Earthquake !

 if you were looking for somewhere that was a hotbed of seismic activity, would Alaska be your first thought?

 Well Alaska has 11% of all earthquakes on the planet.......who knew??
Thats because it lies on the Pacific ring of fire which is where tectonic plates meet, most of the areas are warmer but Alaska is in this region too.

Every day there are between 5 and 20 earthquakes in Alaska which go largely unnoticed by the population and largely no effect on the ground, although it might explain the cracks in the roads

Alaska is also the site of the second largest recorded earthquake in history 9.2, unsurprisingly it became known as the "Great earthquake " of 1964. If you bear in mind that each 2 is ten stronger than 1 and 3 is 10 times stronger than 2, this thing was massive, it destroyed buildings around Anchorage and Tsunamis in the harbours.
 You can still see some of the evidence today, this is a house that was swallowed up in the earthquake and is still there at mile 90 on the Seward highway

When the ground cracked, salt sea water rushed in and with the Tsunami as well, whole forests of trees were killed and left there like ghosts, its thicker "forest" further on but I had already taken a bit of a risk stopping to photo the house so I didnt stop again when there was more trees!

Last
The last Evening in Anchorage I went down to point Woronzof park near the airport to watch the sun creep just below the horizon

Camera
Still not mad on the camera as it doesnt have a through glass function but some of the photos on the flights home were ok

Rain in the desert in Phoenix

And the queue of planes it caused!  

Of course theyre all white and fluffy, they have just rained all their water on Phoenix!

Washed Away

 The weather has taken a turn for the worse, remember the last week in July  when it rained seemingly without stopping? well it's like that here today, it's never a good sign when the weather says the chance of rain is 100%


Going to Whittier involves The tunnel, I went through it last year , I followed a massive lorry through as the last vehicle on the 10.30 . driving on wet train tracks in a left hand drive car is a challenge to say the least!

Where do you go when it's raining hard? out to sea on a glacier viewing tour.... after all you can't possibly get any wetter. A smart move on my part was packing a waterproof coat so I wasn't too bad, just windy and dripping g when I came in to the inside of the boat, which wasn't very often as I had been assigned a seat on a table with a family of  5 and they were clearly put out at having a stranger placed with them, I was put out when they changed the baby's nappy on the seat where we were eating . So I guess we were about even!

The ice on the glackeys cracking sounds like lorries thumping on a road but really loud.

On the return trip we passed a Kittiwake rookery, 5000 kittiwakes living on a rock, they seem to be having a good time up there for the summer!

I had ordered the fish and chip meal but I think I might have made an error in translation because this is what I got..?

Yeah, Fred will have it

... is obviously how this "collection" started out, this is a glimpse of what can happen when you end up collecting cars and vehicles, one begets another and another and eventually it becomes  so out of control you have to call it a museum to get away with it!    Come to think of it, with Nod being a horder he should have just opened his house as a museum, then the world could have. marvelled at his plastic pots collection!
 I wonder if it was only the lack of a vehicle route round the back that stopped Duncan and AL from starting a "museum" of their own in the back garden....

b