The Long and Winding Road

Whew!  I'm back and had a terrific time! Best damned vacation I've had in many a long day.  What made it so good?  Well for starters Newleaf is a great guy, and he has the same talent that I have for making anything, and I do many ANYTHING dirty.  We can double entendre like you wouldnt believe.

Looking over my pictures I took of our trip, I couldnt decide what to post, so many...... Alaska is just to photogenic!  LOL  So, today I'll post pictures of just our trip onboard the Kenai Fjord Tours boat, which left from Seward.  I didnt get pictures of some of the sealife.  Why?  I was to amazed to even remember that I had a camera!  And there were times when it was to far out for my point and shoot to pick up.  I didnt get a picture of the sea otters, porpoises, the humpback whales, or the fin whales.  Yeah, we saw all of those, and more.  And here we go!

 Our ship pulling into the slip.  This ship was very smooth even on choppy water, and amazingly quiet.

 

 Lush islands in Resurrection Bay area. 

Harbor seals at rest. 

Killer whales!!!!  This is the adult male of the pod.  Killer whales stay in the pod they are born into their entire lives.  When different pods meet up the males will go over and mate with a female and then go back to his mother.  This pod was comprised of this whale's mother, his sister, and several of her offspring.  He is the only one that got close to the boat.  His sister had a new baby that was so tiny!  To explain just how big he is, the dorsal fin is 6 feet (1.828 Meters) tall.

Sea Lions.  Yeah, I know they are kinda smallish.  If you click-ity the pic to embiggen it, you can see them better.  Next time I go, I'm going to have a better camera!  But let me tell ya, sea lions STENCH!  Image a combination of wet dog, cat pee and rotted fish.  Whew!  As you see we didnt get all that close either. I cant imagine getting closer to those smelly beasts.  But still it was cool to see them, and hear them vocalize.

As we got closer to Aialik Glacier the more slush was in the ocean.  The temperature dropped several degrees also.

The chunks of ice got bigger as we drew ever nearer Aialik glacier.  Mentions of the Titanic were heard from our fellow passengers.  We could hear them bump against the hull, a few of them caused the boat to slightly shudder. 

 The ice continues to get ever larger! 

 This was a monster iceberg!  We passed several of these, causing the passengers to become eerily silent. 

 Aialik Glacier.  It was huge!  We saw it calve a few times, but alas I didnt have my camera pointed in the right direction.  (wipes tear)  When the ice would hit the water it sounded like gun shots.  None of the pieces that fell were very large, so we didnt get much in the way of ripples.

I moved away from the glacier side of the boat to let more people have picture access.  While standing at the rail, I heard what to me sounded like breakfast time.  Then I realized it was the ice making that sound.  If you look closely you can see the air "boil" out of the ice.  When the snow compresses into ice, the air gets trapped, and when it melts it pops.

If you ever get the chance to visit Alaska, this trip is a must do, no question about it.  The scenery, the sea life, and what made it even better, is the running dialog about what we were looking at from the captain.  They were informative without being the least bit boring.