Whale watching

The bugs were so awful this morning that Kimber decided against a hike. Instead, we headed out of the bay to whale watch. It didn't take long before I heard someone say something about breaching. Again, I've seen whales before but not breaching whales. We weren't able to get real close to the breaching animals, but we could see them in the distance. The amount of water that is displaced when a whale reenters the water is stunning. The breaching was fantastic to watch, but my attention was often diverted to closer animals. Several humpbacks were near the boat, some approaching as close as 50 yards. During lunch (fresh crab cakes with a ginger sauce), a whale paced the boat right alongside the dining area. No one complained about the view. We stopped several times to take in the whale activities, crossing the Icy Strait to Idaho Inlet. We sailed up the inlet, until dropping anchor near the river at the end which feeds into it. Although the wind kicked up, Kimber decided to lower the kayaks in the water and send us up the river to look for bears. We saw an enormous one just before we anchored. It was a brown bear (aka grizzly), that was grazing in the meadow. We hoped to see more after kayaking to a hiking spot.

We paddled down wind and upstream into the river. We ditched our kayaks in the tall grass, then took a hike along the river. The wildflowers were amazing. Kimber picked a chocolate lily. The root is edible and is a good source of starch. It wasn't terribly tasty, but I suppose if you were starving, it wouldn't be bad. We found no bears, but lots of tracks. In one area there were bear, deer, and river otter tracks. We circled back, hopped in the kayaks, and headed back to the Sea Wolf. We sailed to the Idaho Inlet for the night anchor. It is named after the first tourist boat to come into this area. The Idaho apparently didn't understand the nature of glaciers. They sailed into the inlet, getting stuck in the silt. Although they evacuated the passengers at some point, it took them several years to finally extricate the boat. Czytaj więcej