Reflections of My Travel

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This morning, we did a short hike at Exit Glacier before our 15:00 cruise departure. We got to the cruise shop a little early to find a place to plug up our cameras and get charged a bit. When it was boarding time, we went down to the dock to find a large stellar sea lion frolicking about with some fish dinner right there at the docks. It was fun to watch, but hard to get on camera. When he was done feasting and departed for open waters, we boarded our boat and headed straight for a seat at the front. When we first pulled out from the dock, there were a lot of people sitting out there with us. As we started picking up speed and the wind was getting cold, the people started to disappear. When the cold rain started to join forces with the cold wind, we were the only two out on the front of the boat. It was very pleasant and we were happy that we had invested in some good rain gear. It was so pretty out there in the water with snow-capped mountains all around. We passed by several rookeries of puffins and other birds before spotting some whales. Now let me just say, this was by far the most exciting part of the whole trip. We just happened to run up on a momma and her calf, who was in a very playful mood. As we pulled up near them, they were slapping each other with their flippers. The captain informed us that this calf was making a big wave in the marine biology community around the area because it appeared to be a hybrid between a humpback (momma) and a right whale. It did not have a dorsal fin like it’s humpback momma. Anyhow, while we sat and watched, the whales got closer to the boat (a boat can only approach within a certain distance of whales but if the whales get closer to the boat, it doesn’t have to back away) and more playful. We saw plenty of tail and were able to snap just a few pictures before the rain got too bad. And that was the shame of it. After the rain had gotten too bad to have the cameras out in, the baby humpright performed three beautiful full breaches. It was the most spectacular sight. A once in a lifetime thing. And we were unable to get pictures or video. What a shame. But we do have it in our memory and it was the most thrilling moments. After all that playfulness, it must have been naptime; there was a synchronized terminal dive and that was all we saw of them. We continued on to Aialik Glacier where we sat a quarter of a mile away from it’s 2-mile wide face and watched house sized pebbles of ice calve off of it. The largest piece we saw calve (when glacial pieces break off and become icebergs, it is called calving) was roughly the size of a three story building and created a 20 foot wave. It was pretty spectacular. We were able to get lots of video there. The most remarkable thing about being in front of such a massive glacier is the sounds. It is the eeriest thing, sitting there looking at ice and hearing it move. It is constantly creaking and groaning and when it is getting ready to calve, you hear a distant rumble like thunder and then a splintering sound and then a loud grumble and crash as it detaches and falls into the sea. There’s just no explaining it and no video can fully do it justice. The other eerie thing was being in a boat and feeling and listening to it scraping over all of the icebergs hidden below the water. Immediately conjures thoughts of the last moments of the Titanic. We probably watched and listened to that glacier for a good 45 minutes before it was time to start heading back to Seward (we were about 75 miles out). On the way back, dinner was served and we went inside for the first time. OMG. Bad call. Turns out I don’t like being inside on a boat. I never actually got sick, but I’ve never felt so nauseously disquieted in all my life. Unfortunately, dinner was only being served inside at the tables. And I was hungry. It took me forever but I was able to eat most of my cold food. I was fairly okay if I was able to look out the window or door to the water. It was such a horribly strange sensation that I would prefer to never experience again. Next time I go out on any type of boat, I will have Dramamine with me. About halfway through my struggle to eat my decent, though cold, dinner, the captain announced that for anyone who cared, there were some Dall Porpoises off in the distance that were coming at us. He told us they would put on a show for us. Randal was the first one out so he got a lot of great video looking straight down from the bow of the boat. These animals look like tiny orcas, but the fun part is that they enjoy playing in the underwater wave that boats create. They rode that wave fast and fun, weaving back and forth in front of the bow of the boat. They must have frolicked for 15 minutes before getting tired of surfing and heading back out to more peaceful waters. They were so fun to watch. After that, we went back in and I finished what I could of my dinner and then we adjourned back to the non-sickening outside seats. It really was a wonderful cruise. When we got back to Seward, it was after 21:00 so we went to the grocery store and bought a half gallon of ice cream and headed for the beach. We sat in the car for a while watching the water and eating our ice cream. When we had our fill, we got drove to an area closer to town and walked out to the beach to join the myriad of people lining the beach awaiting the Fourth of July fireworks. I think they were supposed to start at midnight, but they waited until closer to 00:30 (I presume with the hope that it might get just a tad bit darker). It was fun waiting out there and talking with people. And seeing fireworks at 00:30 with so much daylight is certainly an experience, but all in all it was a pretty puny display. Everyone there was ooohing and ahhhing, but Randal and I were just looking at each other and asking, “is that all?”. But it was a good time and it was a nice celebration of the Fourth. When the “grand finale” was over, we went back to our car, ate a bit more ice cream, and called it a night.

