Monday, August 12th-A Spectacular Day on the Water!

Today we took a nine hour day cruise into Kenai Fjords National Park. What did we see? My goodness, it’s hard to list them all! Let’s start with 30-40 glaciers, building sized icebergs, multiple pods of Orca/ Killer Whales, several humpback whales, dozens of sea otters, jumping Silver Salmon, several different types of birds (Cormorant, Tufted and Horned Puffins, Auklet, Terns, one bald eagle, and Murre), Steller Sea Lions, Harbor Seals, AND some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable!

Probably the most spectacular thing we saw was unique calving of the Northwestern Glacier. Here a fixed photo but I’d like to describe for you how it happened.

Look at the above pic and imagine this happening: (the boat is about a half mile from the “terminus” of the glacier-where it falls or flows into the ocean) A room sized chunk of ice fell from the upper part of the glacier above the giant rocks at the top of the picture 2-300 feet to the lower section of the glacier along with a lot of pent up water. THEN the Rock burst into several large chunks and rolled down the lower part of the glacier. You can see the funnel shaped white part of the glacier as it narrows down the closer it gets to the bottom. THEN it goes over the edge of the glacier straight down about 300 feet! Diana took a wonderful two minute video of the whole thing! The wi-fi sucks here so she can’t upload it tonight but she’ll put it on FB when we get a strong signal.

I can’t decide which pics to put on this post-they are all so beautiful! (Especially the person in the first one!) Here are a few to whet your appetite for the natural beauty of Alaska!

Calved Icebergs From the Glaciers
5 or 6 Glaciers Visible at Once!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to Mike and Diana Griffith's RV Life Blog!

Image
Welcome to our new blog! We invite you to follow us as we travel throughout the USA and Canada in our Durango fifth-wheel. We'll be sharing the highlights and pictures of our travels on this blog.  Rather than retiring in the usual sense, here is a short summary of our retirement plans:  We've already sold our home in Kingwood, TX.  We currently live in our RV in an RV Park North of Kingwood. This means we went from 2560 SF to 335 SF! Now THAT was a real challenge! We'll be updating this blog about the RV in the future.  We plan to leave here about the middle of May. We're going to the Dallas area to see our daughter and her family for a while. Then North to ALASKA! We will probably spend 3-4 weeks getting there because 1) we're retired and 2) we want to go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and a few National Parks in Utah and Montana on the way. After exploring Alaska, we'll be headed back to Banff and Jasper National Parks in the Canadian Rockies. We
Read more

Saturday, October 26-Good News and Bad News About Lake Tahoe!

Image
We got to Lake Tahoe about dark-30 on Friday night. We drove through Truckee (on the CA side) down to the lake and then around the Nevada side to Zephyr Cove RV Park. We’re about four miles North of Stateline. First the good news: Lake Tahoe is a gift! The water is almost as blue as the water in Crater Lake but LT is much bigger. The lake is roughly rectangular with the dimensions being roughly ten by twenty miles. Everyone who has ever been here has a favorite part of the lake. The favorite part of LT for Diana and I has always been the area around Emerald Bay. Here are a couple of pics: Now for the bad news: I took a pretty nasty fall. I’m okay but here’s a quick summary: I have a broken right thumb and the orthopedic surgeon put a pin in it, with a couple of stitches, so it will heal correctly. My left knee has a hairline fracture so it’s immobilized with a flexbrace. Several stitches in my head and that pretty much does it. Look at the rocks at the bottom of the lower pic
Read more

Tues, Dec 1, 2020-Petrified Forest National Park

Image
We expected to spend an hour or two at PFNP but we found it so unique we spent all day. We went there thinking there would see some hand sized pieces of petrified wood but were we wrong! We saw forests of petrified wood! Here’s a sample of some of the sizes of these trees now turned to crystal: The process of trees turning into rocks is a fascinating one. Several million years, when this area of NE Arizona was covered by a massive swamp, these giant trees fell into water. