Monday | June 13

Good birding day in town as we explore totem park and carving shed.  Some of the bird friends we saw and heard in the small town town today:  barn swallow, violet-green swallow, orange-crowned warbler, song sparrow, pine siskin, red crossbill, mourning dove, and lots of eagles and ravens.

Sidney, the young teenager niece of Les our guide leads an informative tour along with James the wood-carver.  We hear a lot of “learning by doing” from lead guide Les.  Les is very animated and says that a Tlingit speaker that has his hands tied behind his back does not have the ability to speak since they like to do so using their hands.

Saturday | June 11th

The Voyage North from Ketchikan to Juneau begins at 4 p.m. with a new group of very energetic guests.  After settling into cabins, attending “welcome aboard” orientation meetings in the lounge and eating dinner, we are all astonished by a sunset that lasts for almost an hour.  What a way to begin a vacation!  The water is absolutely mesmerizing and hundreds, if not thousands of pictures are digitally etched on memory cards.

 

 

   

Sunday | June 12

We awoke in El Capitan Passage surrounded by breathtaking Tongass National Forest and then treked up to El Capitan Cave, where 400,000-year-old bones have been found. We had a great tour with National Forest Service Rangers Chad Bevenger and Cherie Barth.  Cherie does a terrific job of interpreting the highlights of the cave.  Guests enjoy donning their helmets and flashlights for the tour inside of the karst caves. El Capitan Cave is the longest mapped cave in Alaska.

Check out the video of our tour!

Saturday | June 4th

Everybody is still talking about our marvelous voyage and the jaw-dropping tidewater glacier we saw yesterday in the Endicott Arm. We appreciate the value of small-ship cruising when we dock adjacent to one of the mammoth-sized cruise ships in Juneau, the capital of Alaska. While packing suitcases, guests take pictures of our maps and the wildlife list that I kept up-to-date during our week-long excursion.

Thursday | June 2nd

The remarkable sunrise is appreciated by all as we depart the narrow and spectacular Patterson Bay fiord.

In the afternoon, we enjoy seeing the penguin-like Common Murre seabird floating on drifting logs.

We are also entertained this afternoon by a breaching humpback whale. I finally take a photo of a whale with the background for a change. So many times we take photos of our subject and only get water as the background. The viewer might wonder if the whale is really in Alaska  or wintering in its breeding and calving grounds down in Hawaii.

The hours spent looking for wildlife is a perfect opportunity for me to put some educational hand-outs out on the top deck and give a presentation on migration, the natural history of marine mammals and the threats that they face from human activity.

Wednesday | June 1st

Leah our wellness instructor offers a morning meditation on the shoreline next to a river swollen from snow melt.

A full days worth of activities ensues in Patterson Bay. The bay was named after Carlisle Patterson, Superintendent of the Coast Survey on a ship in the late 1870’s.

I have the all-day bring-a-sack-lunch kayak and a half-dozen of us luxuriate amongst the stunning scenery while feeling the warm rays of delicious sunshine. I write in my journal: “One of the loveliest paddle days of my life…waterfalls everywhere you look, cascading down thousands of feet of sheer cliffs. The roots of trees and shrubs grips the cliffs with tenacity. The breath-taking views has everybody practically speech-less. You can almost see and feel the vegetation growing as the sunshine is so intense.”

“We are so appreciative for what Mother Nature is providing: stunning scenery and sunshine in Alaskas’ vast and very fecund wilderness. A variety of neotropical migrant songbirds are heard throughout our kayak including: Orange-crowned warbler, Townsends’ Warbler and Wilson’s Warbler and the first of the season Swainsons’ Thrush, fresh from a flight from South America.”

