Kenai Fjords National Park Cruise, Seward

Today we went on Major Marine Tours full-day cruise in Kenai Fjords National Park. The weather was a little cool on the water but the sun shone all day and the ocean was quite calm.

This picture shows the campground from the water. I'm pretty sure there are more RV's visiting Seward than there are permanent residences!

In addition to spectacular scenery, including lots of glaciers, we saw lots of wildlife and seabirds. The first wildlife we spotted, a pair of sea otters, were sure cute. They float on their backs with their little paws held up out of the water. They don’t have insulating hair on their paws which is why they keep them out of the water. Sea otters can spend their entire life in the water. The sea otters were almost wiped out by over-hunting prior to 1850 but their population is fairly healthy now. The first (close-up) picture is from the book they gave us on the boat. The second, Fran took today.

We caught glimpses of Dall’s porpoises but they didn’t stick around long enough for pictures. They look like small orcas.

There was a Humpbacked Whale family (two adults and one juvenile) that entertained us for quite a while. The youngster kept rolling around and waving his flipper at us. It’s hard to get good shots of whales when 90% of their bodies are in the water, but Fran managed to get a tail shot when one dove.

In a couple of spots the captain took us by, there were large populations of Steller Sea Lions. These big guys weigh about 1,500 pounds each!

My favourite sea bird is the Puffin. There are two types in the Kenai: horned puffins and tufted puffins. It’s hard to get good pictures of them because they are pretty small in the big ocean and when they fly by they are going so fast, but here are a few pretty good ones.

These little merres look like penguins when they stand up.

The captain took us by some really nice rock formations, including Three-Hole Point.

We also sailed past the Bear Glacier. It used to be a tidewater glacier (flowing directly into the ocean), but the build-up of a moraine on the shore has trapped the freshwater and now the icebergs that calve from the glacier are trapped in the lake right adjacent to the ocean.

We went up quite close to the Holgate Glacier. It is 500 feet thick and 13 miles long. It moaned and groaned but didn’t calve when we were there.

Another nice feature of this cruise is the delicious meal the crew cooked for us: prime rib, salmon, etc. We enjoyed it with our table-mates, Bob and Honey from San Diego. On this boat, everyone has an assigned table seat inside to use as a ‘home base’ but we spent most of the day outside watching the sights and taking pictures.

The pups were really happy to see us home and we spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the motorhome.