A small part of the Kenai Mountain Range:
Mount Marathon of the Kenai Mountain Range hovering over Seward (no photoshopping has been done for these brilliant colors):
Our camping spot in Seward looking across Resurrection Bay:
DAY II
Now that that's been taken care of, it's time to discuss day 2 and 3 of our weekend getaway. After our glacial nightcap, we slept pretty peacefully under the mountains. Since the summer solstice it's been getting progressively darker every night which made outdoors sleeping much easier. When we woke up, we headed to our boat to explore Resurrection Bay. The ride provided more fantastic scenery. There are around 30 glaciers surrounded by bright green mountains in the area which makes for a pretty surreal landscape.
We immediately saw five otters rafting together. We see otters pretty much daily but I promise they are not getting old.
Lots of our good friend, the tufted puffin.
We saw brief glimpses of a few humpback whales, including one that had an all white tail. This mom and calf were the closest.
Our next stop was an enormous glacier known for its massive beauty, Aialik.
I've included this photo because it provides a size estimate. In the lower left hand corner there is another boat. It's that tiny white shape under the foot of the mountain.
Aialik is calving (losing giant chunks of ice) at a rate of 8-20 feet a day. It took a few seconds for us to hear the sound of thunder and a few more for us to see a minivan-sized hunk of ice fall into the ocean. This continued for the entirety of the 15 minutes we were here.
On our way back everyone became very still and silent at the sight of this very identifiable black and white dorsal fin:
It was a freaking pod of ORCAS!!! I think we saw about 20 in total. Some came really close to the ship. They were beautiful and amazing and majestic. Our tour was actually late in returning because of the insane amount of orcas that we saw that day.
Minutes later, we came across a crazy humpback whale that was flipping his tail around and showing off for everyone. Here are three different parts of the whale's body. The only way that I can explain the massive size of the humpback is to repeat the captain in saying that its jawbone is as big as a bedroom wall.
Pectoral fin:
Dorsal fin:
Tail fin:
This is the other side of his tail. The markings are referred to as their "thumbprint".
After such a majestic day, we were beat and ready for some food and sleep. Griffin made a giant fire like a very tough man.
After a good look around at the scenery it was decided that the only reasonable thing to do would be to immerse ourselves in this high glacial content water under the mountains despite the 30 degree temperature.
When we got back to the fire, Griffin appeared to be steaming next to it because of the temperature difference.
I saw an otter out in the water late that night and walked to take a look. It played with me for a good quarter of a mile down the beach by popping its head up close to me and then diving under far away. I thought the photo Griffin attempted to take of the whole ordeal was about as surreal as the whole story.
DAY III
On the third day of our trip, we went for a short kayak. We took a stroll down the beach while we were waiting to load out, enjoying one of the most beautiful days we have seen. During this walk, Griffin found a pair of wraparound sunglasses in a bunch of seaweed that he is still talking about right now.
Before heading out into the ocean, we took a short walk to a lovely waterfall.
This day was a great example of Alaska weather because by the time we were in the kayaks the fog had set and the mountains became this:
We've decided that we don't mind the fog so much because often the mountains then appear to float over the ocean . . . which is pretty cool.
We saw a lot of little glacial waterfalls coming down the mountains on our kayak.
We received the best goodbye ever as we headed out of Seward and saw this little guy/lady posing alongside the road:
Look how close it was to the road!
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