National Geographic moments

Saturday 20th July
Today we went on a Kenai Fjords boat trip. The captain, who had a deep mellifluous voice reminiscent of Johnny Cash, gave us an interesting commentary about the history of the area and the sea life. He explained that Seward had been a commercial port with oil and gas terminals until the March 27 1964 Alaska earthquake. Seward was almost completely destroyed and the oil tanks ruptured, and then half an hour later three tsunamis pushed the spilled oil back up on shore and it went on fire, devastating what remained of the town. As we were told in Anchorage, the fact that it was Good Friday and businesses and schools were closed meant that there was little loss of life, but financially Seward has never quite recovered and is now mainly a fishing and tourism town, handy for the Kenai Fjords National Park. The first glacier that we came to was Bear Glacier which is a land-locked glacier which comes down almost to the sea; 75% of Kenai Fjords national park is covered by glaciers. At Calisto Point we saw two North Pacific hump-backed whales feeding. We also saw rusty brown Steller sea lions basking and squabbling on some rocks, and harbour seals. We turned in towards the Aialik Glacier, passing the Holgate Glacier and the Pederson Glacier on the way. All of these are flowing down from the massive Harding Icefield. The captain took us close up to the glacier and we saw it calving; just seemingly small bits of ice were coming off it but they made a tremendous noise as they crashed down. I do like a boat trip and the scenery was beautiful with turquoise seas and steep sided fjords, the lower slopes of the mountains densely covered with forest and the upper slopes consisting of rock and snow.
We saw some sea otters floating on their backs and also some black and white porpoises - one of them swam along right beside the boat! The highlight of the whole trip had to be a group of Orca (killer) whales, feeding alongside humpbacked whales and a fin whale near Matushka Island. The boat was surrounded by whales! Also because they were feeding on schools of small fish, there were lots of seabirds feeding there too including puffins, who were so full of fish that they were skimming across the surface of the water having difficulty taking off! The captain played us a recording of the Orca's sounds under the water which a scientist on the boat (who is doing his Master's on Orcas!) had just made using a hydrophone; it was a haunting, echoey, almost bird like sound. The captain told us that so much sea life activity on one trip is very unusual and it was a "National Geographic moment!"
After six hours on a boat we felt the need for a short walk so we drove up to Exit Glacier (about 8 miles from Seward) and went for a forty minute walk to the viewpoint before dinner. It was stunning; grey shallow river and many hued green woods with the huge glacier hanging behind them.
We went back to Chinook's for dinner and again our meal was delicious, and we had a pleasant chat about our day. The captain of the boat told us earlier that this is the best summer that they have had in Alaska for ten years; it is so beautiful that it will be hard to leave tomorrow!