Sorry about the long lapse between posts – we’ve been super busy, stopping back in town, heading out for one last cruise of the season, back in town in time for the Rainforest Festival, and getting the boat ready for winter.  Last week we had overnight temps just above freezing, with slick frost on the docks in the mornings.  The days are getting much shorter, and we’re losing daylight at a rate of 5 minutes a day! 

We tend to spend so much time exploring far from home that we forget how good the cruising can be in our own backyard.  For the last cruise of the season we traveled just 16 nautical miles to Thomas Bay for another visit to the Baird Glacier and the aptly named Scenery Cove.We had the little mini-fjord all to ourselves for a couple of days, enjoying some kayaking and exploring along the edges.We didn’t see any bears here – there weren’t any salmon, but we saw a deer leaping and lots of interesting little things along the shoreline… like these curly tree branches……and tiny silvery threads of falling water.Fall is starting to make its arrival known…The other great thing about Scenery Cove is that it’s right at the doorstep of the Baird Glacier, one of the two glaciers that formed Thomas Bay.  The Baird is no longer a tidewater glacier, which means that it no longer comes down to the sea, but it has a meltwater lake at its face that flows into the bay.  The outflow changed over the winter, making the channel accessible by small boat this summer.  However, glacier water is completely opaque with glacial silt and the channel is shallow and rocky.  It’s not very forgiving, as our dinghy propeller can attest.But… it’s worth a little excitement for the views and to have a chance to explore the gravel bars and silt plains left behind as the glacier has retreated.

We saw moose tracks and bear scat, and we were careful to make lots of noise when we passed through thickets of brush.  There were barren patches of fine silt and sand, big stretches covered in boulders and cobbles, small trees, and a wonderful assortment of mosses, lichens and tiny mushrooms.I don’t have enough space in this Blog to put all the photos I took of the various lichens and tiny plants – I’m still looking up all the names of everything!  My point is that, while the landscape is a grand one, the many details within that landscape are also special… like a “face” in the silt.And aren’t the patterns and texture of the glacier beautiful?