Cruisin'

Aug 17th: Sean and I scoped out a company for a glacier cruise the day previous, and settled on Major Marine Tours out of Seward to view some of the glaciers off of the Kenai Fjords National Park. Since Sean is prone to motion sickness we had to make sure the company had a catamaran type boat to help stabilize any rolling from rough seas, and the projected forecast for July 17th was 9 foot seas. At first you think "9 foot seas is nothing," and yes, it is better than 20 foot seas, but it is in it's own right very rough.

The weather when we got up was cloudy, rainy, and foggy. Not the best conditions for viewing mountains and glaciers, but we kept our hopes up.

We got to sleep in for a while, as we didn't have to check-in until 10:45am, and I made us each a sandwich and brought some other snacks and drinks. They offer a buffet for a whopping $19 extra per person, haha! If you know us, that is not something we go for voluntarily, and plus, we didn't know how Sean would fair. Luckily, we thought ahead and the previous night I had him take some Dramamine. The next morning he took another so he would be ready before we got on the boat.

We boarded the Glacier Express at 11:00am and after a touristy picture with a life-ring (taken by the staff, to sell to us later) we were shown to our table which was to be our "home base."

The staff and captain introduced themselves, and promptly we were on our way out of the harbor and past the Waterfront Park. Can you spot our motorhome?

There was a Park Ranger onboard that is a life-long resident to Seward. She had lots of information about the area and its wildlife. We saw our motorhome on the way out toward the end of the bay. The ride was very smooth through Resurrection Bay and up until we were out of the mouth of the bay did we feel much roughness.

Our first stop was to an area known to have puffins for residents. Their nests are built into the cliffside and very difficult to spot. They are notably recognizable by their bright orange beaks and feet. It was hard to snap a good photo of these guys because they move so darn fast and, of course, not fans of the boat!

It was time to race over to Holgate Glacier and for the crew and passengers to brace themselves for the rough seas. That means grabbing onto something stable, which is not another person beside you, haha!

There were many glaciers to view from a distance, but none we could get close to except Holgate Glacier. This glacier spills out right into the ocean and has many small icebergs in the waters surrounding it that are from the glacier calving. The captain got us a safe distance from the icebergs and turned off the engine. You would not believe the sounds a huge chunk of ice could make. You would see something move in your peripheral vision, than bam! There goes a large chunk of ice falling off the glacier. Apparently this glacier moves 5 feet per day.

On our way headed back home, we hadn't even made it out of the fjord where Holgate Glacier was, we spotted a humpback whale doing something unusual, as you can watch below.

The whale had done this several times, but I'm unsure why.

We made our way to a place called Spider Cove, which offered unique and pretty views. Each small island is full of bird's nests.

As we returned to Resurrection Bay, God graced us with the first glimpse of sun that day. It is amazing how the sun can warm you instantly! Before we knew it, we were home (at 5:30pm) and Sean's motion sickness never bothered him. Thank goodness!

 

While we were on our way back to the motorhome, we happened upon some boxes filled with ice that had large Silver Salmon in them. Sean mentioned that he saw something about a fishing derby going on in town. It turns out this fish, a 21.25 lbs. Silver Salmon, was caught earlier that day and was the winner of the Silver Salmon Fishing Derby, and its fisherman $10,000 richer.