Monday, July 2, 2012

Prince William Sound Boat Trip


Today we woke up to another bear, not that it made any noise or anything. Like last time he just wandered around.

This time he was a brown colored Black Bear.

Still a little guy.

Today we decided to take a boat tour of Prince William Sound.  We opt'd for the smaller boat of two companies partially because it was a shorter trip.

Here is the vessel, the Lu Lu Belle!

Here are some of the un-suspecting passengers on our tour. It is strange mix of people for sure.

The captain is also a Baptist Minister and first is kind of funny, but after a few hours it gets very tiresome.

The tour was listed as 5+ hours but we end up on the boat for more than 8 hours and many people end up a bit cranky, myself included.

Mostly I am worried about Max he is stuck in the trailer for 10 hours!  He totally held it all till we got back so that was a good thing. Although he ran around the trailer park like a mad dog once we let him out.

Enough of the bad parts, on to the good parts of the tour.  The boat is a very nice boat with wood interior and it had a fully galley which cranked out fresh baked brownies!
The sound is full of wild-life and first we sea a big raft of sea otters. They are really cute frolicking around in the water.

This guy was my favorite. They always float on their backs like this!
It is a bit chilly on the deck of the boat, but we alternate some time inside and out depending on what there is to see.

I get the impression it is always cloudy here so this is about as clear a sky as we can expect.








 We stop for a while to watch a salmon boat fishing, the season isn't officially open these are special boats that partially make money to payback the cost of the cannery and part to determine how well this years stock is going to be.


After watching the fishing we motor out to an island and look for Puffins but really only find sea-lions which our nutty captain tells us are hated by all the fishermen.

They like to eat all the salmon and are pretty smart and hard to get rid of. They will hangout at the fish ladder and gorge themselves on fish,

We start heading toward the Columbia Glacier and see lots of icebergs and whales.




Since we are here at the beginning of summer there is still miles of ice between us and the glacier. At this point it is really cold on the deck of the boat! Air temperature was 39 and the water was 42!

We chase way to many whales and at one point park next to this iceberg so everyone on the boat can have their picture take with it in the background. You get to hold one of there things a Merry Christmas sign, a Happy Hanukkah sign or the Lu Lu Belle Life ring.


The trip left us and most people exhausted, so we just made a quick dinner and went right to sleep!

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