Capturing the Moment

  My coworker, Christian, took this photo from one of our small boats. I am in the middle in the orange, setting up a paddle high-five in front of Holgate Glacier. I led a wonderful, five mile kayak trip today in the beautiful Kenai Fjords National Park near Seward, Alaska. My group of ten and I paddle through a fjord, past thousand foot waterfalls, up to the face of Holgate Glacier. This glacier had some of the bluest ice that I've seen. It was very low tide, and the glacier was resting on a sandy/rocky bottom, so we were able to safely get very close. On our paddle we came across a family of river otters as well as a mom and baby sea otter. There were a few water birds, with the horned puffin being the big star. But the glacier was by far the most memorable sight of the morning. I don't think the guests will forget looking up from the kayaks at a two hundred foot tall wall of ice, disappearing off into the horizon in front of them. There is something so special about explorin...

Getting an insider tour through the native Tlingit village of Kake, Alaska.  First look at Kake, Alaska In the middle of Alaska's inside passage lies a village where native Alaskans have been living for thousands of years. The Tlingit culture has been going strong in the Kake region all this time partly because of the sheer amount of resources and food here, but also because of their ingenuity in harvesting and keeping that bounty through the long winters.  Settling for grass at the moment  The long winters also brought a bounty of another kind to this small community...a bounty of time. With daylight hours numbering close to the four hour mark in the heart of winter there was plenty of forced leisure time around these parts. That is when the weaving, carving, dancing, and story telling really took hold. This was the culture that we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of this week on the Safari Quest.  Pulling up to the village of Kake, whose ...

Stellar Sea Lions and the Safari Quest Sea Lion in flight Fluffy Sea Otter saying hello Brown bear eating some grass  Sea otters, moose, and bears, oh my! My first week back in southeast Alaska, and my first time on the new Petersburg to Petersburg itinerary provided a blast of Alaskan wildlife. And as amazing as the wildlife show was this week, it wasn't even the guests' favorite part of the trip! (See next post for more on that) Regal Eagle on its perch    Our wildlife list quickly grew over the week as the sightings and encounters rolled in. We had humpback whales and cute little sea otters, plus an orca encounter before breakfast on the first full day onboard. Lots more sea otters followed at the Bay of Pillars, including new moms with tiny fluff balls riding on their stomach. Pigeon Guillemot Playful orca encounter Orca and Iceberg   Not only did we have a beautiful sunset orca encounter with a lone big male on night on...

Hanging with Sea Otters Sea Otter Photographs for Sale   On the tours that I lead up in Alaska the wildlife is often a big draw. Every week we come across a plethora of charismatic megafauna, aka really cool big animals. Encounters with humpback whales, bald eagles, killer whales , and brown bears are usually at the forefront of everyones mind when the trip starts. And when we come across those animals it is easy to fall under the spell of their charisma. However it is a slightly smaller marine mammal that can melt the heart of just about everyone who encounters it…the sea otter ( Enhydra lutris ).   Covered in extremely dense fur, about a million hairs per square inch, these aquatic mammals of the weasel family stay warm by trapping air underneath their coat. But it is this same feature that drove early settlers to hunt these sea otters to the brink of extinction. Russia fur traders were prevalent in Alaska’s forming years because of the number of otters. Howeve...