Finally Orcas!

On our way to Homer, we stopped for a mountain bike ride along the famous Iditarod route near Resurrection pass. It was a long-ish ride of 26 miles with lots of climbing, and we never really got above tree line like we hoped. However, this was where we first discovered the blueberries: Once you know where to look, they are everywhere. Someone showed us, and we feasted on handfuls of them – yum. Since then I've always taken great pleasure on hikes from having free food all along the trail!

We enjoyed Homer for a few days. It has lots of restaurants, a microbrewery, and the famous “spit,” a very narrow strip of land that juts out into the bay several miles (about halfway across). We took a water taxi over to the Kachemak Bay state park area, where we kayaked for a few hours and saw lots of sea otters, jellyfish, and a few porpoises, including a small one that seemed to be resting at the surface for a while. With a few extra hours before pickup by the water taxi, we decided to hike up a little used trail – mistake. The trail was overgrown and had lots of bear scat. We had hoped to get above treeline, but the whole hike was in the forest brush. It was a bit intimidating to be so remote, pushing our way thru the brush, and trying to avoid stepping in bear scat. At about our turn around time, I heard a short low rumble sound. And again. We are hyper-alert at this point listening intently and got startled by my ringing phone – it was vibrating in my pack a few times before the audible ring. I guess we were high enough on the mountain to get a signal from Homer. Fortunately we didn't see any bears on the hike back down.

Next we visited another beautiful coastal town, Seward. From here we took a 6 hour boat tour – the only way to get to most of the Kenai National Park. It was really great – we saw so many things, but perhaps most importantly, this was the first time Eileen or I have ever seen Orcas! There were over a dozen of them and they swam around and even under the boat. I really had no idea just how tall their dorsal fin is (up to 6 feet tall they said), but unlike dolphins and whale, the Orca's dorsal fin stick WAY up out of the water. For several long seconds after they've surfaced, it slowly descends out of view. We also saw sea otters, a humpback whale and her calf, Stellar sea lions (1500 lbs giants), puffins, and lots of other birds I don't remember. The destination of the tour was the Aialik Glacier, which is a very active tidewater glacier. The boat drifted quietly out in front of the face as it cracked and boomed at us – occasionally shedding a giant tower of ice into the water below. Very cool!

Before leaving Seward, we drove to see the Exit glacier – it's only a few miles from town. 4 miles and 3000 vertical feet of hiking later, we were at the top where it spills out from the ice field. This was a very unusual view – a glacier from the top looking down at it's path, and seeing the featureless expanse of flat snow that tops the ice field. It was like being in a flight-seeing airplane ($400 saved!). The 2.5 hour hike down was tough on the knees – very steep – if only I had my paraglider, I'd be down in 15 glorious minutes.

We timed things just right to see the famous tidal bore on the way back north toward Anchorage. The Turnagain arm of the Cook inlet has the one of the greatest tides of North America: 33 feet! Well, two or three times a month when the tides are most extreme, the water rushing out meets the force of the incoming tide and the water stands up in a wave (up to 6 ft tall). So we sat on the rocks 15 feet above the water level and watched the water rush out until we saw something strange in the distance thru binoculars. Suddenly it was upon us, a wave (probably 2-3 feet) rolled by carrying a massive river of boiling churning water behind it. At that point, we noticed three surfers paddling out from the shore just up the inlet from us. Wow! They paddled into the wave and rode it almost out of sight – maybe for a full minute (>10x longer than most surfing waves). To top it all off, the beluga whales followed it in a short while later, so we watched more than a dozen of them swimming around for a bit.

We'd heard that the Alaska State Fair has the largest vegetables in the world – like 500 lb pumpkins and 100 lb cabbages. This is because they have so much daylight during the summer (and they say the soil is great). We stopped in on our way north to Denali to see for ourselves. It had been a rainy summer so things weren't as impressive as all that, but we did see really giant pumpkins and cabbages (why those two I don't know – why not giant radishes, or watermelon, or something). We gorged ourselves on fair junk food until we felt a little sick.

Next stop Denali!