Alaska

I just got back from Alaska yesterday. Above is a picture of my brother Mark on the lake behind the cabin where we stayed in Soldotna. And below is a satellite shot of the lake. The river running down the left side is the Kenai River where I caught two kings: one was the 40+ pounder I posted about earlier and another, much smaller, 12 pound "jack" king. All in all we brought back between four and five hundred pounds of meat, about 220 of which was halibut.

Overall I had an incredible time. It was cold and rainy and there was a certain amount of drama on the last day that I have come to terms with and I enjoyed it immensely. We caught a lot of fish, played a lot of cards, and ate way too much great food every night. Thanks to my dad for investing in this experience for his 5 sons.


After getting home around 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon Whit and I killed some time at Ikea before going to see the Dark Knight on imax. WOW. That's all I can say.

I caught a king.

Here are the King Salmon that my brothers Mark and Robert and I caught yesterday. Mine was the biggest on the bottom. Though there was no official weight our guide said that it's a 40+. Just smaller than mine was Roberts who caught his first King ever, but caught something of a mutant. Our guide thought it was a girl by looking at it but when he was making filets out of it was surprised to find that it is in fact a boy. I hope I don't get any of those filets. The little guy was Marks. He couldn't handle bringing a bigger one in.

I left my laptop at home so I don't have access to any of the pictures I've taken, but I'll update with those later. It's been drizzly and cold here but we're generally done fishing in the early afternoon and have the rest of the day to bring up our core temperatures and play cards.

A digital graverobber.

Shortly before Whit and I got home from Switzerland I sat down with her to have what to me was a very serious discussion. I love the advent of digital photography and everything it brings to the table. I love that it has liberated people and allowed them to take as many pictures as you want and there is that instant gratification, being able to see the picture immediately after taking it. The one disadvantage of digital is that probably 99% of photos never escape the digital realm. The computer has become a graveyard for photos and that is something I feel is borderline sinful. There's something much more intimate about being able to hold a photo and see it on paper.

After devoting so much of our time in Switzerland to taking pictures I wanted to make sure to not disrespect the photos and convict them to a life of nothingness on my hard drive. Especially after having my hard drive crash this past Spring Break and losing everything in the six months or so that I hadn't backed up. So I talked to Whit about investing in a good photo album to display some of our pictures. I searched all over town trying to find an album similar to our wedding photo album, something that would hold 200-300 photos, preferably in red. Much to my avail all I found was scrapbooking crap. Through becoming increasingly frustrated it finally dawned on me that maybe our wedding album would have the brand name in it and I could just look it up online. And the rest is history. We ordered a nice red photo album from Kolo that holds 300 photos and I took it in to work and printed a white swiss cross on it. And there you have it.

The best SnoShack in town.

If you live in Logan or ever come here you should know that this is the best SnoShack around. The ice is so finely shaved that it is as close to snow as you can get during the summer. They put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the bottom and pour cream on top and they make it extra saucy for me. Eating one is what eating an angel must taste like. Aside from the fantasticness of the cone itself, they also do punch cards and once you spend 20 dollars you get a free 16oz.
We're junkies.

A betrayal and a fresh start.

Today I feel like I stabbed an old friend in the back. But in doing so I have made a much better friend, one that won't cost so much, plays music and takes pretty good pictures. After being with Sprint for as long as we were, we switched over to T-Mobile today. Now I don't want you to get the wrong idea, Sprint is not the old friend I was referring to. That honor goes to my old phone. I am really sad to have to leave him behind but I feel this change was akin to saying forever goodbye to a good friend because his family is part of the mafia. I'm debating whether or not there will be a formal funeral service or not, I'll keep you posted.


In the mean time, let me introduce to you my new phone. Notice the juicy orange color. I spent most of the night personalizing the buttons and entering contacts. It was a great first date (though now that I'm getting all romantic I'm wondering if I should go back and change any reference to a phone being masculine).

Also, we saw Hancock tonight. It was much better than I thought, in fact I enjoyed it quite a bit.

All Caught Up

Okay, I filled in all the story that goes along with the pictures for our last week in Switzerland. So if you're interested you can go back and read about it, if not I won't hold it against you, it's probably a waste of time anyways.

Snowshoeing in Italy

I was scrolling through the blog when I realized that I had never posted these pictures of us snowshoeing. This was the day after arriving at the St. Bernard's Hospice. We crossed the border into Italy and went up the mountain as far as visibility would allow us. On the way back somehow the tip of my snowshoe got buried and I slid on my face for about 20 feet. Then at the bottom of the mountain there was this 3 foot drop you had to slide down to get to the road. Thanks to Dominique who helped Whit get down safely.

HOME

Well, after leaving at 4am yesterday, traveling 28 hours and arriving around midnight last night/this morning, we are finally home. As each hour passed I got more and more excited to be heading home: to sleep in my own bed and eat burritos, eggs, snowcones and hamburgers, all of which I've been craving since we left. But it was on the last stretch of our trip, riding in a car through Willard that it really hit me that we were home and I'm not in Switzerland anymore. That sucks. It is such a beautiful place and while Logan has its merits it just doesn't compare.

