Sunday, June 7, 2009

Various pictures from Kenai Fjords National Park





Three Hole


Our trip to Seward, Alaska

Driving to Seward.


Seward Marina


Waiting on their ship to sail.

Glacier Pictures

Bear Glacier


Aialik Glacier




Exit Glacier



More animals...

Seen on the the Kenai Fjords Tour.

Humpback Whales


Harbor Seal


Stellar Sea Lions



Seals


Sea Otters


Puffins

Wildlife

Here are some pictures of some of the wildlife we saw Saturday.

Orcas



Bald Eagle



Dalls Porpoise


Saturday, June 6 Recap – Wow!

Wow! That’s it. Wow! That’s the first thing that comes to mind when you first survey the beauty of Alaska. There’s time enough to wax poetic later on, but initially you’re just overwhelmed by the sheer size and grandeur of it all. Now mind you, when I say “Wow!” it means something. We haven’t just arrived here having never seen a tree, let alone a mountain. I mean we hail from the mountains of East Tennessee. We lay claim to the Great Smoky Mountains. But, the sheer scope and beauty and rawness of Alaska is just overwhelming, and we’re only experiencing one small portion of what exists.

We spent today sightseeing as it’s one of the few days that every person from every church is all present. We booked a sightseeing cruise in the Kenai Fjords National Park about 2 hours from Anchorage. The web site for the national park is http://www.nps.gov/kefj/ and the web site for the tour company is http://www.kenaifjords.com/ . It was breathtaking.

We left Anchorage at 6:00 a.m. Alaskan Time and drove to Seward. On the way we saw a mother moose and two babies and a black bear ran across the road in front of us like deer do in Tennessee. We arrived in Seward at 8:15 a.m. Seward was much smaller than I expected since you hear it mentioned so often, but the population in 2007 was just 3,061.

We checked in at the harbor, had breakfast and began our excursion at 10:00 a.m. We got back to the harbor at 6:00 p.m. Without giving a minute by minute account, I’ll just quickly summarize and follow this post with a sampling of pictures that will say more than my fingers could ever hope.

We saw mountains and fjords and snow and islands and glaciers, in fact, we spent a half hour bobbing a quarter of a mile away from the face of Aialik Glacier listen to the moans and cracks and watching pieces of the glacier as big as a house and weighing tons break off and land with a splash in the water below. We also saw orcas and harbor seals and Dall’s porpoises (they are black and white and resemble an orca) and humpback whales and sea lions and puffins (along with other birds that greatly excited the birders on the trip, though they didn’t move me as much). I also saw and took a grainy photo of a bald eagle nesting.

We had a dinner on an island and returned back to the marina and then drove to Exit Glacier. We took some great pictures and a few of the group even walked to the toe of the glacier and touched the ice.

We got back to Anchorage around 11:00 p.m. and I imagine everyone was in bed by midnight (that’s 4:00 a.m. Eastern Time for those keeping score).

Tomorrow we will attend church in the morning and then drive to Whittier. This is our last day seeing the sights as work begins in earnest on Monday morning at the children’s home.

Continue to keep us in your prayers.