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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When we woke up this morning and got out of the car to brush our teeth, there was a large cow moose just on the other side of the small lake staring at us. Now that’s the way to wake up – surrounded by beautiful mountains and crystal blue glaciers right alongside a perfectly clear blue-green lake with a moose staring at you. It was such an exhilarating way to start the day. After sitting for a while to reflect on the beauty of the morning, we headed back to the Portage Glacier visitor center. There were some new icebergs in Portage Lake that must have calved overnight. They were just spectacular ice sculptures floating out in the clear water. The visitor’s center was really a very nice facility. They had several interactive displays, including some live ice worms that Randal tried to murder (clearly, the sign said “do not touch, your body heat will kill”) and an informational movie that we watched. Turns out that about 50 years ago, the face of Portage Glacier was directly in front of the visitor’s center. They have a huge window behind the movie screen and at the end of the movie, the screen slowly ascends to reveal this once-majestic up-close view of a glacier. Now when it lifts, there is a beautiful iceberg-filled lake and they tell you that if you look real hard, you can see the top corner of Portage Glacier above the mountain at the other side of the lake. I just find it amazing how quickly they recede. It’s truly a spectacular feat of nature to create all of that massive moving ice. We were told that there was a trail over on the Whittier side that you can hike and get a pretty close view of the glacier, but it was a 45 minute hike (which means an hour for me) and I was already feeling so crummy and weak from being sick that I asked if we could hold off and do that on the way back out of the peninsula. So instead, we started south toward Seward. When we got there, we secured a campground and bought a couple of showers to get us feeling better. Then we went out for a drive to explore the town. Driving along the edge of the bay, we spotted two orcas swimming together. We pulled over and watched them until they were out of site. It was pretty neat. We relaxed most of the day trying to get me feeling better. We made reservations with Kenai Fjords Tours for a dinner cruise tomorrow afternoon before heading back to our campground for the night.

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This morning we woke up and decided to attempt to make our way up to Tok and then head south for Haines. By this time, I was getting a pretty good cold from all of the smoke that we had encountered up in the Fairbanks area so I think I actually slept most of the way. When we got to Tok, it was just as smoky, if not smokier, as Fairbanks. This was disheartening. We stopped at the visitor’s center to try to find out whether there was any chance that it cleared up south of town. Turned out that it just continued since there were several fires burning in Canada along the way. While we really did want to journey down to Haines and Juneau, we decided that it was not worth it if we couldn’t see or breath. It would have been 450+ miles of only being able to see a quarter of a mile or so. We turned straight around and headed back toward Glennallen again, this time turning there to head back toward Anchorage. We stopped in Anchorage in order to fortify our supplies and then started our trip down the Kenai Peninsula. We turned off toward Portage and were pleased to find that we had stumbled onto a field of large glaciers. They were beautiful. So blue and big. We stopped at three or four glaciers before we got to Portage Lake and discovered that you could not see Portage Glacier from this side of the lake. We enjoyed looking at the icebergs that it had created for a while and then headed back to another lake we had seen back up the road just a bit – it had appeared to be a wonderful camping place. We pulled up alongside the lake and went to bed.