Where Would YOU like to GO?

As a travel educator and content creator, I’ve been to a lot of places. The main question I get from others at our presentations or at cocktail parties is, “where is the best place you’ve ever been?”. It’s an impossible question, akin to “which of your kids is your favorite?” A question I like to ask back is “Where would YOU like to go?” Once I find what the dream destinations are for my audience, then I can share my experiences with those destinations, or who I know that can help them experience what makes the place special. (click on any photo below for more about each destination)

If I‘m pressed, my own personal favorite travel destinations are those where I can have an active experience observing nature and wildlife in a remote location. A safari in Botswana, kayaking the inside passage in Alaska, snorkeling with sharks and sea lions in the Southern Pacific or bumping along in polar rover to see polar bears in Arctic Canada, all qualify as “favorites” and were extraordinary trips for me.

A Park Ranger shares his passion for conservation in Danube Drava National Park in Mohacs Hungary

But when I consider the amazing local guides and people we have met in so many places and how they enriched and enlivened the destination, even in seemingly ordinary places, I realize “favorite” or “best” has more to do with the people we meet than the places we go.

The National Park Ranger who led our bike tour in Mohacs, Hungary shared his passion for protecting the stork and told the story of how the stork is a leading indicator for the health of all life along the river, including the humans who live along the Danube. Meeting ordinary families walking their dogs (and tiny ponies!) along the bike path allowed us to get up close to local families, as well as the famous Hungarian storks. It felt like having one without the other would have been hollow. Would I tell people to run out and go to Mohacs, Hungary? Is it on anyone’e top 10? Probably not, and yet, I had one of my “favorite” travel experiences there because of the people and the animals!

A family takes their pony for a “walk” along the Danube in Mohacs

So, where would you like to go? It’s a question that encompasses the questions; what would you like to DO, and who you would like to meet? Cities and culture? Beaches and night clubs? A quiet chair by a lake? One thing to consider is if a destination that is a “favorite” on social media or on top ten lists will really be a match for you! There are so many “bests”, listed because they have excellent marketing budgets and promotion on social media. I sometimes say there are destinations that “everybody goes, because everybody goes”. Whether it’s right for you depends on knowing what you like, and not just following the hoard to whatever destinations turn up on Instagram most often! That’s what we at Go See It Travel have always tried to share with readers and the folks who attend out presentations.

We’d love to hear from you about your favorite destinations. Please comment below! If you’d like to research a destination, just put it in the search bar and see if we have photos and stories about your “favorite” place or your next adventure!

We will be taking a short break from posting new content on the blog for several weeks, while we attend to several family matters, including a major move. You’ll still see us sharing some “reruns” and we will still be presenting publicly and providing content to our partners, but we won’t be traveling until the New Year, when we will have lots more to share!

What’s Coming Up in 2019

• Snow Birds of Southeast FL

• Zumba Charter Cruise- A photo essay of the “Motion on the Ocean”

• Go See It Travel Tackles Disney World with tips for survival!

• One of the Worlds Biggest Ships- Harmony of the Seas

• River Cruise In Vietnam and Cambodia

• Whales of Baja

Photos From Our 2018 Travels click on any photo to see more!



Bears of Southeast Alaska

Of all the wildlife we hoped to see in Alaska, we knew bears would be the most fleeting. While hiking or kayaking in bear country, you have to take steps to actively avoid them! But on board Our UnCruise in Southeast Alaska, we hoped we could spot some and enjoy their antics from a safe distance. Luckily, for us, we had several wild sightings of bear during our late August visit, including some amazing behaviors such as a family of brown nears hunting under beach rocks and a black bear swimming!

Fortress of the Bears

As an insurance policy to see bears, we decided to visit Fortress of the Bear in Sitka, our port of embarkation. Fortress of the Bear was started as a non profit preserve for bear cubs that would otherwise be euthanized when their mother was killed or needed to be euthanized by AK fish and wildlife officials. Before FOTB, there was no rescue organization, and cubs were put down with their mothers or euthanized if their mothers were killed accidentally. Fortress of the Bear re purposed a huge wood processing area, using the pulp silos as habitats for the orphaned bear cubs they accepted.

Old pulp wood silos serve as habit for bears, and the platforms above allow visitors to safely view the bears up close.

There, staff would train bears in behaviors to help veterinarians examine them (such as lifting a paw on command or opening their mouths for inspection) This allows FOTB staff and vets to monitor the health of animals from afar without needing to drug them unless absolutely necessary. As animals that can never be released in the wild (they are fed by humans) FOTB can provide animals to certified zoos and also raise money for their mission by inviting visitors to see the bears up close.

Black Bears, Bandit, Tuliaan, and Smokey

Bandit gets up to get some fruit from his hendlers

Bandit and Tuliaan

Smokey climbs a tree to get a better look down on the coastal brown bears in another enclosure.

Coastal Brown Bears Chaik and Killisnoo

Another enclosure is reserved for brothers Chaik and Killisnoo, who put on quite a show, playing and swimming while we visited.

