Whale acrobatics!!!

Our last day in Alaska was to be spent on the Kenai Fjords Tour, which was a six hour boat tour going through Resurrection Bay and on up to the Aialik tidewater glacier. We happened to meet our the other bed and breakfast guests at breakfast, and that had taken the same tour yesterday. It was very lucky that I met them, and they informed me that the boat was really rolling over the waves. I went immediately to get my motion sickness patch. :)

Before taking getting on the boat, we checked all our baggage into the train station for our 6pm departure, then we walked over to the harbor to get on the Orca Voyager, our boat for the day. I was also glad for my extra layers, as that boat was COLD, even in the inside seating! Our captain's voice seemed very familiar, and we figured out that he reminded us of Jim Gaffigan the comedian. :) We saw a ton of wildlife on the trip, including harbor seals, stellar sea lions, various birds, a brief glimpse of Dall porpoises, and the two highlights: a pod of orca whales and a very social humpback whale that breached several times right in front of our boat! We also got to finally see a glacier calving - the Aialik glacier at the farthest point on our trip was pretty active. Because the water was so deep, the boat got pretty close to the glacier, and we could hear it cracking as the ice shifted and calved.

One of the orcas in the pod we saw.

Stellar sea lions - notice the grouchy one roaring at the boat! :)

A flock of birds feeds on a school of fish in the water.

Trees clinging to rock formations in the fjords.

Icebergs from the Aialik Glacier.

The Aialik Glacier.

Some of the boat workers fished a chunk of ice out of the water and let all we tourists take photos holding it. :)

Beautiful blue!

It's a breach! A humpback whale!!!

And again! Our captain called him a "punk whale." for showing off. :)

Whale tail.

Humpback in front of the Bear Glacier.

When we arrived back at the dock, we were just in time to catch our train back to Anchorage. The ride was uneventful, except we got to see a couple of moose and a bald eagle's nest with one bald eagle appearing to pose nicely for us. :) Once we arrived back in Anchorage, we picked up our rental car and drove to the airport to catch our 1:30am flight... This is going to be a long and exhausting trip back with more that twelve hours in transit and two stops, but what an amazing time we have had in Alaska!

Our train back to Anchorage passes in front of a glacier.

 

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