Alaska | Youseph Tanha

Porcupine

One of the things I was shocked to find out when I moved to Juneau Alaska was just how common porcupines are. They are in the trees and crossing the street. They are just about as common as stray cats are. You just don’t want to pet them of course. That would be a new kind of pain for me that I am not ready to experience.

Like BigFoot and the Loch Ness Monster, my pictures of local porcupines have not been the best. They always seem to jump out of frame just as I get ready to snap a picture of them. But last Friday that all changed. Hannah was out walking her dog when she found a porcupine hiding in a near by ditch. She snapped some pictures of it and here they are.

Sucker Hole

When I first moved to Alaska I kept hearing the term “Sucker Hole” all around me but had no idea what it meant. I finally asked one of the guys I worked with and he told me that a sucker hole is when the clouds over head brake apart enough to let some light through and all the suckers in town follow the light around for as long as it lasts.

Wikipedia describes a sucker hole as:

A colloquial term referring to a short spate of good weather that “suckers” sailors into leaving port just in time for a storm to resume at full force.

I thought i might share this with everyone since the weather here has been so bad and as I looked out of my office windows I was treated to a bref shower of sunlight.

A Cloudy Outing

The weekend has come and gone with little change in the weather. This however did not keep Hannah and myself inside the whole weekend. We went outside anyway to try and make the best of things regardless of the fact that mother nature clearly has a vendetta against Juneau right now.

We took ourselves out to Mendenhall Glacier in hopes to see some of the Sockeye salmon making their run up stream. When we got there we were lucky to find a decent parking spot because the park was packed with tourists from the cruise ships docked in town. We manage to see a few of salmon and take some pictures of them, but over all the rivers where pretty bare of fish compared to other times we have gone to see them run.

Looking out into the glacier bay we saw kayakers paddling in front of the glacier. It was quite the site to see. These people in their little boats with the glacier towering over them.

Just another day in Juneau with people making the best of bad weather.

Rain Rain Go Away

Has Juneau Alaska became the rain capital of the world? Ever since Hannah and I got back from our vacatin in Washington it has just been either overcast, or rainy. It was really starting to get to me for a minute, but then I just started taking some viteman D and all is better.

I really am starting to miss the sun though. Last summer was kind of like this too. The first summer we spent here was great, but that was 3 years ago. Seattle Washington really has been unfairly called the rainiest place on earth thanks to a little movie called “Sleepless In Seattle“. I have lived in Washington for several years and it’s true it is rainy. But Seattle has nothing on Juneau for rain right now.

I do hope this is not a trend. Maybe it can be blamed on El Niño, or the butterfly affect.