Travel Journals

An Alaska Cruise Adventure

By Jan and Len Grincevicius We had talked about going on an Alaska Cruise since we retired almost 10 years ago. This year, we decided it was time. Since we had never been on a cruise before, we decided to just do one that was seven days. The cruise left from Vancouver, so we arrived a few days before and hit some spots such as Granville Island, Stanley Park (English Bay, Siwash Rock, Prospect Point and the Lions Gate Bridge), and a beautiful classical Chinese garden created by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. Unfortunately, the rain and heavy cloud cover didn’t allow a visit to Grouse Mountain or Vancouver Lookout. Our cruise took us from Vancouver to Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan and back to Vancouver. Alaska’s Inside Passage is a protected network of waterways that wind through glacier-cut fjords and lush temperate…
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Borneo: A Travel Journal

By George Pond (All photos by the author) I suppose my “Bucket List” desire to visit Borneo goes back to my public school days of reading National Geographic. Here was a country still covered with pristine rainforest, where head hunters once roamed the dense jungle; where herds of wild Asian pygmy elephants were common, Orangutans claimed their canopy territories, where troops of Long-tailed and Pig-tailed Macaques lived in groups of 20 or more animals, and strange looking Proboscis monkeys, with their funny noses lived in trees along the river valleys. Here eight species of Hornbills, birds with massive bills, would fly overhead or sit on exposed limbs of dead trees; and various species of hawks and eagles patrolled the rivers searching for whatever nature provided. A land of abundant wildlife. Well, the head hunters have long disappeared as has most…
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Nature under the Midnight Sun: A Travel Journal

by Inga Hinnerichsen (Note: All photos by the author unless otherwise indicated) Finland: The land of the Midnight Sun, thirty thousand lakes and five thousand islands. The land where people are born with cross-country skis on their feet. This is where I grew up. Last summer I travelled back for an overdue visit. First a few geographic, geological and historical facts. From top to bottom Finland is approximately 1100 km long. It's hugged by two arms of the Baltic Sea in the south and west. It borders with Sweden and Norway in the north and with Russia to the east. Compared to Canada, the southern edge is at the same latitude as White Horse and it stretches north to about Tuktoyaktuk. A thick glacier covered the entire country during the last ice age. The receding ice scoured away top soil…
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