Valdez was
relatively warm, at 60 degrees and lightly raining, yesterday evening when we
pulled into town. This morning, it was in the low 40’s and only slightly drizzling.
The six hour
boat tour promised us the beauty and excitement of Prince William Sound. We had
our cameras and our binoculars ready. During our Alaska trip, we’ve found that
phone cameras are not designed for wildlife photography. This was again confirmed
today. Nevertheless, I’ll include a few grainy shots of what we saw. However,
our cameras were not up to the task of recording the iconic whale flukes shots.
Once we got
out on the water, it started to get even cooler. The hot chocolate helped.
Just off
Heather Island, we saw a bald eagle. See if you can spot it, too.
As we
traveled through Valdez Arm, the sun started to come out. Over at Point Bull
Head, we saw a large group of Steller sea lions basking in the sun. We also saw
some humpback whales – honest, we really did!
We turned
north up toward Columbia Bay. Once again, the sun went away and it started
to get cold. Looking at the ice floating by made it feel even colder.
Columbia
Glacier is a tidewater glacier. Since 1980, it’s retreated more than 13 miles.
Had we taken this boat excursion nearly 40 years ago, we’d have had to leave
the boat behind and hiked to where we sailed today.
Our captain
took us as far as he could safely go today into the ice-choked bay. He said
conditions vary so much and so quickly, that you never know how close to the
glacier you can get. We didn’t want to end up like Jack and Rose (see ‘Titanic’),
so we had no problem when we were still a couple of miles from the nose of the
glacier when we stopped.
After drifting
in the balmy low 40’s temperature for awhile, we turned around and threaded our
way through the icy water on our return to Valdez. Along the way, we saw some
other sunbathers.
Back in
Valdez, we grabbed some halibut at the Alaska Halibut House and went back to
our hotel room to warm up.
Next: Ferry
Ride to Whittier
No comments:
Post a Comment