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Sunset
This is undoctored, unlike my camera's "sunset" setting. Jeff took this at 11:42 ADT. Our only scheduled event for today was a cruise through Resurrection Bay and Kenai Fjords National Park. It didn’t leave until 11:45, so we had the laziest morning of our vacation. The boys slept in; we had French toast for breakfast. While Jeff was cooking, I was just hanging out on the beach watching the bay. There was a single bald eagle fairly close in front of me and a couple further down, so I was mostly paying attention to them, until a guy walking on the beach pointed out the whale. Cool! A whale from our campsite! I watched them (yes, two) for awhile before they got too far away.
Our tour was through Major Marine Tours on the Kenai Star. We took off at 11:45 for a 7½ hour tour. Liam’s day started out great because Captain Colby’s tie had the Jolly Roger on it. Could it get any better than that? Basically, our tour took us out Resurrection Bay, past Caines and Callisto Heads, through the Harding Gateway and into Aialik Bay to Holgate Glacier and back. We again saw many whales, sea lions and sea birds. Puffins were numerous, as were black-legged kittiwakes (which I always
View from our campsite
This eagle sat on the shore for a long time before a photographer spooked him off. It got the result I wanted, though. thought were just seagulls). We also saw a couple of sea otters frolicking and Dall’s porpoises who were just too quick for us to get good photos. I was disappointed that we didn’t see orcas. Our National Park Service ranger Chad said he hasn’t seen an orca in a month, and it was a lot further out than we were. Oh, well. Holgate Glacier was huge and we got fairly close. We didn’t see a big iceberg calving off, but we saw a few icefalls, which were impressive. We learned that the haze everywhere isn’t haze, but smoke from a couple wildfires. No wonder if smells a little weird here.
Liam earned his Junior Ranger badge, and the ranger even did a little ceremony, which was cute. Liam’s favorite part of the day, though, was getting a chunk of glacier ice from the first mate, who had netted some during our trip. He spent an hour licking it, drinking the water from it, playing with it. Who knew something so simple could be so fascinating?
I was not disappointed in their food. For lunch, we had all-you-can-eat prime rib. Salmon, too, but I tried it just to prove
Also a view from our campsite
Honestly, how cool is it to sit at a picnic table and see a humpback whale? to Floyd that really, I don’t like salmon. Thankfully, they catch more than just salmon up here. We also had all-you-can-eat dessert, in the form of cheesecake for me (and Cole, who ate all of Floyd’s), carrot cake, brownies, Jell-O, fruit. We didn’t even need to eat supper when we came back, and just had s’mores instead.
Conversation of the Day (while near Holgate Glacier):
L: Look, glacier ice (an iceberg, not the glacier)
M: Cool.
L: Everybody! Glacier ice, starboard side. (He was correct.)
L: Mom, tell everyone to come see.
M: People are looking at it.
L: No, the people down here, over there (pointing at the other people in the cabin)
M: They’re probably doing something else.
L: So we have the glacier ice all to ourselves?
License Plates Noticed: AK, AZ, CA
Animals Noticed (unique to the trip):
Black-legged kittiwakes (now that I know they’re not gulls)
Common murres
Tufted puffins
Horned puffins
High Temperature: 85o (Seward, AK)
Low Temperature: 55o (Seward, AK)
Miles: 7.3
Total Time on the Road: 0:00
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