MY JUNE MINI TOUR OF ALASKA CONTINUED....A TRIP TO THE ALASKA ZOO!

If you are new to my blog, click here to go back to the beginning of this little tour I took a friend on when she visited Alaska back in June. 

My friend who visited, Tami, is a real trooper.  On her first day in Alaska, she left Minneapolis at 9 am (so you know she was up early getting ready to go), arrived in Anchorage at 11:30 am and was ready go sight seeing when she hit the ground!  I don't know about you, but flying wears me out. I would have been ready for a shower and a nap!  But not Tami!  She was ready to go!  That was the day we took an ultra-scenic drive down Turnagain arm on the way to Portage Glacier. 

The next day (after work of course, as she was here on business) we went to the Alaska Zoo!  I love to visit the zoo when I am travelling to places that have big or neat zoos.  To my delight, Tami feels the same way, so we made a night of it - at the zoo!  I always like to see the animals, but at the same time, it always breaks my heart a little bit to know that they never get to live a full life as God intended them to.

Bald Eagle

These were Tami's favorite:

  Wolves

Tiger  

Dall Sheep

Grizzly Bears.  They live wild in Anchorage ya'll.  I am not even kidding.  I have never seen one in the wild anywhere in Alaska in the 25 years I have lived here.  And I do take it for granted that one could be  sitting on my front porch any time I open the door....I shudder at the thought!  

Grizzly Bears strike fear into my heart like Great White Sharks and Polar Bears do.  Guess what?  I just saw on Shark Week that Great Whites travel into the waters of Alaska.  Yay, now all my biggest (wild animal) fears are together in one state! 

Ah.  That's better.  Llama.  Nice Llama.

Oh my goodness, this was the smelliest creature at the zoo!

Pretty flowers.  I wish I new what they are called.

Black Bears eating dinner.

They are not as scary to me as Grizzly, although, I recon they should be.  And I have had close encounters with these bears in the wild.  Click on the photography button at the top right side of my blog, or click here, to see pictures of one of them stealing bird seed off of my front porch. 

Two-humped (Bactrian) camel - most of the population left in the world of these kind of camels (1.4 million according to wikipedia) are all domesticated.  Fewer than 1000 wild remain.  Sad.

Red Fox - They are so cute, I wish they were domesticated.  I would have two of them if they were!

A pretty cactus.    I don't know what it is called either :-) 

OK, now, prepare yourself for a scary beast: 

 

Polar Bears. Oh my.

Seriously, they ARE scary.

Seems harmless enough right?

Dare I say cute, even?

Did you ever hear of Binky?  Binky was a bad bear that bit (mauled) a tourist at the Alaska Zoo back in 1994.   The tourist foolishly climbed over two fences to get close to Binky's enclosure.  You can click here to see the video footage - warning - it is pretty graphic.  The tourist lived, but sadly Binky died of an infection in 1995.  The infection was not related to the tourist, as far as I know. 

OK Binky wasn't bad, he was just being a bear, doing what bears do.  Especially Polar Bears, who happen to hunt humans.  To eat.  For Dinner.   

I'm sure these bears would bite you if they could.  As a matter of fact, this one is starting to look interested in me.

I think he was trying to catch my scent because he would like me to be on the menu for dinner! Yikes!  This concludes our trip to the zoo.  Thank goodness we were near the exit!

On a related note, about 3 years ago, I was blessed to get to travel to the "North Slope" - Alaska's North Coast, where the oil drilling operations are - for a tour.  Part of our tour included the Seawater Treatment Plant (STP), a facility that is located about a mile off the coast (yes, it is in the ocean). 

The Seawater Treatment Plant is a facility that brings seawater (salt water) inside to filter and treat it (by removing marine life among other things) so it can be piped over to the oil wells and pumped down a hole to the reservoir to displace the oil while it is sucked out, or something like that.  Basically, this keeps the pressure up which helps get the oil out. 

(Thank you to Cold Cliff for use of this photo!)

This is an aerial view of the STP.  They had to install a metal cage on the outside of the exit that you step into when you leave the building, because the Polar Bears will sit and wait for someone to come out so they can eat them.  In other words, they are hunting us.

The cages look like this:

That just freaks me out!