We had a great time on our wildlife tour on Monday, 15 August. We went with Coldwater Tours, but I bet the same basic tour is available from other vendors. The boat was quite nice, and our captain Zach knew a lot about the birds. It wasn’t a narrated trip with him talking about the history or geography, but he pointed out animals along the way, and he really seemed to enjoy discussing the birds. He was very cautious not to disturb wildlife, and I appreciated that. We also absolutely lucked out with the weather! It has been raining for days, but we didn’t get rained on even once on the trip.
First some basic landscapes.
Now to the animals. Our first was this bald eagle posing for us.
We saw a harbor seal who got stuck on rocks at high tide and could get safely off at the lower tide we were in. We stayed well off the point he was on so as to not scare him. The only picture I took just shows a blog of light color on dark rocks, so I won’t insult you with it. We also saw lots and lots of sea otters. Most were just floating on their backs to watch us.
We saw a bunch of jelly fish, all orange like the one below. They ranged in size from a small 2-3” to 9” plus. This one was about 6” in diameter.
And then there were the birds! Lots of birds. All kinds of gulls plus puffins! There were two rocky outcroppings used as nesting areas for a variety of gulls and other birds. The eggs are just laid on the bare rock in a crevice just big enough to hold them. The captain said the eggs are not round but pointed so they don’t roll off as easy. You can see the spots where the nests had been by the droppings and sometimes a dab of seaweed.
More exciting than gulls were the puffins! We saw both a crested puffin and horned puffin. However the only good picture I got was of crested puffins. The horned ones always had their back to me when trying to take a picture, and from the back they are just a black bird.
It was our first time seeing a puffin in the wild. They are rare enough that the captain says he doesn’t always get to show them to passengers.
We saw no large mammals – no moose, no bear. Sigh.
On Tuesday I finished up the baby quilt for Baby Lucy, scheduled to arrive this month. At least I thought I finished. Turns out I forgot to quilt the middle medallion! I was pretty irritated with myself since I was so excited to finish the binding and thought it ready to wash and mail. Oops! I also didn’t have enough of the color of thread I needed, so I had to wait until this afternoon to buy some along the way. Thank goodness for nice, small town quilt shops with a good selection. I guess it will be a few more days until I get it in the mail.
Today we drove to Seward. It rained pretty steadily, and we didn’t expect to see much along the way. Surprise! We found a nice cow and calf moose. Moose have a tendency to hide in the brush, and these two did their best.
We are now settled in at Stoney Creek RV Park outside Seward. Nice place with more room than we have had recently plus 50 amp power! That is unusual in Alaska. Most places have 30 amp, and it doesn’t always work well even at that level. We had a fabulous dinner at the Gold Rush a bistro in town plus did exciting things like go grocery shopping including getting some sea sickness preventatives – Dramamine, candied ginger, and peppermint. We go on another much longer wildlife cruise in a couple of days, and the water could be rough. Hope it calms down some before then as it is very rough right now.
We did some sightseeing to the literal end of the road and saw this fabulous waterfall.
The rain is forecast to continue, and we are almost surely going to miss the strong aurora forecast for tonight. Oh well.