La Conte Glacier & Petersburg, Alaska
Waking up to growling noises and wondering what causes them is quite an adventure! Today this is exactly what happened. As we approached the La Conte Glacier, we marveled at the enormous quantity of floating ice, in all sizes and forms. At moments we were almost completely hemmed in! But everything resolved fine, and we were anchored pretty soon to commence our morning adventures on our Zodiacs. Slowly we moved between the growlers, burgy-bits and icebergs. Sometimes the head of a harbor seal would peak between the ice pieces, to our amazement, or an eagle would be seen perched atop an ink-blue iceberg. Yes, that was our morning!
Later we visited Petersburg, that lovely, little working/fishing town, begun by a Norwegian some time ago there, because of the proximity to the available ice! Some of us took airplane flights to see the glaciers from above, others hiked into a bog (or muskeg) on the neighboring island of Kupreanof, to see some of the trees and plants that can live in these acidic waters and soil, such as lodgepole pines, Alaska yellow cedar and common juniper. Spring is late, and very few smaller plants were seen.
As a great corollary, we had a humpback whale researcher on board, to tell us about his interesting work on the feeding behavior of these magnificent animals.
Waking up to growling noises and wondering what causes them is quite an adventure! Today this is exactly what happened. As we approached the La Conte Glacier, we marveled at the enormous quantity of floating ice, in all sizes and forms. At moments we were almost completely hemmed in! But everything resolved fine, and we were anchored pretty soon to commence our morning adventures on our Zodiacs. Slowly we moved between the growlers, burgy-bits and icebergs. Sometimes the head of a harbor seal would peak between the ice pieces, to our amazement, or an eagle would be seen perched atop an ink-blue iceberg. Yes, that was our morning!
Later we visited Petersburg, that lovely, little working/fishing town, begun by a Norwegian some time ago there, because of the proximity to the available ice! Some of us took airplane flights to see the glaciers from above, others hiked into a bog (or muskeg) on the neighboring island of Kupreanof, to see some of the trees and plants that can live in these acidic waters and soil, such as lodgepole pines, Alaska yellow cedar and common juniper. Spring is late, and very few smaller plants were seen.
As a great corollary, we had a humpback whale researcher on board, to tell us about his interesting work on the feeding behavior of these magnificent animals.
