Author: Steve

We watched the bore tide.

Turnagain Arm is a 45-mile-long body of water off the Cook Inlet.  It is up to 4 miles wide.  At low tide it is a giant mudflat with a few channels through it, but every twelve hours or so, a tide rushes in and fills it.  The tides here at Turnagain Arm are extreme, running about 40 feet!  The tide rising 40 feet over a 45-mile stretch can create an incoming wave know as a bore tide that travels along at about 5 miles per hour.  The bore tide can be tracked with tide charts, so we showed up at the right time at the right place (Beluga Point), waited, watched and photographed.  It wasn’t a spectacular bore tide; maybe a twelve-inch surge, but it was fun to be there.

The name Turnagain Arm is reputed to come from Captain Cook’s 1776 effort to find the fabled Northwest Passage.  What made his effort different was that he started from the west coast and looked east; every other attempt being from the east coast looking west.  Every large inlet like this had to be explored to determine if it was a passage or a river mouth.  Every inlet along this coast was a disappointment.  When this too was determined to be a river mouth, it was time to “turn again” and continue on.  (He never did discover a Northwest Passage; his ships were ultimately turned around, in August, by impenetrable ice.)

At low tide, mostly mud.

Waiting and watching for the bore tide.

I’m thinking standing on fractured unstable mud might not be the wisest vantage from which to watch the oncoming rush of water.

Here it is, the bore tide itself.

That’s not the entire incoming tide, just the bore tide part of it.  Overall the rise in tide is a significant 40 feet.

A lone paddleboarder way out there catching a ride on the ripple.

At high tide, just a normal bay.

As the tide rushes in, it is filled with salmon this time of year.  Many of the fish turn and go up Bird Creek, where fishermen await.  There are an array of spinners and flyrods, but there is no point in using bait.  These fish are on a mission to spawn and die; they’re no longer interested in food.  Fishing for them involves snagging; dragging treble hooks through the mass of fish and hooking them in the side or back.  Surprisingly a lot of the fish are released.  Snag, drag, and release; not quite like fly fishing with tiny barbless hooks and one-pound-test leader on gold-medal trout water, reviving caught fish to gently release them unharmed.

This guy was reeling in a fish on practically every cast.

Here is where we are, at Bird Creek Campground.

There aren’t actually many birds here, but it’s a good place to be right now.

There is a nice trail that goes by us called the Bird to Gird Path.

It goes from Bird Creek, a hot salmon fishery, to Girdwood, a town about 12 miles down the road.

Here is the view at nearby Bird Point.

From this nicely constructed pathway and lookout.

We have a tree turning yellow here and dropping its leaves,

…which brings the conversation back around to winter and Alaska and when winter arrives in Alaska.  We’re not worried about a little bit of cold and snow, unless that snow lands on our slide awnings and doesn’t melt off right away.  It’s hard to pull the slides in to move the rig when there is snow on the slide awnings.  They won’t roll up into the retractor.  No worries though; no snow in the forecast; no problem!  It’s only just August tomorrow.  How bad could it be anyway?

There were other excitements on Wednesday’s boat ride.  There were humpbacked whales.

Dolphins.

Puffins galore.

Kittlitz’s murrelets.

Parakeet auklets.

Sooty shearwaters.

Pigeon guillemots.

And more sea otters.

Even a sea otter savoring a starfish!

And lastly, our newfound friends who shared this adventure with us!

It got dark!  The sun was still up when we went to bed, but with our being father south, and with it later in the year past the summer solstice, when I got up in the middle of the night briefly, it was dark!

We’ve moved a couple times since we last had internet.  On Saturday we went to the Seward KOA for full hookups for a couple days.  Today, we’re at Bird Creek State Park south of Anchorage.

This part of the Alaska trip map

Here is a picture from Seward.

The fireweed is still in bloom, but it looks like it might be starting to fade.  The flower stalks start from the bottom and work their way up to the top.  We’re told when the fireweed blooms are gone, so is summer.  We’re not giving up that easily though.  We still have the month of August before it starts to snow.  No need to hurry home.

That Wednesday boat ride was so great, it took me four days to describe it.

Sunday, we went for a nice calm walk.  First, we drove to Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park.

A ranger told us that dark streak down the middle is because the middle flows fasted than the edges and all the rocks and junk the glacier picks up along the way is funneled to the center.

Then we followed a trail through the woods.

Admiring the view along the way.

And the moss on the rocks.

And got right up to the glacier itself.

And met a really nice young person from Barrow, visiting friends in Anchorage, who took our picture for us.

Every glacier on the Kenai Peninsula is fed by the Harding Ice Fields, a seven-hundred square mile sheet of ice.  Replenished by 400 inches of snowfall a year, it pushes down on forty separate glaciers keeping them moving.  Exit Glacier moves along at about a foot a day.

Here is a moment in front of the glacier.

Exit Glacier video

It wasn’t as windy as it sounds.  It was a little chilly though, in front of the ice.