Kenai Fjord Natl. Park

7/11/11

What a day we had today!  WOW!!  We arrived at the boat dock around 9:30 for our on-time 10 AM departure.  We sailed through Resurrection Bay out of Seward, through part of the Gulf of Alaska and up into a fjord leading to Aialik Glacier.  It was quite cloudy, but the ceiling was pretty high when we left so it seemed like it was going to be fine.  Along the way we saw:

1.       A pod of Orcas (“Killer whales”) – actually not really a whale, but the largest member of the dolphin family.

2.       Mother humpback whale and her baby

3.       Several Sea Lions

4.       Harbor Seals

5.       Harbor Porpoises

6.       Sea Otters

7.       A Fin Whale

8.       Tufted Puffins

 9
.       Horned Puffins

10.   Common Murres

11.   Cormorants

12.   Two Black Oyster Catchers

13.   Many Glaucous Winged Gulls

14.   A Black Legged Kittiwake nesting colony

15.   Marbled Murrelets

16.   Thick billed Murres

17.   Common Mergansers

18.   Several Mountain Goats up high – two kids and their moms

I took over 150 pictures – quite a few of a glacier “calving” – we sat with the engine turned off ¼ of a mile out from the Aialik glacier and listened to the cracking and thunderous roar as huge semi-truck sized pieces of ice fell into the sea.

I nearly wept several times listening to nature like I have never heard it before in my life.  The puffins were nesting in several places, gulls; murres, etc. were all nesting.  We learned that puffin chicks spend 3 years at sea before coming in to nest for just a month or two.  We learned that puffins can dive using their wings up to 300 feet but that murres can dive 600 feet!   We learned that the Fin Whale we saw was probably 65 feet long and was larger than the humpback – in fact is the second largest animal in the ocean (Blue whale is the largest).

Need I say more?  Oh yes, the day was capped off with a prime rib, salmon and king crab dinner at Fox Island, a remote island on the Eastern side of Resurrection bay.  Several times in the morning I have

 prayed with Marty that God would “show us His glory today.”  We saw it in all of its wonder and beauty today…to the point of nearly shouting to the crowd, “Can’t you see the glory of God in all of this?”  But I was refined and just smiled to myself.