Coastal Brown Bears Lucky and Toby

Lucky plays with a little stream of water running through his habitat

Lucky

Toby

Wild Bears In Glacier Bay National Park

Fortunately, we did get to see bears in the wild in Glacier Bay National Park, which was easily one of the highlights of our time there. Our first sighting was a very distance view of black bear on a hill just past the glaciers in Glacier Bay National Park. I spotted them through my binoculars, a mother and 3 cubs! I shared our findings with the guides on deck and the captain slowed our ship and we moved closer to the shore where they were located. But because of how high they were in the mountain, and that they were moving in and out of the shrubs, they were difficult to see without binoculars and difficult to photograph.

Can you see them? The distance and elusiveness of wild bears often makes them tough to spot, even when there are 3 or 4 of them right in front of you! (click to expand the photos)

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Later we would see an unusual sight, a black bear swimming in the water heading towards the Glacier Bay National Park visitors center as we docked nearby!

But the biggest treat was when our guides spotted 3 bears, a mother and 2 large yearling cubs, walking along the shore of Russel Island. We were able to drift close enough to see them pretty well with the naked eye. Everyone on board was silent, as to not disturb them from their work. They were making their way along the shore flipping huge rocks along the shore with complete ease with their huge paws. From the bow of the ship we could hear the rocks clacking against each other and the sound of black legged kittiwakes making alarmed calls as the bears got close to their nesting area.

(in the video below, you can see the bears hustling to catch up to their mother, and hear the kittwakes alarming as the bears approach their nesting area.)

The bears were hunting for tasty seafood, including sea cucumbers and sea stars we had seen on our shore walks. We watched for over an hour as the shaggy brown bears padded on their huge paws, from one rock to the next, with the cubs hustling along every so often to catch up to their mother. After an incredible hour in silence enjoying these huge animals in their natural environment, we were all excitedly comparing photos and the wonder of having this incredible wildlife sighting with our fellow passengers. We moved on to see more wildlife in GBNP...for more photos and more of our experience on Glacier Bay National Park please see our post Here.

Check out the size of the rocks these huge bears flip easily in the video below!

Redemption In Glacier Bay National Park

No we didn’t have a religious conversion in Southeast Alaska, but we did have a chance to redeem a prior trip to the area that didn’t go exactly as we’d wished.

The highlight of a Glacier Bay National Park cruise ship visit is settling in front of the Margerie Glacier for your assigned hour and waiting for the crack of sound that often indicates a chunk ice is about to flow into the sea. Only 2 large cruise ships, 2 small cruise ships, and 25 private vessels are permitted to enter the park on any given day, and those are all assigned just one hour in front of the tidewater Margerie Glacier. The pinnacle experience is seeing the enormous river of ice in front of you, which runs from mountain to bay, reliably calving huge truck sized chunks of ice into the sea. After you assigned hour is up, it’s time to move on to the other wonders of the GBNP (see our posts about the whales and bears of Glacier Bay National Park)

Unfortunately, during the last time we sailed into Glacier Bay National Park on a large cruise ship in 2005, our 8 year old daughters’s day ended with her in tears!

We had enrolled our daughters, then 8 and 10 in the children’s program on that ship. The staff had promised the children would get to watch the glaciers calving at the Margerie Glacier. They said that a Park Ranger would board and do Junior Ranger activities with the children.

Our children had earned other Junior Ranger badges during activities in Skagway and Denali, and the chance to do so in GBNP, was appealing to them. We dropped them off at the program, and an hour later returned to learn that the Park Ranger assigned to the children’s program never boarded.

Our daughters, then 8 and 10 years old enjoyed earning Jr Ranger status at Klondike Historic National Park in Skagway in 2005. Look at that earnest little 8 YO face…wouldn’t you take her back to Alaska if she missed something important!?

Watching a glacier calving requires some patience, and some of the boys in the program got bored and started acting up. The staff of the children’s program had moved all the children to an interior room to play video games. Our children had completely missed the glacier calving hour! I could not recreate the experience for our 8 year old, and we weren’t likely to return to Alaska anytime soon, so all I could do was promise them we’d go back when they graduated from college. (see our posts here about the 2005 trip)

Lesson learned, we kept the kids with us in the College Fjords, but no calving tidewater glaciers that day in 2005.

Fast forward 13 years, with one graduated and the other on track to do the same, the time had come for redemption! This time, no mass market cruise with thousands of passengers would do. I contacted Chris, at Expedition Trips, the travel agent who put together our Polar Bear Safari (see post here) and explained the whole situation. Chris, with his vast knowledge of polar cruising, knew just what we needed and here we were on an UnCruise in Southeast Alaska hoping to redeem that bad experience on a large cruise ship 13 years earlier.

Margerie Glacier

Our daughter, 21 yo, 13 years later, up at 6:30 AM, excited and ready for redemption!

