Kenai Fjords National Park Cruise Tour

A glorious day for a cruise!!  The waitress where we had dinner last night told us that we were fortunate that we came to Seward when we did because last year at this time it was snowing.  We just took it easy this morning and enjoyed the view from our hotel.  We had to be at the tour office by 10:30 to board our boat at 11:00.  It was nice and warm while we were waiting.

The first sighting of wildlife.

Sea otters playing

Then we got really cold!  Yes, I had to ride on the top open deck because being inside would have made me very sick.

Bear Glacier

Holgate Arms Glacier

Aialik Glacier.  We actually got very close to this glacier.  The captain of our boat said he could rarely get this close.  The face is 300-400 feet high and the ice moves 3 to 5 feet a day.

 In this picture below you can see the spray from the ice calving. 

 It sounds like thunder when the ice cracks and then it drops off into the water. 

These are horned Puffins. We saw many other types of birds as well, eagles, common murres, and gulls.  Thousands of birds!

We also saw whales but they're on a video.  

We did not take this picture below, but this is very close to what we saw.  The sky wasn't this blue because the clouds had started to come in, and it was getting even colder.  Our captain told us that there were several signs from the wildlife that told him bad weather was probably coming in tomorrow. One was the fact that we saw lots of sea lions that had moved up to higher rocks.  Another was the way the birds were acting.  

Mountain goats a long way up the mountain.  Our camera has a good zoom lens. 

Stellar sea lions. 

 Again, we didn't take this picture (we ran out of memory on the camera), 

but this is exactly the way we saw them.

Yes, it was very cold and windy on the boat, but we had a blast!