Mist is part of the scenery in Southeast Alaska – or at least it was while we were there. On Monday, the second full day of our Uncruise and 5th day of our Alaska trip, we woke up in yet another beautiful, misty cove. Thankfully it was not raining. We had signed up to take a river hike this morning, so we hopped into a skiff and putt-putted to shore. We had not set foot on land for several days.
Harbor seals circling the skiff.
MUSKEG COUNTRY
This was a pretty walk, marred slightly by the fact that it was too big a group – something like 17. I stayed close to our guide Alex, because I wanted to hear about the flora (a topic about which she was especially knowledgeable). I noticed that she had some habits like mine, namely taking close-up photos of berries and mushrooms, which is kind of a silly activity but reminds me where I’ve been and what I’ve seen.
On this walk I took the first and probably best (because the water was so still) of what I think of as my Alaskan Rorschach photos.
I think these are really cool, but maybe I’m the only one.
After walking through a marshy field we did what the guides call a “forest poke” – dipping into the forest to see what’s there. We bushwhacked a bit and came out onto an Alaskan muskeg.
mus·keg ˈməskeɡ/
noun: muskeg; plural noun: muskegs. A North American swamp or bog consisting of a mixture of water and partly dead vegetation, frequently covered by a layer of sphagnum or other mosses.
Origin: Cree
(Definition courtesy of Google).
So if you’re like me you’re thinking: Cree? What’s Cree? Only the biggest Canadian Native American tribe around today (I now know from having looked it up just now).
Anyway, in this muskeg the ground was covered by a heathery multicolored plant. Unlike any heath I’ve been on, this ground sank about a foot with each step one took. Most of the time the ground cover sprang right back up, but occasionally it could grab onto you, as one fellow hiker learned when his rubber boot got sucked up. (He did get it back.)
The trees were barren and dwarflike from the acidic soil. At the top of most every barren tree there seemed to be a Bald Eagle.
We dipped back into the forest then scrambled down a muddy embankment. I should add that there was not exactly a trail. Alex was roughly following where she thought Christina had gone with a group a little earlier in the morning. After the scramble, we were on the very wide marshy banks of a river. There were dead salmon lying in the marshes, rather chewed up (form bears and bald eagles) so Dave concluded that there must be salmon still intact in the water, and he set out to find them. Find them he did, hundreds of them, but they were a sorry lot on the very last legs of their journeys. To say that these were not good-looking salmon was to put it mildly. At first we thought they were dark with white stripes, but the white was just the skin where the scales had been battered off. (As I thought about it later, I wondered just how they lost all those scales, because this was a sleepy little river with no discernible rapids. Salmon brawls?) They had come here to spawn and die, as salmon are wont to do. These poor fish were so weary that you could stand in the water and catch them with your hands.
Dave with ugly salmon
I like this one 
As was the custom most days, the boat moved to a new spot while we were eating lunch, moving out through the mist.
In the afternoon we entered Frederick Sound. This was supposed to be our whale-watching afternoon, but Dave was extremely skeptical (perhaps recalling the hours we spent in a remote part of Nova Scotia sitting on a cliff looking for the supposedly abundant whales). For the record, I recall Dave boldly predicting as we entered the Sound: “We’re not going to see any whales.” Pretty soon, however, Joanne – Captain Ron’s wife, who was traveling with him on this particular voyage — spotted a fluke with her binoculars. We came across several humpback whales in ones and twos. I learned that it is close to impossible to get the perfect photo of a whale’s fluke. This one’s not too bad:
Next we chased two orcas for a while. (By “chased” I mean the boat meandered along nearby and changed direction when the orcas did. In no way did the boat harass the animals.) A HUGE advantage of traveling on a boat this small: Orcas spotted? Let’s follow them! The pre-cruise paperwork had made clear that the itinerary was just a suggestion; the boat would go where the wildlife was.
After a satisfying whale watch, we began to head out of Frederick Sound. It was misty/rainy, and most folks went inside to warm up. I kept up my watch for more humpbacks, as I was not pleased enough with my photos . . . and also because I had nothing better to do, which is the sign of my finally being on vacation. In reality there was plenty I could have done: I could have been diving into my briefcase, which was stuffed with client bills to edit and professional reading and even some actual work that I was neglecting; or I could have been reading my book (about a hermit living in Alaska with the bears, courtesy of Melanie to get me psyched for the trip) – but instead I chose to stand on the deck in the drizzle looking for more whales.
And that’s why I was one of the first to experience what happened next. Gavin Rainwater, the Second Mate, was at the helm and spotted up ahead what looked like a group of whales feeding cooperatively. He took the boat into the thick of them. For the next hour and a half – but who knows because time stood still—we were surrounded by 40, maybe 50, humpback whales. Whales frolicked in every direction, coming right up to the boat. Well, perhaps they were enthusiastically eating krill, not frolicking, but it sure looked like frolicking from where we stood. Mark, the Expedition Leader, made an announcement over the PA system that all passengers and crew should come on deck to observe, because it was so special.
I purposely left Dave in these photos to show how close they were to the boat.
It’s a struggle to understand some of these photos, because the whales were in constant motion, twisting and turning and writhing and singing right next to each other and sometimes right next to the boat. It was hard to tell what part of the anatomy we were seeing.
What?? is the photo above three different whales? Four? It was baffling.
At this point I think it would be useful to include a diagram of a humpback whale. I wish I had had such a diagram standing on the deck that day.
One of my favorite photos is below. It was 5:00 and the crew had to eat their dinner before the meal was prepared for the guests. But who could bear not to be watching this display? The crew took their dinners to the portholes.
At the risk of corniness, I’ll say that this was the most spectacular display of living creatures I’ve ever seen. Breathtaking does not quite capture it (nor do photos); I felt almost teary-eyed with amazement.
Everywhere you looked, in every direction, there were whales, almost as far as the eye could see. And where the water was disturbed, there were whales underneath it.
Check back again and maybe I’ll have figured out how to upload video here. Dave got some pretty remarkable shots with his iPad but it even the short clips seem too large to upload here.
BEACH PARTY
Have I mentioned that this day, August 18, 2014, was our 30th wedding anniversary and the entire excuse for the trip? We’re not especially sentimental people, but if one happens to find oneself celebrating 30 years of marriage, this is not a bad way to do it. After the whale-watching extravaganza we had a few celebratory pops in the cozy bar before dinner.
And after dinner, the entire group of passengers disembarked into skiffs and onto shore for a beach party.
Mark and Sherry from Boston, with whom we had become friendly, getting ready to get on skiffs to go ashore.
View from the skiff back toward the ship.
At the beach party we strolled the shore and pocketed some pebbly sand for our collection, to be catalogued in spice jars back at Pandemonium-By-The-Sea. My competitive husband challenged Alex to a rock-skipping contest, and she turned out to be just as competitive. The lone kid on the trip (Uncruise has some weeks that are especially kid-friendly, but this was not one of them) and his slightly older sister roasted many marshmallows.
My Boy Scout of a husband.
Me looking about three sheets to the wind. While it may look like broad daylight, it had in fact been Happy Hour for quite a few hours by this point. It stays light late in the summer in Alaska!
I didn’t bring my camera on this outing so all of these were taken with my iPhone.
But I’ll end with this lovely picture below looking back at the ship, taken by someone else — one of the passengers who was a professional photographer:
