Off to Seward!
Today was an incredibly
early day! To get to Seward for the Kenai Fjords tour by 11 AM, we needed to be
leaving Homer by 6:45 AM. After getting
in the bus, the majority of us instantly fell asleep. Some caught up on their
journals or worked on the class paper, but willpower faded into sleep. We got to Seward early and ready for the tour!
We toured with the Kenai Fjords Tours out in Resurrection Bay. Boating out into sea, we saw a little
wildlife including two eagles and many other birds. However, we hit the jackpot with our first
whale sighting! A pod of orcas with a baby were swimming in a cove near
Seward. After watching them for a while,
the curious orcas swam right up to the bow of our boat! With that topping off
the beginning of the trip, we headed over to a glacier. On our way, we saw a group steller sea
lions. For the view individuals who
stayed at the bow of the ship, they were almost blown away by the intense winds
created by the boat. Once at the glacier,
our captain talked about the loss of glacial ice over the years as well as the
anatomy of the glacier. Unfortunately, we
only got to see a few small ice chunks calve off the glacier. Heading back out to open ocean, we hit really
rough water. The boat was bouncing almost
as bad as the small water taxi after our sea kayaking adventure. From a distance, we saw a north pacific
humpback whale and some dall porpoise. Usually the porpoise love to play with the
boat and chaise it; however, these ones were not interested. The captain then took us to an island complex
where tons of birds where roosting.
While traveling around the island, we saw a bald eagle snatch a bird
clean out of the water! We traveled to a couple different islands in an attempt
to see roosting puffins. We saw many
other roosting birds, but only saw a few flying puffin. Heading back through choppy water, the crew
of the ship made us chocolate chip cookies which tasted excellent after a long
day out in the cold wind. The total
runtime of the tour was approximately six hours. By the end, everyone was exhausted. For dinner, we ordered in pizza and everyone
enjoyed a meal together. The rest of the
evening was spent hanging out together and writing both journals and our final
paper.
(C) 2014. All photos below are the
property of Benjamin Bogard. All rights reserved.
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