miracle way of buying a cabin out in Tenakee…