LeConte Bay & Petersburg
Ice surrounds us and bumps noisily against the hull as we carefully make our way up the sinuous and ice-choked LeConte fiord. Enchanting shapes colored with indescribable shades of cerulean blue excite and bemuse us and the ice appears to be lit from within. The sun, ah, the sun has come to warm Southeast Alaska on this beautiful spring morning and we are fully enjoying the benefits of its glorious rays!
Twenty-two mile long LeConte glacier is the southern-most tidewater glacier in North America. In 1994, it began a rapid retreat at a rate of about 90 feet per day! Today it is still some of the fastest moving ice on earth and the glacier calves about 300 feet in the summer months.
Zodiacs provide the perfect platform for photographing these gigantic and ephemeral sapphire jewels. As we watch, drops of water fall from icy edges and plink gently into the sea. These icebergs are changing and melting and by next week, this floating sculpture garden will be renewed, though blue will certainly remain the thematic color. How wonderful to attend this one-morning-only spectacular art show.
This afternoon, in the delightful Norwegian-flavored fishing village of Petersburg, the locals are sporting shorts and t-shirts. After a record snowfall measuring 220 inches this past winter, everyone is grateful for this sunny weather. In the muskeg, there is much evidence of spring as well. The long sunny days of this week have encouraged the first bloom of tiny wild flowers. Luscious rose colored flowers of bog laurel and delicate tiny pink lanterns of bog rosemary dot the miniature landscape that is dominated by sphagnum mosses and bonsai shore pines.
Whether you explored by floatplane, helicopter, on foot or by Zodiac, this has been a memorable day of unforgettable sights.
Ice surrounds us and bumps noisily against the hull as we carefully make our way up the sinuous and ice-choked LeConte fiord. Enchanting shapes colored with indescribable shades of cerulean blue excite and bemuse us and the ice appears to be lit from within. The sun, ah, the sun has come to warm Southeast Alaska on this beautiful spring morning and we are fully enjoying the benefits of its glorious rays!
Twenty-two mile long LeConte glacier is the southern-most tidewater glacier in North America. In 1994, it began a rapid retreat at a rate of about 90 feet per day! Today it is still some of the fastest moving ice on earth and the glacier calves about 300 feet in the summer months.
Zodiacs provide the perfect platform for photographing these gigantic and ephemeral sapphire jewels. As we watch, drops of water fall from icy edges and plink gently into the sea. These icebergs are changing and melting and by next week, this floating sculpture garden will be renewed, though blue will certainly remain the thematic color. How wonderful to attend this one-morning-only spectacular art show.
This afternoon, in the delightful Norwegian-flavored fishing village of Petersburg, the locals are sporting shorts and t-shirts. After a record snowfall measuring 220 inches this past winter, everyone is grateful for this sunny weather. In the muskeg, there is much evidence of spring as well. The long sunny days of this week have encouraged the first bloom of tiny wild flowers. Luscious rose colored flowers of bog laurel and delicate tiny pink lanterns of bog rosemary dot the miniature landscape that is dominated by sphagnum mosses and bonsai shore pines.
Whether you explored by floatplane, helicopter, on foot or by Zodiac, this has been a memorable day of unforgettable sights.
