We disembarked from the Noordam this morning, and headed straight to a marina to take a 6 hour boat tour of the Kenai Fjords.
This big guy obligingly swam next to our boat to vigorously groom and preen. His webbed feet are huge and effective in the water, but make for awkward going on land.
Tufted puffin
Humpback whale (another conservation success story)
Kenai Fjords National Park includes the Holgate Icefield, which covers a mountain range under a thousand feet of ice and sources 38 glaciers. We saw two at sea level on our cruise of the fjords, and several on the surrounding mountains.
Harbor seals on ice floes by Holgate Glacier were unperturbed by possible calving.
Glacier fed waterfalls tumbled hundreds of feet down fjord walls.
We followed a pair of orcas for a while but never saw more than a dorsal fin and a tail display.
But this guy was more cooperative.
It's now 10 PM. I'm sitting on our balcony writing and it looks like this:
The birds don't know to go to bed. 😴
Like the other Alaska towns we've visited, Seward hugs the coast, tucked against mountains. Here the mountains have snow. Seward owes its founding to the sea otters which still can be found here. Their dense fur (up to a million hairs per square inch) was prized by hunters in search of this "wet gold." Between 1741 and 1911 they were hunted so aggressively worldwide that their population plummeted from 150,000-300,000 to 1000-2000. Conservation efforts and an international ban on hunting have improved their status, but sea otters are still considered an endangered species.
This big guy obligingly swam next to our boat to vigorously groom and preen. His webbed feet are huge and effective in the water, but make for awkward going on land.
We were hoping for marine animal sightings on the cruise and were not disappointed. There were not lots of anything except birds, but we saw a wide variety of critters.
Tufted puffin
Humpback whale (another conservation success story)
Steller (or northern) sea lions. A bull with his harem. Much larger than California sea lions, a male can be up to 11 feet long and 2,500 lbs!
Kenai Fjords National Park includes the Holgate Icefield, which covers a mountain range under a thousand feet of ice and sources 38 glaciers. We saw two at sea level on our cruise of the fjords, and several on the surrounding mountains.
Harbor seals on ice floes by Holgate Glacier were unperturbed by possible calving.
Glacier fed waterfalls tumbled hundreds of feet down fjord walls.
We followed a pair of orcas for a while but never saw more than a dorsal fin and a tail display.
But this guy was more cooperative.
After the cruise, Greg and I dashed to the nearby National Park visitors' center to stamp our NPS passport books before our bus left for the Windsong Lodge.
It's now 10 PM. I'm sitting on our balcony writing and it looks like this:
The birds don't know to go to bed. 😴
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