Steve and Judy's Travels!

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.

On the Wednesday boat tour, we rounded the horn and headed for a glacier.

We parked in front of it, watched and listened to it calving, and felt the chill for about an hour.

It looked like we were right next to the glacier, but Captain Leif said we were a half mile away.  It is so massive we lost our sense of scale.  We could tell he was right because the sound of the ice cracking took so long to get to us after the ice fell.  The glacier in front of us is about 300 feet high and about a mile across.  That’s the height of a thirty-story building!

It was hard to time a photograph of the ice first falling, but I got several of the cloud of debris it made when it hit the water in front and began the swell that would later rock the boat.

Glacier video

There were seals on ice flows.

And ice chunks floating all around; bumping up against the hull of the boat.

With tiny icebergs glowing blue.

The sights and sounds were so glorious, it was an exhausting day.

It was a long day on the boat on Wednesday.  Not only did we see scenery, glaciers, and icebergs, we saw sea lions.

And orcas.

And, spectacularly, sea lions and orcas at the same time; one sea-mammal-eating sea mammal pitted against another sea mammal.

Orcas patrolling right up against the rocks, withdrawing, returning.  Intelligent strategic creatures; velociraptors of the sea.

A roaring diving and splashing racket from the sea lions.  Surprisingly they didn’t all just jump up out of the water, they advanced, retreated, and advanced again.  It was almost like the sea lions were taunting the orcas as much as the orcas were taunting them.

The whales doing their own tail splashing.

We couldn’t know the entirety of the situation.  There was clearly an encounter between the two types of creatures.  Were there any winners or losers; were any whales fed or sea lions lives lost?  We couldn’t tell.  As the situation quieted down, we moved along.

We took a boat tour yesterday.  We went out Resurrection Bay, through the islands, and into Aialik Bay in Kenai Fjords National Park.

Kenai Fjords Tour Map

Northern Latitude Adventures.  There were just five of us and Captain Leif.

In the winter the Captain drives a boat in Hawaii.

Don, the other guy, was also enjoying the tour along with his wife and daughter.  I didn’t get any group photos, but we all had a great time together.

Wow!  Scenic sensory overload!