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We woke up on this fine Fourth of July to hear the sounds of the Mount Marathon race already underway a few blocks away. We got up and headed over to it to check it out. For those of you who have never heard of it, this is a gathering of insane people every Fourth of July racing from the center of town, up a 3,000 foot mountain, and back – the goal being to make it in under an hour. The actual length of the course is probably only about 4 miles, but over 1 mile of it is either straight up or straight down a mountain. And it was raining, which I’m sure makes running straight up a mountain more difficult and dangerous. It was crazy. We watched the end of the junior race (17 and under) and the end of the women’s race. It was very impressive. We walked around town for a little bit to soak in the Fourth of July spirit and then we headed to the beach for a nice nap. After recharging, we went back to Exit Glacier for a more intensive hike. We did the majority of the Harding Ice Field trail (it’s a 3.9 mile one-way trail straight up, we did about 2.5 miles one-way of it). It was a very strenuous hike. It was a very vertical trail. We talked constantly in order to assure the bears that we would not make quiet, peaceful meals. We were probably close to two miles up when we finally crossed paths with another human. And, of course he told us how he had already crossed paths with a bear today; had been doing this hike several times a year for 20 years and had never not crossed paths with a bear. We talked louder after parting with him. Up around the corner a bit, we did run up on a wolverine. It was hiding in a bush and looked pretty scared. I think it was a young’un. We continued on our way and ran into another person, this one saying that just up the trail she had a baby bear block the trail before letting her go by. When we finally got up to an open plateau (where we could see all around us and not have sneaky bears) I insisted we stop for a break. I was starting to get a bit worn down and didn’t want to push myself back into a full-blown cold so while we overlooked the huge glacier below, we decided this was as far as we were going. We could see the top of the trail and I was so tempted to conquer it so that we could look down on the massive ice field that lay beyond it (and, really, so that I could say I conquered it), but I knew I still had to make it back down (down is so much harder than up) and I was done. After sitting there for a while, an older German woman coming down the path informed us that there was a bear family lurking in the trail just 50 feet above us. We got up and could see the cubs playing around in the tree tops. We shouted out to warn some people coming back down the trail. It was fun to see the bears out in the wild like that but I’m glad we didn’t get a closer encounter than that. We watched them until they got tired of playing and disappeared into the tree line and then we started our descent. It was slow going (down is so much harder on my knees than up). When we did finally make it down to the bottom again, we decided to make our way up to the face of the glacier. This meant changing from our hiking boots to our sandals and crossing several sizeable streams of meltwater. Now, let me just tell you – the meltwater at Worthington Glacier was cold but it was bearable, the meltwater at Exit Glacier seemed to be a whole different animal. I have never felt such bone-numbing cold in my life. From the time you lifted your foot to make that first step into it, to the time your foot was fully submerged and ready for the next foot to move, your toes are completely numb. By the time you cross five to eight feet of that water to get to a sandbar, you have to walk around on the sandbar for a minute in order to thaw your feet again. And then the process repeats until you cross all the streams. When we finally made it over to the face of the glacier, it probably took 5 minutes to fully feel our feet again. But it was beautiful. We ran into a trio of collegiates who were from Alaska but met in college in Florida. They were, uh, interesting, conversationalists. Then the hard part came. Time to cross back across all of the meltwater streams. I just can’t even describe the sensation. All I know is that as fast as my feet were going numb, I am certain that if someone were to fall in (full body submergence) they would have 0 chance of getting themselves back up. They would go into shock instantly. Yes, that is my professional opinion. That last eight foot stream – painful. Oh so painful. By the time we took the nature trail back to the parking lot and turned on the floor heaters of the car full blast, it was a good 45 minutes till our feet were completely unnumbed. It was just insane. But it is an experience I will always remember and one that not too many people will ever have. So I’m not really complaining. While driving out of Seward, we decided that we really needed to go back to Anchorage in order to get some supplies so that’s where we went and camped.

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This morning we got up and did our Anchorage shopping before heading back down the Kenai. We were told by several people that Homer was the place to go, and since it’s also the end of the road on the peninsula, that’s exactly where we went. We stopped at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, which we thought was going to be like Custer State Park‘s wildlife loop (an excellent place to visit in South Dakota), but it was more like a recovery zoo. All of the animals were fenced in and it was a little sad. The humans were allowed to interact with them more than they should, in my opinion, so even when they recover from whatever brought them there, they won’t be able to be released into the wild again. It was a bit sad. When we got to Homer, they had a pretty neat educational center called the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center. It was a nice center with lots of exhibits. There were also some nice little trails out behind it that took you to the beach. My husband loaded his pockets (literally) with rocks from this beach. When we finished looking around there, we got back in the car and drove down to the end of the spit and decided that Homer was nothing more than a fishing town and really didn’t have much to offer non-fishers. We went back to the welcome center and gathered information on cabins in the area. We ended up at HeartHaven Cottage about four miles outside of town. It was a beautiful cabin, wonderful wood all in the inside, and it was pretty cozy once you got past the fact that the owner lives in the shed right out behind it (sure, it’s private and secluded, just don’t open the door or the back windows). It had a huge picture window across the front of it with a great view of glaciers and mountains and ocean. We paid for two nights so we brought in all of our stuff and got settled in, starting with a nice warm shower. After we rested a bit, and since we really didn’t see much in Homer that we cared to do, we went out to the video store and rented some movies and then picked up a bottle of wine. We figured we’d just cozy up in the cabin for a couple of days and honeymoon.