Icy Strait. The name connotes bitter chill, gauzy haze, desolation. We found nothing of the sort. Our day in Icy Strait was bright with sun and filled with richness!
We awoke early to find a humpback whale breaching off the bow! Astonishing to think of a creature weighing fifty thousand pounds throwing itself into the air. More so to think of it doing so with just a couple of mighty flicks of its tail and with elegance to boot!
Entering Idaho Inlet, we found another sort of marine mammal altogether. Sea otters are perhaps the smallest marine mammal, tipping the scale at a delicate 60 pounds. They may be the cutest creatures going and are certainly the fuzziest. Each has about a billion hairs!
Brown bears, while less furry than the otter, are not without their cuddly charm. Still, most of us were happy to find only signs of their recent activity while hiking on Chichagof Island. Instead, we spent some intimate moments with stinky skunk cabbage, irate squirrels and carnivorous plants.
Afternoon found us among the Inian Islands. Great ocean waves and stiff currents assault this archipelago, creating steep crenulated shorelines. By Zodiac we explored some of the Inians. Perhaps the highlight was Steller sea lions. Not the goofy hounds of Californian shores, these hulking beasts bellow and roar, living up to their leonine name. Many of the ‘lions we saw were juveniles, not lacking a certain playful sweetness. But some were ancient warriors, huge, maned, and scarred by a lifetime of territorial duels. They eyed us from their craggy beds with looks both baleful and nonchalant.
As our day began, so it ended, with humpback whales. The sun, dipping toward the Fairweather Range, gilded leviathans’ spouts as they lifted their tails in elegant, ponderous farewell.
We awoke early to find a humpback whale breaching off the bow! Astonishing to think of a creature weighing fifty thousand pounds throwing itself into the air. More so to think of it doing so with just a couple of mighty flicks of its tail and with elegance to boot!
Entering Idaho Inlet, we found another sort of marine mammal altogether. Sea otters are perhaps the smallest marine mammal, tipping the scale at a delicate 60 pounds. They may be the cutest creatures going and are certainly the fuzziest. Each has about a billion hairs!
Brown bears, while less furry than the otter, are not without their cuddly charm. Still, most of us were happy to find only signs of their recent activity while hiking on Chichagof Island. Instead, we spent some intimate moments with stinky skunk cabbage, irate squirrels and carnivorous plants.
Afternoon found us among the Inian Islands. Great ocean waves and stiff currents assault this archipelago, creating steep crenulated shorelines. By Zodiac we explored some of the Inians. Perhaps the highlight was Steller sea lions. Not the goofy hounds of Californian shores, these hulking beasts bellow and roar, living up to their leonine name. Many of the ‘lions we saw were juveniles, not lacking a certain playful sweetness. But some were ancient warriors, huge, maned, and scarred by a lifetime of territorial duels. They eyed us from their craggy beds with looks both baleful and nonchalant.
As our day began, so it ended, with humpback whales. The sun, dipping toward the Fairweather Range, gilded leviathans’ spouts as they lifted their tails in elegant, ponderous farewell.
