Woah Whales!

It looked like it was going to be a pretty typical day this morning. I got up early, took Sig out for a walk, and then grabbed my paddling gear to head down to the dock.

Every once in a while I get to get out of the office and head out on the water with some guests here in Gustavus to go and do some kayaking in and around Pt. Adolphus. It's a fabulous place to be paddling (see June 23rd), and it means that I get to spend a whole day ignoring my cell phone and email and just enjoy being outside with great people.

Today's trip was very cool for two reasons. First, the family that I had out to day was from Wenham, MA! (The tiny town in MA where Gordon College is). They even brought their "Nick's Roastbeef" sticker to Gustavus! We had a great time out on the water talking about all our favorite Wenham places.

The best part of the day though came after lunch. We had stopped out in the middle of the stright to eat and watch some feeding whales that were a bit off from us, but they all dove down deep so we had turned our backs. Then out of nowhere we heard this very loud blow right next to the boat and we all went runnng over to see a whale surface no more than 40 feet off our boat. The captain and I knew that the pod was bigger than one whale so we kept the engines off so that we wouldn't risk running into any of the other ones and then the rest of the pod surfaced, probaby between 8-12 whales, that were close enough that if I had lept off of the boat I could have landed on their backs. Then as quickly as they appeared, they also all took a deep dive and headed back down into the deeps to find fish.

This was definately the coolest thing I've seen all summer, hands down.

We're Back!

Duane and I spent the last few days having some time to ourselves exploring Glacier Bay. I’ve been paddling in here so many times, it seemed only natural that we spent some time up there together so I could show Duane some of my favorite spots in Glacier Bay.

We paddled into the park on Friday night and camped just a few miles north of the Beardslee cut. The next day we had intentions of paddling all the way up to Garforth Island, but about mid morning we were haulted by a severe amount of wind (about 20 knots, seas around 3 feet). We decided to tough it out and stay on the water because we were paddling in a stable double boat, but it still slowed us way down. We ended up staying at Sturgess Island instead, which is one of my favorite campsites in Glacier Bay. We had a wonderful evening hanging out on the beach and watching the colors change over both the east and west arms of the bay.

Sunday we had intentions of making it all the way up to the McBride Glacier to camp that evening, but after being slowed down the day before we decided to stop short at Goose Cove to make sure that we had enough time to get back down the next day to make our pick up. The native people who lived in Glacier Bay (the Tlingit) say that Goose Cove is one of the places that the Krustica lives. The Krustica is a Tlingit shape shifter that lives between life and death. Those who travel in Glacier Bay say that when you sleep in Goose Cove you tend to have bizarre and abstract dreams because of this shape shifter. Neither of us really remember dreaming, but who knows.

Monday morning we got up early to start heading back south on the tide currents that were ebbing south out of the bay. We made it across the bay just in time before the winds started blowing out of the south, right in our faces, again. We did manage to make it down to SeBree Island to camp before our pickup the next day.

The pickup the next day was a breeze, thought getting picked up is always kind of a kick. All the passengers on the boat treat kayakers they are picking up like they are a part of the wildlife. Everyone comes out on the decks to take pictures of you and then the whole day on the boat everyone wants to ask you questions about how people go camping in such a cold and wet place. However, the day tour boat that does the kayaker drop off and pick-ups can be a great end to the trip. It means that the last day of our little “mini vacation” we get to just sit on the boat, drinking lots of cocoa and tea, and watch all the tide water glaciers of the west arm of Glacier Bay as we cruise along.

We got home tonight and the pup seems to have grown up another inch or so and was very excited to see us.

Swing baby Swing

One of the realities we deal with living in costal AK is the phenomal tide swings. Glacier Bay, Alaksa is home to the 3rd largest tide swing in the world, and the 2nd largest in Alaska. On a typical day these swings are anywhere from 12 to 18 vertical feet. (This means that our floating town dock will rise and lower by that height twice a day).

Today however, we are having the largest swing we'll probably see all summer. The Low tide this morning was a -4.4 and this afternoon it will be coming up to 15.5. This means our total swing will be 20.9 vertical feet. To serve as a comparison here are some tide swings for today for other US Cities:

Savannah, GA- 8 ft

Boston, MA- 11 ft

Seattle, WA- 13 ft

I took some pictures too! Here's the Gustavus town dock at low tide:

And here's the dock at High tide later in the afternoon:

Naturally, Duane, Sig and I went down to the beach to do some exploring, and Sig had a fantastic time chasing ravens and looking for clams. We also are watching the progress on our new town dock! I'll update with pictures, but for now here's the sign from the ground breaking.

Skies Break Open

I'll be honest, I was dreading today when I woke up this morning. It was raining again, (which is typical for this part of AK, but rare for this season) and I was headed out the door to go and guide a trip at Pt. Adolphus. Now, I do love being out at Adolphus, the whales out there are wonderful, and the sea lions are very entertaining, but I really wasn't in the mood to trying to convince people that beingout in the cold rain all day really was the most entertaining thing they could have done today.

As soon as we got over to Pt Adolphus though the skies totally broke open and it turned out to be a beautiful day! We had a whole group of sea lions that followed us around for a while and then we saw so many whales! One pair of the humpbacks got a bit closer to us than I was really ok with, but so it goes! We also saw a humpback breech 8 times in a row!

It's another one of those days that makes me fall even harder for Alaska!

Return of the Rain

It's been absolutely amazing how beautiful May and June have been up here in AK. Typically you can expect South East Alaska to be cold and wet most days, and having the weeks just puctuated with the occasional day of sunshine. However, in the last 6 weeks or so I've had to water my plants almost daily just to keep them from drying out.

Today however, I woke up to the ever so familiar sound of drizzle on the roof of the house. Sig and I went for a walk in the rain this morning and now I'm nustled down in the quiet office catching up after last week's chaos.

Gotta go prep for a day trip tomorrow. Let's hope we get some more of those sunny skies!

I'm afraid of June

Wow, I'm not being very good about this. Let's see, since the last post my brother has come and gone, my dad was here for a visit, Sig has shot up like a weed and chaos has erupted at the Gustavus office.

I knew that June was going to be crazy, but didn't think that crazy was going to be this crazy. For the last few weeks I've been running boat transfers, chasing squirrels out of the office, having staff coming and going, and the trip schedule has been completely stacked. One of the staff here joked that I should paint "Rachel's Taxi Service" on the side of the company van, because I've spent so much time just shuttling people around lately.

In other news: The ground breaking for the new Gustavus Dock is tomorrow! Everyone around town is pretty excited that part of the state stimulus money is coming here so that we can get a new dock. Ours is really old and is so small that we can't be on the state ferry system. A new dock will mean that it's going to be so much easier to get too and from Gustavus. Plus all the workers coming to town are just going to help bump the economy a bit in our small town here.

Ok, thats all for now, hoepfully more soon!

Satellite!

YAY! We're offically online with satellite internet at the Gustavus office! I feel like I'm able to work at the speed of light!