“The daintiest most delightful waterfalls have carved out notches following cracks and weaknesses in the very resistant bedrock. The bay is even more beautiful due to the flood tide and the water is oh-so-clear with 1000’s of barnacle exo-skeletons floating in the waters surrounding our plastic ‘yaks. I tell my pod of kayakers that barnacles shed--like a snake its skin—in order to become larger crustaceans, a process called ecdysis.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen more waterfalls on a kayak trip. Water seems to be dancing, leaping and falling with comet-tail ends over cliffs and in a frenzy down to the sea-surface practically every 50 meters or so. The pleasing sounds of the waterfalls reminds me of a few words from naturalist John Muir who said that ‘the snow is melting into music.”

Besides my kayak tour, snorkelers had fun frolicking along the shoreline as Dan Blanchard and my colleague Randall created a rooster-tail of water while racing out in our monohull boat with camping equipment for our guests that signed up for the overnight sleep-out.

They are guaranteed a 1000-star or more hotel tonight!

Tuesday | May 31st

Everybody is excited as we enter a beautiful fiord named Patterson Bay, located on the southeast side of Baranof Island. It is a designated Wilderness Area right off of Chatham Strait. Everyone is on deck soaking in the scenery including the owner of the company Dan Blanchard. He leans on the rail in front of the bridge, telling us about his excitement on his first trip here while scouting this new itinerary we are presently embarking upon.

Monday | May 30th

We visit the town of Klawock, south of El Capitan Passage on the windward side of POW Island. Our host, Les, takes all of our guests on a tour and has his niece Sidney and a young totem carver named James accompany us and interpret the Totem Park, totem-carving shed, ceremonial house and totem “graveyard” along the way.

After dinner, Lee our pastry chef made me a special dessert that I ate without any hands. Crew got a good laugh…it’s not the first time I’ve made a fool of myself.

Sunday | May 29th

We motor through the wildlife-rich waters of Sea Otter Sound in the early morning. Our Wellness Instructor Leah offers one of her wonderful yoga sessions on the sunny Sun Deck to the delight of many of our guests.

We make it to El Capitan on Prince of Wales or POW Island in the late morning. Guests are shuttled to shore for one of the few dry landings of the entire summer. From there, a short walk across a logging road (over 2000 miles of logging roads exist on POW) to the U.S. Forest Service kiosk where 2 rangers await us with helmets and flashlights for our cave tour. But first, 367 steps uphill through a second-growth, and later an old-growth forest to the cave entrance.

I tell my group of spelunkers to be very careful in the cave and to watch out for the USD, the “unexpected and sudden deceleration”, i.e. bumping your head in the cave on the low ceiling!

On our way back to the ship, an unusual sight: Captain Marce pulls Chief Mate Kevin Martin around on an inflatable orca for a half-hour in the bay as part of his birthday celebration.

Lee our chef presents Kevin a huge ice-cream sandwich cookie to celebrate while Kevin warms back-up in the hot tub.

We motor south along El Capitan Passage and pay a visit to the floating dock of Michael and Kathy Sheets, of Alaska Gold Oysters, LLC. They give us an informative and delectable tour of their oyster farm. Located on a floating pier in a tucked away island cove on the west side of Prince of Wales Island, the tour is a big success with our guests as we all got to eat plenty of raw and delicious oysters.

They talk about their operations and permit with Alaska Department of Fish and Game. I ask about harmful algal blooms (HAB’s) and how often they occur. Apparently not too often. HAB’s are events where dangerous levels of plankton such as Pseudo-ntizschia release a toxin called domoic acid in the bodies of filter feeding animals such as mussels. The toxin can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning or PSP in people that eat contaminated bivalves.

Private business associations work in partnership with scientists and managers that monitor and study blooms of toxic algae that harm resources. Tests of plankton in waters are sent to labs and results determine when it is safe to harvest and eat shellfish.

Laurie, one of our expedition guides, finds an MIB, or a “message in a bottle” floating in the sea on her afternoon kayak. She is very excited to read the note that offers a free cup of coffee in the town of Craig, just a few miles away from Klawock. We calculated that the bottle had been at sea for two weeks and covered less than 20 miles!

Saturday | May 28th

Ketchikan turn-day. Off-load guests at 08:30 and take-on new guests at 16:15 hours.

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