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The highlight of most Southeast Alaska cruises of any size, is a day in Glacier Bay National Park. In order to be permitted into the park, cruise lines must board a National Park Ranger, who provides commentary and runs special ranger programs on board. On a larger cruise this may be done via loudspeaker for thousands of passengers lining the decks and in their cabins. During our recent UnCruise to Glacier Bay National Park on Safari Endeavor, it meant we had a more personal experience, getting to not only meet the Park Ranger Kelly personally, but also getting to enjoy Glacier Bay with Ranger Kelly on deck answering our questions and pointing out wildlife and natural features of GBNP. And posing for selfies!!

Ranger Kelly takes a minute from spotting wildlife and explaining the geology of Glacier Bay National Park to pose for a selfie with passengers if the Safari Endeavor.

After telling our story to Ranger Kelly, she explained that “kids” of any age can participate in Junior Ranger activities, filling out an educational activity book, completing at least two activities in the park (we had done nearly a dozen of the suggested activities!) and having an interview with Ranger Kelly to share what you’ve learned. Our daughters decided this was the time for redemption and they tackled that booklet like it was a college final! They weren’t the only ones; several of the young adults on board took the time to finish the activities and took the oath at the end of our day in Glacier Bay National Park!

The young adults over 18 nearly outnumbered the “kids” getting inducted as Jr Rangers. Ranger Kelly made the kids pledge to put down their devices for at least an hour a day and asked a thought provoking question about their ideas for preserving Glacier Bay National Park. It will be these young people, including the passionate Ranger Kelly, who will carry forward the need to preserve these beautiful wilderness areas!

So Would You Like to see the Glaciers!?

We had an amazing day and everyone on board was able to see the Margerie Glacier calving and marvel at the sheer size of these tidewater glaciers.

To get a sense of scale…a huge flock of gull sized Kittiwakes are dwarfed by just a small section of the Margerie Glacier.

The glacier was fairly active with a few large chunks crashing to sea as we watched.

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A chunk the size of a tiny house breaks off with a noise that sounds like a gunshot or thunder, and the resulting waves can swamp anything nearby.

After our hour watching the Margerie Glacier, our ship ceded it’s turn to a small sailboat coming in. As we left, seeing the sailboat nearly disappear into the vastness of the glacier allowed me to imagine a time when glaciers covered the whole earth and carved out the largest mountains and deepest canyons and lakes!

Can you spot the sailboat? This 25-40 foot sailboat is dwarfed by the glacier!

Although our time wit the Margerie Glacier was over, our time in the 90 mile inlet that is the GBNP, had just begun. Next we sailed into the Johns Hopkins Inlet.

The map of our day in GBNP and all the exciting things we saw in the park.

John Hopkins Inlet

A beautiful water fall…but look closer, as I was with binoculars, and I saw some movement in the shrubs!

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Zooming in: Our captain moved the ship in a little closer. To get an idea of how carefully you have to look for wildlife, here are the black bear we saw. We were really looking for movement because if you look quickly, you wouldn’t notice the bears! I places a red dot under each of the three visible here, another bear is hidden in the bushes.

We were rewarded for staying out on deck all morning with lot more sightings of wildlife.

A seal rests on a chuck of ice

A group of sea otters rest on another piece of floating ice

This sea otter decided he didn’t need the ice, he’d just float along on his back!

Russel Island

One of our most exciting wildlife encounters was watching a family of bears moving along the coast of Russel Island. We have more about the bears in our post about Bears in Alaska click here for more, including video!

Gloomy Knob

In addition to the marine mammals and bears to watch for, it’s important to keep an eye out on the mountain sides for mountain goats.

And we spotted one grazing! Our ship moved closer, but it still looked like a little white fluffy spot on the mountain!

South Marble Island

One of the areas we slowed down and spent some time exploring was at South Marble Island. A huge sea lion colony hauls out into the island creating a lot of noise and not a little stink! It was interesting watching their behavior. We saw a small sea otter on a rock and two sea lions just swam up and body slammed it off the rock! They weren’t even interested in pulling out onto the rock, they just wanted the sea otter off of their rock!

South marble Island also serves as a rookery for thousands of sea birds.

A tufted puffin

Ranger Kelly described South Marble Island as a high rise apartment building, where different birds live on different levels.

As we wrapped up our day in GBNP, we had the opportunity to do another thing the large cruise ships do not, we docked at the Glacier Bay National Park visitor center.

We were briefed about exploring the visitors center on our own, including a mile long boardwalk loop through the forest and along the coast. The amazing wildlife sightings continued, when we were encouraged to watch a black bear swimming from one point to another near the visitor center. We were also discouraged from hiking in the area where it landed!

The Glacier Bay Lodge, where there is a small museum in the visitors center with displays ecological exhibits

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A whale skeleton was reconstructed at the visitors center, after it was struck by a cruise ship.

After exploring the visitors center and nearby trail, we sailed out of Glacier Bay and into the Lynn Canal, a parallel gorge where our next stop would be the small town of Haines, Alaska. But the whole family could agree, we had definitely redeemed the disappointing experiences from the last cruise, with some of the most amazing adventures on this one! It’s not often you get a do over, and we felt very lucky we had!