WHALEAPALOOSA

Sometime last night we docked in Seward, which is the end point of the cruise, and we transition to the land portion of our trip.  Well, this first day actuallly was more surf than turf.  Last night we said our good-byes to the kids, as they had a crack-of-dawn departure from the ship to make the shuttle over to Anchorage and their flights home.  It’s only us retirees who get to continue to play.  Sure enough, even tho we got up early as well, we didn’t get to see them before they disembarked.  We had a quick breakfast (gotta get every last bit of my money’s worth) on board, then headed to the theater to wait for them to call our get-off group’s number.  As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait.  As soon as we got there, they told us we were all cleared to leave whenever we wanted.  On the dock we used their number system to locate our bags, and we were on our own.  With two large suitcases and several smaller bags. 

I had booked the rest of our tour through Alaska Tour & Travel as they seemed (on the web) to be experienced and had lots of tour options.  When I was booking, I hadn’t quite cottoned onto the idea that they don’t actually conduct tours, they simply put together a package of lodging, bus transportation, and local tours operated by other companies.  A consolidator if you will.  As we would find, this leaves some gaps, but we were able to scramble when necessary.  With hindsight, we could have booked all these things directly and saved whatever commission AT&T (unfortunate initials) made on the deal.  But, the outfits and places they booked us with turned out to be just fine, and it was worth it not to have to blind-pick these things ourselves.  They provided us with a thick envelope containing “vouchers” for each of the things we had included in our package.  Unfortunately, there was no voucher for transportation from the ship to our first adventure, a whale-watching cruise of the Kenai Fjords National Park waters.  I had spotted this omission before we left, and spoke with one of AT&T’s junior reps on the phone.  She suggested we could just walk it as it wasn’t far, or try to find a taxi.  Well, as the crow flies, it wasn’t far . . .

That’s the ship, and I’m taking the photo from where we wanted to be, the small boat dock.  But to get here on foot is at least a mile or more walk around the entire harbor.  With all those bags?  Ain’t gonna happen.  I found a gal who seemed to be arranging transportation for someone, and asked about cabs.  Well, she was just putting her passengers into the only one around.  But we might try that car over there.  That car over there turned out to be a gypsy cab operated by a very nice woman in her family station wagon, and she saved our bacon.  She took us to our first night’s lodgings, waited while we stored our bags for our later check-in, then motored us over to our dock.  I tipped her generously.  Once there, Major Marine Tours checked us in and sent us out to wait for our departure.  We walked about a bit and window shopped, then settled in for about an hour.

Loni wasn’t feeling so hot, so we were concerned that this might be a, ah, dicey voyage, but she was a trouper and ensconced herself on the aft deck of our catamaran craft, which had excellent viewing.

The Denali small boat harbor is quite picturesque itself.  That’s not our boat, just some fisherman.

It’s a long way out of Resurrection Bay, which is a long inlet with Seward sitting at the very end.  On the way out, a jet ski came roaring up and began using our wake for jumps (he’s just catching up to us in this shot).  Seward is way back there around to the left (out of sight).

Although we didn’t know it at this point, this would turn out to be a spectacular day for whale watching.  Even the crew was impressed.  About an hour out, we got our first Orca sighting.

A whale activity that is not often observed is “bubble net feeding,” where the whales circle their prey underwater and exhale bubbles, creating a column of bubbles with the prey inside the column.  This concentrates the prey and then the whales go crazy and get big mouthfuls.  Here’s a bunch of humpbacks doing their thing.

Once we got closer into the shore, we saw pods of whales close up.

The light smudges on the photo are whale spouts.  The birds of course flock to these feeding frenzies as there is a nice concentration of fish to dive at.  I like this next shot because it captures both of the things we came on this cruise to see:  whale and glacier.

Here a pod of orcas have their heads out of the water and mouths open as they feed.  Loni was watching through the binocs and said it was incredible.  I again lament the lack of a proper telephoto lens.  The park ranger who was along on this trip for commentary was totally jazzed and said he’d never seen this amount of whale activity.  We were pretty siezed, too!

Now it was time to head for the glaciers.  We traveled way up Aialik Bay to the Holgate Glacier, part of the Harding Icefield that covers much of the park.  It was impressive as we approached,

and even more impressive closer in, with another ship to provide some scale. 

Over to the right, where the glacier meets the water, an under-ice stream was storming out from the base, roiling the water.  It’s not too impressive in this shot, but was cool to see.

As we pulled away on our return, I got a panorama of both Holgate and Little Holgate glaciers, the latter also known as Surprise Glacier.  Spectacular.  Again, our luck continues with the weather clearing just when we need it to.  Touch wood.

The exit shot as we left the Holgate Arm wasn’t too shabby either.  This is gorgeous country.

I count five or six waterfalls coming down this mountain. 

Reminds me a bit of Milford Sound from our visit to New Zealand ten years ago.  On our way back to Seward the captain took us close to the cliffs when he spotted a bevy of basking sea lions enjoying the good weather.

These little islands reminded me of photos I’ve seen of SE Asia waterways.  How in the world do trees that big grow out of seemingly solid rock?

And we saw another famiy of orcas, including a baby (at left).  This is how they should be viewed, not in a swimming pool at SeaWorld.

This was a terrific trip.  Kudos to Major Marine, but also to our good fortune.  The crew and the ranger both vowed that this was the best whale watching they had seen in 15 years.  But we weren’t done.  We had two more sightings just as we pulled back into Seward.

Ah, yes, the rare and elusive brace of Lazy Daze RVs, far from their home territory.  That’s sure a primo camping spot right on the bay.  We envied them, but not all the driving they had to do to get to this spot.  This was the end of our six hour tour, and we had a great time.  Now all we had to do was to make our way back to our Wind Song Lodge.  There was supposed to be a shuttle, but the directions we got were vague to say the least.  We were also told it ran every half hour.  Wrong.  Every hour on the half.  We waited the full hour, got on, found we were headed outbound instead of in, then had to suffer a tour of the town with extra stops to wait for passengers.  This turned out to be somewhat of a blessing, because by the time we got back to where they originally picked us up, it was standing room only and very packed.  Wind Song Lodge was clean, rustic, and nicely situated.  We ate at their restaurant, but neither of us was that hungry.  A hummus plate for Loni and clam chowder for me.  It was a full day!