Kenai Fjords Boat Tour

Hey everybody, Casey and I decided that the easiest and best way to keep everyone in the loop on our Great Alaskan Adventure was to start a blog. So here we go! 

Casey and I have been at the Kenai Princess Lodge in Cooper Landing for two weeks now and so far so good! Casey started training right away when we got here and I was lucky enough to have a few days to relax and get settled because I was technically early. The lodge opened on May 26th, and has been slow for the most part so far. We did have the largest group they've ever had on opening weekend here Saturday afternoon through Monday morning, but it was nothing we couldn't handle. The other people here have been great so far! It's basically like summer camp for adults. 

Cooper Landing is a small fishing mecca in the summer with between 300-400 residents year round. It's a very tight knit community that openly welcomes summer visitors. I will get more into Cooper Landing in a later post once I get some pictures. 

Casey and I really wanted to show some pictures from the tour we went on about a week ago. It started in the small town of Seward in Resurrection Bay. Resurrection Bay is so deep that it stays ice free in the winter making it the perfect port town, which it was until 1964.  In 1964, an earthquake very similar to the one in Japan hit the area followed by a tsunami that devastated the town. So ever since then it has become a quiet town that tourists like to visit. The only thing that goes out of the port now is coal that is brought down from a mine further north in Alaska that eventually ends up in South America. Here are some of our favorites pictures from the tour:

View of the harbor in the lovely town of Seward. 

It's kind of hard to see, but that is a sea lion on that rock. 

Our first bear sighting! Our captain had a really good eye, because for the life of me I could not see the bear at first. It just looked like a little black dot on the hill. Casey helped me out though and we ended up seeing two other bears on the same hillside. 

This is a picture of Casey as we are pulling up to the glacier. The water is literally that blue! I didn't edit this photo at all.

Here's the glacier we went to. 

This was another tour boat that was in front of us, and they aren't nearly as close to the glacier as it looks. Thats how huge this glacier was!

According to our captain all of the ice that was in the water had fallen of the glacier in the last 24 hours,  only 10% of it was floating on top of the water. 

Here's  Casey and I in front of the glacier and proof that we are still alive and well for those you who don't believe us ;)

More sea lions.

This is one of the orcas we saw. The orcas are way faster than Casey and I were with the camera, so this is the best picture we got.

One of many islands that we saw on the tour.

We saw lots of whales on our tour! I believe this one is a humpback. They didn't feel like showing off much because they were too busy eating. In the winter these whales go to Hawaii to breed, but there really isn't any food there for them to eat. So when they come to Alaska in the summer pretty much all the do is chow down.

Another gorgeous island. 

We were hoping to get some pictures of eagles and puffins on the tour, but it didn't work out. I did manage to snap this shot of a crow flying over once we got back to Seward though!