The last week since the school portion of the trip got wrapped up has been incredibly busy. We felt like we had to take advantage of each day and go somewhere, but at nights I had to edit photos to turn into my teacher by last Saturday. By the time that was over I was so burned out from looking at the computer that I didn't want to post here, so I'll try to make up for it now.


MONDAY (06/23)
INTERLAKEN AND GRINDELWALD


Since this is the one place that my dad told us that we should go, and seeing how most museums are closed on Mondays anyways, we decided to check it out. Originally we had planned on taking the tram up to the Jungfraubahn, which is known as the top of Europe (or maybe just Switzerland, I can't remember), but tickets would have cost us about 100 bucks a piece. Then we found out that they have Zorbing in Interlaken, you know, the giant hamster ball that you get in and roll down mountains, but that would have cost us the same and I hadn't realized that you are strapped in there so that you don't break your neck. That doesn't sound to me like as much fun because you wouldn't be able to just slide, you'd be forced to roll around in there and it makes me wonder how many people lose their lunch and get trapped in there with it. We ended up just taking it easy for the most part. We walked around and enjoyed the scenery. I can't believe how spectacular the mountains are there.

With about an hour and a half left before our train left Interlaken, we decided to try this funicular that takes you up this hill that overlooks the town and then you ride an alpine coaster down. The lady talked us into doing 3 ("you only pay for 2!") trips and I'm glad we did. Since the carts are on a coaster you can basically floor it the whole time with no worry of flipping off the track.


TUESDAY
LAUSANNE



After finishing up with the guided section of our trip I had a number of place that I wanted to return to in order to photograph things differently than I originally had and Lausanne was high on my list. There we were able to kill a few birds with one stone. By this time I had finished all of the books that I had brought with me (Love those trains.) and the guidebook said that Lausanne was home to one of the best bookstores in Switzerland. They housed an enormous English section with plenty of overpriced paperbacks. I quickly found a soft spot for the British covers of the Stephen King books and bought Cell. It was also in this bookstore that I found a whole section of Gestalten's books. It was great to be able to pick up and peruse many books that have found there way on to my wishlist in the past few months.

For the most part we just wandered around. I shot the cathedral again, Whit bought the shorts at H&M that she had been thinking about since we saw them in Basel and we went to a photography exhibition entitled Teen City. There we saw the work of many artists addressing different aspects of teenhood, but the photographer whose work stood out the most to me was Julia Fullerton-Batten. Google it. Particularly her piece Red Dress. Another artist did a series that was based on all these teen girls and the contrast between their actual lives and the lives that they portray on the Internet with Myspace and blogs.


WEDNESDAY
GENEVA


Wednesday we went to Geneva. A large group had gone there the day before so we were able to hear what stuff was worth it to see and what wasn't. What I remember most about the day was hot humid it was. Before leaving for Switzerland our teacher told us that since there is only one washer and dryer at the hotel that we should plan on wearing our clothes multiple times before washing them and I was perfectly ok with that until we got over there and realized how much our clothes reeked after one day.

We did a lot of walking. First we walked around the river and checked out this fountain that is the highest in the world. Then we went to the Museum of Art and History. They had some really cool exhibits but what I was anticipating the whole time was the printmaking room. According to the description I read they focus more on contemporary printmaking so after spending some time going through the main exhibits we headed over there to find that it was closed for renovations. From there we walked around this parade route and eventually found the Patek Phillipe watch museum which was amazing. I am amazed at the amount of detail on these watches. Most were pocket watches and were either hand-painted or had little animatronics or both. Amazing that someone could figure out how to make this little bird 1/2 inch tall open its mouth, turn its head, flap it's wings and tail feathers and spin around. Seriously incredible.


THURSDAY
BERN


We were able to go to the temple just outside of Bern on Thursday. It was a really amazing experience. It took so long to get there that we didn't have time to get lunch and then afterwards we only had about 15 minutes at the train station before our train left, so being so phenomenally hungry we ran into the little coop there to find something to tide us over until we could have dinner. It was then, with only 4 days left in Switzerland that I found out that the whole time I had been there I could have been enjoying Mango Lassis. They were my new addiction for those few days, underscored by them only being 1.75 as opposed to the 3.00 at the Indian Oven here in Logan.



FRIDAY
MARTIGNY AND VEVEY (LAKE GENEVA)


Friday marked the day that Jackson and Eliza got back from Austria and we had roommates again. While they were gone most people avoided hanging out with us, apparently married people are only safe to be around in larger numbers. So with them back we had people that would come with us and that gave other people the green light too.

We started the day in Martigny because that is where you can find the St. Bernard Museum where they keep the dogs when they're not up at the hospice. Whit was bummed that the dogs weren't there when we were up so we decided to pay a visit to the museum. It was kind of a bust, the dogs were like zoo animals in their pens: they just sat there and slept. And there really weren't any puppies, much to Whit's dismay. But next door to the museum is this old Roman Amphitheater that they've set up bleachers and a huge screen and every night they play movies. I thought it was pretty cool.

