On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day folks, enjoy the pictures!
Today, pictures from valued commenter arrieve.
Where it was taken: Antarctica
When: January 2018Last month I fulfilled a longtime dream and went to Antarctica. I had long planned that this would be my retirement present to myself, and even though I’ve had to push the retirement part back a bit, I decided that was no reason not to do the trip as originally planned.
Our itinerary started in Punta Arenas, Chile. We flew to the Falklands and boarded the ship there, sailed two days across the Drake Passage, and then spent eight days sailing around the Antarctic. It was everything I had hoped for and more – spectacular scenery and wildlife, and interesting historical sites as well. I’m still going through the pictures but here’s a small sample.
The Lemaire Channel:
This is probably the largest iceberg we saw, in Cierva Cove – it was taller than our ship.
Most of my best iceberg pictures were taken from the zodiacs, where we got so close I could, and did, touch them.
The picture below is from Wilhelmina Bay. This was our first time out in the zodiacs, before I learned that I needed four layers and three pairs of socks if we weren’t going to be getting out of the boats and walking around. I was freezing and that turquoise water looked deceptively tropical.
Crabeater seals in Iceberg Alley.
Gentoo penguins lining up to go for a swim in Cierva Cove.
Thank you so much arrieve, do send us more when you can.
This has always been on my bucket list as well. Your wonderful pictures have moved it up the list, and forced me to double-underline it!
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
eclare
Wow! Thank you for sharing.
raven
Holy smokes!!!
?BillinGlendaleCA
Almost reminds me of infrared pics, but I’ve seen the glaciers in Alaska and they really are that color.
Amir Khalid
Those ice formations look majestic.
satby
arrieve, outstanding! So happy you got your early retirement present to yourself, and that you shared such fantastic pictures with us. Just wonderful.
Quinerly
?
HeartlandLiberal
Those are some mighty “cool” pictures. Beautiful images.
Schlemazel
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I told you things made me cold!
Thanks your the pictures, it looks like the trip of a lifetime!
Mary G
Thanks for sharing those. It looks cold.
arrieve
@?BillinGlendaleCA: When the sun shines, the ice is more white, but when it’s overcast, as is often the case, you get those amazing blues.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Schlemazel: Yes, but my IR pics are usually taken when it’s 80-90 degrees out.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@arrieve: Yup, when Madame took our pics from Alaska to work(she worked in a one hour photo shop), the lady who did the printing thought the colors were all wrong. Nope, that’s the way they look.
arrieve
@Mary G: It was, but it was actually colder in New York before I left. The temperatures were around the freezing mark most days, so it wasn’t that bad. Sometimes I went out on the deck of the ship in just a fleece sweater and I was fine, at least long enough to take a few pictures. After an hour in the zodiacs though I was always cold no matter how many layers I wore because we weren’t moving around. It was worth it for the chance to get close to the ice though.
Baud
Damn, that’s cool. Hope I can make it there before all the ice is gone. Congrats on fulfilling a bucket list item.
Waratah
Thank you arrieve for sharing these wonderful photos.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
Stunning! And how very cool to get to go see that. Thanks for the terrific pictures.
JPL
@arrieve: Thanks for your comment because when I saw the pictures, they were of course beautiful, but also chilling. What a wonderful trip.
debbie
@JPL:
Best On the Road pictures yet! I’m too old to talk like this, but totally awesome!
I have to ask, how could you touch an iceberg without scraping up whatever boat you were in?
Robyn
Wow! Incredible photos. Thank you for sharing them. I’m going to have to add this trip to my own bucket list now.
arrieve
@debbie: The zodiacs are pretty tough. They could ease up along the side of the iceberg until we could reach out and touch it. This was only the smaller icebergs — you have to stay a safe distance away from the bigger ones because they can flip over or calve and you don’t want to be next to them if they do. But in Cierva Cove we drove right through a carpet of sea ice and it was noisy but doable.
TomatoQueen
All the superlatives, and zillions of bonus points for the seals and the Gentoo penguins.
Another Scott
Fabulous pictures and a great story. Thanks very much.
Cheers,
Scott.
gbbalto
Thanks very much for the story and pix!
jayboat
Wonderful shots. I got a bit of a chill looking at them.
Ohio Mom
Our planet is a very weird place. We get used to our corner of it and forget how strange it is in total.
What a reminder these photos are!
cosima
Wow wow wow. Those are amazing photos. What an incredible trip to have taken. What a shame that these places are being so dramatically changed for the worse — so fortunate for you to have had the opportunity to see that beautiful place. It must have been completely awe-inspiring.
Tazj
Spectacular pictures! You’re very adventurous, thanks for sharing.
Major Major Major Major
Wow. Very cool, thanks.
@HeartlandLiberal:
Boooo!
Mel
What breathtaking images. Thank you so much for sharing these!
Ben Cisco
Speechless.
schrodingers_cat
Cool images, there are other worldly.
J R in WV
@arrieve:
So, wild guess, Lindblad Expeditions, National Geographic Orion, (or maybe the N G Explorer?) and they do it in January because that’s midsummer in Antarctica…
Congratulations, whoever took you to a fabulous place, and great pictures!
arrieve
@J R in WV: Good guess, but actually no — I tried to sign up with NatGeo and got waitlisted. So I ended up going with a Canadian company called One Ocean Expeditions instead. It worked out better in the end because they had a lot of different itineraries to choose from and I was able to pick one that went below the Antarctic Circle, which meant we got to visit a couple of sites tourists don’t often see. Also tourism in Antarctica is tightly regulated so you can’t have more than 100 people go ashore at one time. Our ship had 94 people, so that was never an issue. I highly, highly recommend them for those of you who have this on your own bucket lists. (Also they turned out to be cheaper than NatGeo, so that was helpful — got to stay several days in Santiago.)
Miss Bianca
Well, OK, you’ve done it to me. I have never – as in, never ever – felt the slightest urge to visit the South Pole. Till now.
Thanks! (I think?).//
maurinsky
Wow! I have a friend from high school who was recently in Antarctica with Greenpeace, but I think maybe you’ve shared more pictures than he did!
arrieve
@maurinsky: With the Arctic Sunrise? We saw their boat!