05/11/11

 

A highlight of this trip was a cruise to view glaciers and sea life in the Kenai Fjords National Park.  We used Kenai Fjords Tours out of Seward.  The album below captures a sense of what the tour was like.  To set the stage, we took the tour on a day when the sky was clear blue but the winds were higher than desired - the sea was running in the 3 to 5 foot range.  I must say that the stability of our tour boat was excellent and neither of us ever felt the least bit queasy (nor, to my knowledge, did any of the other 84 passengers).  Be warned that the album contains multiple pictures of coastal scenery and glaciers. 

As a side note, our tour also gave us a more than bargained for dose of reality as we came upon the passengers of a small fishing boat which had swamped in the rough water.  This was entirely an act of God as they were spotted in the water while we were making our way back to port after cruising for about 5 hours.  The outcome of this chance event was bittersweet as our boat took 3 people on board and successfully treated them for hypothermia and transported them to a hospital where they were treated.  A smaller charter fishing boat arrived on the scene and took 2 others aboard.  Medical personnel were transferred from another cruise boat, but despite their best efforts, the people rescued by the smaller boat did not survive.  According to a news report in the Anchorage Daily News the next day, the 5 people were all from Anchorage and it was determined that they had been in the 60 degree waters of the Gulf of Alaska for approximately 1 hour.  We have thought many times about the outcome of this had our tour boat not taken the exact course it did on our return trip.

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First Glacier

This glacier was spotted soon after our departure from the Seward dock.

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

This site was last updated 12/03/05