From Martigny we went to Vevey. I had been pretty anxious to try out my new swimsuit and we also wanted to rent a pedal boat. We went out and it was one of the most fun things we did the whole trip. Jackson has a waterproof point and shoot camera so we were able to take some pictures that you normally wouldn't be able to.




SATURDAY
BASEL



While we were on the train going to Basel for the first time I was looking out the window at the scenery. The last stretch of track before entering the station was filled with some of the coolest graffiti I've seen, at least with my real eyes and not just in a book. I tried to grab my camera as it was speeding past but by the time I was able to get it out of my backpack it was gone. So ever since then I had wanted to go back and capture some of it as we sped past. Saturday we got a couple of us and were able to do this. Some of the pictures turned out, some not so much, but at least I got a second shot at it.

The group that went was my BFF Adrienne Smart (who incidentally accomplished her goal for the trip of growing calves), Ashlee Clapie, Riley Onyon and Sara whose-last-name-I-can't-remember, our roommate Eliza Couch (while Jackson stayed at home working on photos), Whit and me. It was fun to go up there and be the team-leader, playing "Bob." Maybe fun isn't the right word. What's a word that means "to induce suicide?" Hmmm, it's right on the tip of my tongue. Oh well. All we need to remember is that ultimately I got us where we needed to go, no need to remember how long it took us to get there.

We started the day going back to the old town area for some lunch and shopping. I bought another shirt from H&M, this one not as cool but still very nice and we looked for some swim shorts like those I got there to give to Jackson. Eliza spent her time scouring the area for a Hummel to give to her mom. By the time that was all finished we jumped on a bus that in a very roundabout way took us to the Jean Tinguely Museum and left us with only an hour to check it out and get back to the train station to catch our train. That was my only regret for the day, that I didn't have more time to spend there. Jean Tinguely is an artist who made all these kenetic sculptures. Each is made up of gears and belts and chains and lights and things that rattle and shake. In front of them is a big red button that you step on to turn it on. It was such an entertaining museum.

The last funny thing was about getting to the train station. We left the museum at about 20 minutes to 5. I had told everybody that the train left at 5 o'clock so we had to hurry. So we jump on a bus then take a tram and get to the train station with about 3 minutes to spare. The Swiss are notoriously punctual so we book it to the platform. With Riley in the lead we are weaving in and out of people, up one set of stairs and down another. Riley gets to the train first and stands in the doorway to keep the door from shutting while the rest of us catch up. And we did it! We're finally sitting, all of us gasping for air and I say, "The funny thing about all of this is that when I said that the train left at 5, I really meant that the train left at 5:04." I've never felt so hated in my whole life. I think Whit was probably the closest from tearing me limb-from-limb and it just got worse as the minutes passed and the train still hadn't left. In the end we all had a good laugh about it though.


SUNDAY
SION




Not much to say about Sunday. We went to church and I took advantage of some downtime to shoot some graffiti I had seen from the train in Sion. Oh, and the train station bathrooms in Aigle. I was really freaked out the first time I went in to use the facilities because of the blaring blue light. It definitely helped me take care of my business as fast as I could so I could get out of there, but I guess the blue lights serve another purpose: You can't see your veins in it. Sorry junkies, you'll have to find somewhere else to shoot up.


MONDAY
MONTREAUX, VEVEY, LAUSANNE, VEVEY


Monday was a sad day on many levels. Being our last day in Switzerland we wanted to go out with a bang and we had had it all planned out for a while. Since most galleries and museums would be closed on Mondays we would have to find something else to do that would be exciting. Luckily Whit and I heard about this adventure ropes course and we started spreading the word. There were a bunch of us that were going to go and Sunday night we got on to their website to figure out what time they opened to find out that they are not opened at all on Mondays! We were so mad because had we known we could have gone there earlier and planned something else! So all of the sudden the rug was pulled from under us and we had to figure out something else to do. It came together pretty quickly, pieced together from some of the small things that we wanted to do.

In Montreaux there were a few other spots of graffiti that I wanted to shoot and I had heard about a statue of Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen. In Vevey there was a shop that we wanted to find that sold purses that Whit wanted to get. And somewhere along the way we had to eat one last Doner Kebab and buy a bunch of chocolate to take home. It only made sense to start our day in Montreaux, make our way over to Vevey and then head back home. And that's how it started. Come to find out there wasn't a whole lot in Montreaux aside from the statue and the graffiti so we decided to head to Vevey early. It only takes about 3 or 4 minutes on the train so we figured that we would just follow the boardwalk and walk over there. After an hour or so of walking and only making it maybe two-thirds the way there we decided to hop on the next bus to take us the rest of the way. We got to Vevey and walked around for a while and couldn't find either the shop with the purses or a place to eat Doner Kebabs. Luckily, having been there twice previously, we knew where a good Kebab place was in Lausanne. We ate, shopped around a bit and then went back to Vevey for one last shot at finding the purse and buying our chocolate. We found the purse, got the chocolate and Whit got me one last Mango Lassi. All in all a very good day and close to our trip. I can't believe it's over. It's nice to be home but I miss so many things.