Sitkoh Bay & Chatham Strait
Mountaintops covered in snow, forests carpeted by lush green mosses and ferns… tiny seabirds diving after fish, enormous eagles returning to treetop nests… a humpback whale breathing slowly, Dall’s porpoises speeding ahead of the ship. Southeast Alaska is full of contrasts and brimming with raw, natural beauty. Open your senses, and be rewarded, refreshed, renewed.
Before breakfast, we stood quietly on the ship’s bow watching five brown bears amble along the shores of Sitkoh Bay. We walked on an old logging road where spruce and hemlocks grew out of rotting tree stumps. A bear had taken steps in the exact same places countless times, and the depressed footprints passed a tree whose dripping sap held strands of bear fur. The forest had this bear’s ‘magic footprints,’ along with pixie cup fungus, prickly devil’s club plants and witch’s broom growths on tree branches. The forest certainly had a magical air about it. Meanwhile, kayakers paddled in the same quiet cove as a humpback whale searching for food along its shores.
The afternoon was sunny and warm as we sailed north in Chatham Strait. Humpback whales swam slowly, their exhaled breath hanging in the still air. Black and white Dall’s porpoises quickly approached us by ones and twos, and they sped along beneath the bow, zig-zagging in front of the ship, bursting through the surface with energetic splashes. No footprints marked their paths, only memories imprinted in our minds. Our excitement and joy matched their energy overflow.
As snowy mountaintops turned pink with late sunset colors, a humpback whale breached close to the ship, and then again… so close! We barely missed getting splashed as it landed a few feet from us. It was a spectacular punctuation at the end of a perfect day.
Mountaintops covered in snow, forests carpeted by lush green mosses and ferns… tiny seabirds diving after fish, enormous eagles returning to treetop nests… a humpback whale breathing slowly, Dall’s porpoises speeding ahead of the ship. Southeast Alaska is full of contrasts and brimming with raw, natural beauty. Open your senses, and be rewarded, refreshed, renewed.
Before breakfast, we stood quietly on the ship’s bow watching five brown bears amble along the shores of Sitkoh Bay. We walked on an old logging road where spruce and hemlocks grew out of rotting tree stumps. A bear had taken steps in the exact same places countless times, and the depressed footprints passed a tree whose dripping sap held strands of bear fur. The forest had this bear’s ‘magic footprints,’ along with pixie cup fungus, prickly devil’s club plants and witch’s broom growths on tree branches. The forest certainly had a magical air about it. Meanwhile, kayakers paddled in the same quiet cove as a humpback whale searching for food along its shores.
The afternoon was sunny and warm as we sailed north in Chatham Strait. Humpback whales swam slowly, their exhaled breath hanging in the still air. Black and white Dall’s porpoises quickly approached us by ones and twos, and they sped along beneath the bow, zig-zagging in front of the ship, bursting through the surface with energetic splashes. No footprints marked their paths, only memories imprinted in our minds. Our excitement and joy matched their energy overflow.
As snowy mountaintops turned pink with late sunset colors, a humpback whale breached close to the ship, and then again… so close! We barely missed getting splashed as it landed a few feet from us. It was a spectacular punctuation at the end of a perfect day.
