Friday | May 13th

KRoth our E.L. wakes us all up at 0600 for an announcement that we have entered Alaska and that Dall Porpoise our riding our bow wave.

It is a spectacular morning with stunning scenery.  We do not have any kayak rangers with the Misty Fjord National Monument come out to greet us.  We go into Rudyerd Bay for some scenic cruising and go past Punchbowl and Owls Cliff and turn around.  Wanted to do our kayak operations but we have to postpone until after lunch and we’ll be doing that in Walker Cove.  I spot the first several Mountain Goats in more than 4 locations today and we spot a healthy black bear in the morning and a brown bear in the afternoon.

I give a geology talk on the top deck and ask Randall my roommate to give a glaciology talk with me.  It is very enjoyable since the day was warm and there was little breeze.  I use props such as different colored boots that represent accreted terrains and how the dock up against other terrains and make the geological story of the Coast Range very complicated.  We have the perfect background for the talk, being in the fjords with snow pack and avalanche gullies.

After lunch we have to cancel the kayak operations since the captain could not find a good anchorage and the winds were blowing a little too much for launching the kayaks from a moving ship platform.  Instead, Kevin the Chief Mate and I have a terrific time naturalizing together (he drove) along the shoreline after a 30-minute close viewing of the grizzly bear digging for clams.  I shot like 200 pictures and now have to do the sad job of deleting and selecting which ones are worth keeping.  I have so much coming back to me after almost a 3 year hiatus from my last time up in Alaska. Put a back of a sea star up against the back of a mans wrist and he feels the pincher organs called pedicillaria. Teach everyone all about the flora and the three different kinds of lichens and weathering (crustose, foliose and fructicose and chemical, biological and physical weathering, respectively).  Incredibly steep walls and lots of snowmelt.  See common mergansers, goldeneyes, raven, nw crow, hear hermit thrush, pigeon guillemot, marbled murrelet, belted kngisher.  Lots of Dall porpoise each time we were about to enter or depart an inlet.  Also had over half-dozen porpoise feeding right alongside two humpback whales at sunset.  Switched one hour back this morning/last nght.  Had antoher dinner outside on the top deck to soak up the scenery along with a staff meeting…usually three meetings a day.

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