Alaska - The Last (and Vast) Frontier
Alaska - endless wilderness, bear country, the largest state, home to the tallest mountain in North America.
Alaska - endless wilderness, bear country, the largest state, home to the tallest mountain in North America, and a few random surprises. There’s a lot of beauty to be discovered here, as I learnt during my trip with Capture The Atlas.
From Anchorage to Kenai Fjords
Day 1 took us along a few interesting sights on the road from the state’s largest city (which is not its capital) to Seward, gateway to Kenai fjords, a National Park.
Byron Glacier
The second stop was Byron Glacier, an easily accessible glacier with a small ice cave, visible at the bottom of the aerial photo.
Exit Glacier
We had one more stop on the way to Seward, which was the aptly named “Exit Glacier” - it’s literally receding so quickly, it may be gone within our lifetime. Signs along the trail show how its terminus moved over the last 200 years, and the speed by which it does can hardly be described as glacial - up to 100m a year.
The Kenai Fjords
A boat cruise into the smallest national park of Alaska was next on the agenda. While the size of the park may not compare to others in the state, it does contain the largest ice field in the US at almost 2000 sqkm, with almost 40 glaciers feeding from it.
Wildlife Sightings
The area is home to varied wildlife, and we spotted puffins, sea otters, harbor seals, and a humpback whale.
Our destination was Aialik Glacier in the namesake bay.
Bears of Crescent Lake
From Kenai we took a flight over the beautiful landscapes (more on that later) towards a turquoise lake across the Cook Inlet, with the goal to find and photograph brown bears. In fact, three of them acted as our greeting committee, sitting by the shorelines while the floatplane approached the lake, but quickly hiding in the bushes as we landed on the water.
Back in Anchorage, a scenic Flight, and another (attempted) Bear Tour
From Anchorage we took a flight to Chinitna Bay for another bear tour in a different environment.
Shapes & Colours
The flight to and from the location partly made up for this disappointment though, as the views of the Alaskan landscapes, volcanoes, mountains, and ground patters were incredible.
Valdez - Waterfalls and Kayaks
The next drive took us the small town of Valdez, at the head of a deep fjord in Prince William Sound. The journey is a beautiful one, past several glaciers and into canyons where one waterfalls follows the next.
Next was a full day boat trip towards the end of the Valdez arm into the Columbia bay, home to one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world.
What was very special here is the fact we switched to a smaller and more manual method of transport once we reached the glacier - a Kayak. Moving through the ice like this was a very unique way to experience and explore the tidal glacier and the many icebergs originating from the calving of its terminus.
From Above
We had the chance to fly our drone from a small beach, providing some spectacular views of the landscape - and its inhabitants.
Sea Life
Aside from some chilled otters, we also spotted Steller sea lions, a near threatened species that had significantly declined since the 1970s but is slowly making a comeback, as well as porpoises, although getting a photo of them proved to be tricky.
The Matanuska Glacier
On our way back from Valdez we crossed the Thompson pass, and on the next morning Alaska had one more glacier experience to offer: This time, we got even closer than in the kayak, since it is possible to hike on this icey giant.
Alaska’s Most Unique House
The next destination was Denali National Park, and the road northwards also leads to a rather peculiar building better seen from the air: Goose Creek Tower, or colloquially “Dr Seuss House”.
Denali - a National Park and North America’s tallest Mountain
However, the next morning we had the chance to take a (dry) walk around Horseshoe lake, which features beautiful scenery reflected in the still lake waters, and a few beaver architectural masterpieces.
Denali also had a bit more wildlife in store for us, including Moose and Caribou, commonly known as their domesticated version - Reindeers.
Watch more of Alaska’s landscapes from the air.
Thanks for making it until the end!
Minneapolis & "The Quietest Place on Earth"
The yearly trip to HITEC - the world’s largest hospitality technology show - this year brought me to Minneapolis, MN, in the United States.
Since I’m always up for exploring a new place, I couldn’t resist to stay an extra day to make the 26h trip from Dubai a little more worthwhile - and it definitely was!
The yearly trip to HITEC - the world’s largest hospitality technology show - this year brought me to Minneapolis, MN, in the United States.
Since I’m always up for exploring a new place, I couldn’t resist to stay an extra day to make the 26h trip from Dubai a little more worthwhile - and it definitely was!
Minneapolis has a rich history as the milling capital of the US, owing to the Mississippi River running through the city, and is home to a few interesting sights.
As I only had a few hours, I didn’t take my camera along, so all the photos here are shot on iPhone XS.
New Orleans - Leave Your Dignity Behind
Had a free day after HITEC 2016 in the Big Easy and walked around to get some shots.
Had a free day after HITEC 2016 in the Big Easy and walked around to get some shots.
Austin - HITEC 2015
Straight from WWDC, I flew on to Austin for HITEC, the world’s biggest hospitality technology show, where iRiS has been exhibiting for the past few years. This was my second, but also last show for the company, since after 3,5 years I’m moving on to new horizons in August.
Team Photo
Flying over the endless planes of the southern USA.
Straight from WWDC, I flew on to Austin for HITEC, the world’s biggest hospitality technology show, where iRiS has been exhibiting for the past few years. This was my second, but also last show for the company, since after 3,5 years I’m moving on to new horizons in August - more on that soon.
But before that, we still had a lot of new product to show and for that reason, the weeks before the show were very intense as always, although this year a lot of the burden was with the great teams I work with.
We had a team of 15 people I think, who stayed scattered across 3 houses in the city - much nicer than hotels. Sunday and Monday were largely spent preparing our stand and making final fixes and tweaks to the applications to get ready for the show on Tuesday.
As always, what we wanted to showcase was on the cutting edge of hospitality technology, and it took until the last minute to get everything perfectly polished and working - a big compliment goes out to my dedicated team for their effort. The highlights of our demos included Mobile Check In, Mobile Door Key, a new Windows based Lobby solution, a redesigned Brand Application and a new responsive Web Guest Service product, all with a number of integrations to third party systems such as the PMS, POS and Room Controls.
In the end, all worked pretty much flawlessly and made for a very impressed hospitality crowd, judging from the feedback I was able to gather. It also felt like we hit some of the general trends at the show - using your phone to check in and as the door key to bypass the Front Desk completely was something that everyone was after. Our excellent position in the space was also evident by the numerous partnerships with large technology companies such as Microsoft, Samsung and Oracle, all of which had iRiS products integrated to their solutions to showcase.
The bar scene in Austin offered a lot of good live music
We also managed to explore the city of Austin a bit, parts of which actually seem quite pleasant. Granted, you get the impression you are in a place with a strong and distinct culture to say the least, but that's always part of the enjoyment of seeing new cities.
HITEC days always end with numerous dinners and parties in the evenings. While we attended the big ones such as the Samsung and Newmarket events, the local bar scene also provided some great alternatives. We were (or maybe I was) particularly lucky with the live music at two of the places we went to - that made the evenings were the rest of the people enjoyed a drink or two or three very enjoyable for me as well, not to mention that it was the last time I got to see some of my colleagues (at least they might not be "colleagues" any more next time) and of course also a few people from other companies, it's a small industry after all.
Everything was over on Friday and I left Austin at 10am in the morning, to arrive back in Dubai on Saturday evening at 8pm - a long journey indeed, but those two weeks were definitely worth the travel time.
The iRiS stand.