Kenai Fjords Tour

WOW, what a day; almost too much sightseeing to list!  If you ever plan to go to Seward, be sure to plan an extra day for this 9-hour tour, it is well worth it.

Our day started quite overcast, with the tops of the mountains that we saw yesterday, hidden behind the very low cloud ceiling.  Still we enjoyed the boat ride and the scenery as we headed down Resurrection Bay toward the Gulf of Alaska. At one point we pulled into a small cove and got close to several harbor seals sunning on rocks.  Later on Mary got of photo of this eagle on top of a tree.

At our next stop we saw two kinds of puffins.   Puffins are small diving birds with a very distinct flying style.  We saw some on rocks, but most were floating around like this one.

Next we spotted some humpback whales feeding.  At first we followed one for a while, then as we moved on, we came across several whales feeding.  It was amazing to  keep seeing whale "blows" and dives, one after the other.  I also captured a few short videos, one of which I hope to post here.

Next, as we turned into our destination,  Northwest Fjord, we saw sunshine, and it stayed with us for our entire visit to the fjord.  The glaciers were beautiful.  A few of the dozens of pictures we snapped are below.

Eventually we reached our goal: Northwest Glacier. As you can see, this glacier has two main parts, and both were rather active today.  I was amazed at feeling the cold chill coming off the glacier even though it was a few hundred yards away.  Shortly after we arrived, the left side had a major calving, captured in the three pictures below.  Note the large wave in the third picture.  As this wave reached our ship it turned into a series of 8' swells so we bounced around quite a bit!

Later on, the right side of the glacier had some movement near the top.  This turned into an "ice waterfall" that lasted nearly two minutes! I captured a video of it, but that is a 4.5 MB video and is too large to upload.

Eventually we had to leave and head back to Seward.  As we left the fjord, the cloud cover returned. The tour always stops at a small cove with many waterfalls. They pull up VERY close to one and take your picture in front of it!

We had more wildlife sightings on our return trip.  In addition to watching a couple more whales, we saw this bird nesting cliff.  The boat got close enough to see that two nests  had hatchlings!  We also saw this brood of sea lions with several large males and quite a few pups.

We arrived back in Seward on schedule, tired but thrilled at what we had experienced.