Misty Fjords National Monument
The strange and wonderful thing about traveling from Seattle to Juneau in May is that it’s a bit like traveling back in time—or if not in time, in season. The blooms get a little tighter and the leaves a bit more furled as we move north.
Today, we woke in Alaska, Rudyerd Bay to be specific, a spectacular spot in Misty Fjords National Monument. We tucked into Punchbowl Cove, where high granite rose thousands of feet above us. Even with low-hanging mist we could see plenty of snow in avalanche chutes and the ground high or shaded enough to not yet feel Spring’s pull.
Misty Fjord’s drama is in stone, as evidenced by the streaks and grooves left by massive glaciers that carved these steep narrow inlets. We spent the morning exploring the reaches of Rudyerd Bay in kayaks and Zodiacs, craning our necks at peaks and waterfalls that ran down the marbled rock.
A few harbor seals raised their sleek heads near river mouths, but the birdsong really stole the show this morning. While the last few days the woods had been relatively still, today everyone was singing: varied thrushes in their referee-whistle trill, hermit thrushes, the overwhelmingly loud and long warble of winter wrens, yellow warblers, and more sung out through the cedar boughs. Perhaps, like us, they like the wilder spaces we’ve come to.
During the afternoon, we traversed Behm Canal. Birdwatchers on the bow were rewarded by what seemed like hordes of loons: red-throated and Pacific loons and also the yellow-billed loon, a rare and celebrated sight. We also saw our first Arctic tern of the trip. Not to be outshone, Dall’s porpoise sped by, throwing up rooster-tails of salt spray as they pursued fish or enjoyed the power of their own push through the water.
We thought we’d finished with wildlife viewing at the end of the day, but right as we were ready to begin our evening recap, a humpback whale surfaced off the starboard beam. Glad to have the living and breathing creatures of this place pull us from the lounge, we watched it rise, breathe, and dive a few times before we parted ways. It’s good to be in The Great Land.
The strange and wonderful thing about traveling from Seattle to Juneau in May is that it’s a bit like traveling back in time—or if not in time, in season. The blooms get a little tighter and the leaves a bit more furled as we move north.
Today, we woke in Alaska, Rudyerd Bay to be specific, a spectacular spot in Misty Fjords National Monument. We tucked into Punchbowl Cove, where high granite rose thousands of feet above us. Even with low-hanging mist we could see plenty of snow in avalanche chutes and the ground high or shaded enough to not yet feel Spring’s pull.
Misty Fjord’s drama is in stone, as evidenced by the streaks and grooves left by massive glaciers that carved these steep narrow inlets. We spent the morning exploring the reaches of Rudyerd Bay in kayaks and Zodiacs, craning our necks at peaks and waterfalls that ran down the marbled rock.
A few harbor seals raised their sleek heads near river mouths, but the birdsong really stole the show this morning. While the last few days the woods had been relatively still, today everyone was singing: varied thrushes in their referee-whistle trill, hermit thrushes, the overwhelmingly loud and long warble of winter wrens, yellow warblers, and more sung out through the cedar boughs. Perhaps, like us, they like the wilder spaces we’ve come to.
During the afternoon, we traversed Behm Canal. Birdwatchers on the bow were rewarded by what seemed like hordes of loons: red-throated and Pacific loons and also the yellow-billed loon, a rare and celebrated sight. We also saw our first Arctic tern of the trip. Not to be outshone, Dall’s porpoise sped by, throwing up rooster-tails of salt spray as they pursued fish or enjoyed the power of their own push through the water.
We thought we’d finished with wildlife viewing at the end of the day, but right as we were ready to begin our evening recap, a humpback whale surfaced off the starboard beam. Glad to have the living and breathing creatures of this place pull us from the lounge, we watched it rise, breathe, and dive a few times before we parted ways. It’s good to be in The Great Land.
