More Glacier Bay Treats

Posted on August 14, 2022 by Robin

The glaciers that give this National Park its name are in the north end of the bay, but there is so much to see on the journey up to the ice!

The sea otters are some of the most adorable critters, especially when they’re clutching their little pups. But they’re not popular with fishermen since they have no natural predators and they’re voracious eaters. They will eat everything in sight, wiping out the crabs and other bottom creatures, until the food is gone and they move on to another area. At some point, their numbers will overwhelm the available food sources and their population will crash. But yes, they are really cute.

We spotted a number of bears, and because it was early in the season, it was mating time. Males follow females that they’re interested in, and we saw several pairs of persistent males and uninterested females. This male was steadily pursuing his love interest, and she kept trotting and eventually running away from him.

We spotted three different “romantic” couples, as well as one female with a nice big second-year cub.

As we got closer to the glaciers, we started seeing harbor seals resting on floating ice. As it was still early in the season, the seals were giving birth so we needed to keep a big distance from them so we didn’t disturb the fragile new pups.

And finally we arrived up at the main glaciers – the Reid, Lamplugh, Johns Hopkins, Margerie, and the Grand Pacific. We’re lucky enough to be able to anchor by the Reid, giving us time to just look and listen to it for hours and hours.

What’s sad is that we can see more and more of the mountain underneath, and we’ve witnessed the very noticeable changes yearly since our first exciting visit to see it in 2014.

All the glaciers are changing so quickly – it’s like watching old friends decline, and it breaks our hearts.

We had the upper part of the bay all to ourselves one day, and we headed up to see the “show glacier” – the Margerie, that one that the cruise ships spend most of their time visiting. It’s splashy-flashy, as glaciers go, though not as blue as some of the other ones.

We were lucky this time – we heard some cracking like thunder, then silence… then the whoosh of some bits of ice falling. The glaciers are always making noises – they’re rivers of ice that are constantly flowing down the mountain, carrying snow that fell about 200 years ago that’s now compressed into dense ice. This day, the Margerie was more active than we’ve ever seen, eventually gifting us with a nice big calving event. You’ll note that the video is quite short, because we were fairly close to the glacier’s face, and the ice-laden wave was not to be trifled with.

You can hear Jim yelling about the wave, so I had to put the camera down and get the boat moving back and angled to take the wave. Yowza!

Back to Glacier Bay

Posted on August 10, 2022 by Robin

It’s our 13th trip into Glacier Bay National Park… It’s addictive.

We love the forest…

…the ponds with buckbean and birds and water lilies…

…and the lupine in bloom.

The music of the bay includes the groaning and barking of Steller’s sea lions (big, loud sausages on the rocks, sleek rockets in the water)…

…and the songs of the whales (having a hydrophone helps).

Gulls and kittiwakes nest on the cliffs…

…as do the puffins! They make a burrow in rock crevices to incubate their eggs, returning to the sea for the rest of the year once their chicks have fledged.

Pelagic cormorants also like the rocky cliffs, often found near the puffin burrows as well as where we see mountain goats.

Speaking of mountain goats – we found a few… some relaxing, and a nanny with a kid, demonstrating their climbing prowess.

There’s more to show you… Glacier Bay has so much to see, so stay tuned.

Exploring the Inner Channels

Posted on August 6, 2022 by Robin

I continue to be way behind on blogging, but we continue to be busy exploring and working on projects. The good news is that there’s plenty to share – so far it has been a great summer.

In late May we spent a few days in Red Bluff Bay, on the eastern shore of Baranof Island, because there’s a terrific “bear meadow” that usually has some brown bears eating sedges (a type of grass) at that time of the year. Early wildflowers, like the shooting stars above, are also in bloom, adding to the beauty of the place.

As soon as the anchor was set, I was in the kayak with cameras, and I spotted the four-legged furry things that I love to watch…

The photo above shows typical bear behavior – they’re always scanning to see what’s going on around them, ever watchful for a more dominant bear or a threat. This bear paid particular attention to one area in the nearby forest, though nothing scary ever emerged.

Late one afternoon, two sub-adult bears were eating grass and playing on a shoal, and wrestled and interacted as they swam across to the main meadow – fun to watch since bears are solitary more often than not.

A lone trumpeter swan was in residence, odd to see one this late in the spring since most have migrated farther north by now.

Mergansers are usually pretty shy, but these two let me get fairly close.

As we made our way up to Glacier Bay, we spent a few nights in some favorite anchorages along the way, and finally got to see some good whale action on our way into an anchorage one afternoon. It was a good-sized pod of humpbacks bubble-net feeding!

We watched them through binoculars for a while as we slowed our approach to the anchorage, but the food they were following kept moving them farther away. So that is the end of this tale (tail)… for now…

Next up is Glacier Bay, which never disappoints!

Natural Beauty – From Yosemite back to Alaska

Posted on July 3, 2022 by Robin

We are people who must meander, never content to sit still for too long. There are too many places to see and things to explore. Once again, I’m trying to catch up – this time from the end of March, when we wrapped up a road trip with a stop in Yosemite National Park, to our return home to Petersburg – shifting from the roads to the waterways.

But first – Yosemite. Wow.

The National Park Service advertising tag says “Find Your Park” – and the problem is that we keep finding Parks and falling in love with them, and it’s impossible to choose just one. Thankfully we don’t have to. Unfortunately we hit Yosemite on a weekend, so it was crowded, and our campground was a long drive from the valley. We enjoyed seeing the iconic views, but we also wanted to get off the beaten path a little, and snow shoes in the higher elevations turned out to be a perfect way to find solitude.

We only made a short visit to this famous national park this trip, but we hope to return and explore it more deeply another time.

And now for something completely different… back home in Petersburg, with orcas cruising by…

…and a trip with friends to see the nearby LeConte Glacier. In mid-May, there’s often a lot of calving, and the inlet can be so choked with brash ice that it’s impassable. There was a good chance we might not be able to see the glacier’s face, but we were on an aluminum jet-powered boat that could safely navigate a lot more ice than ADVENTURES can!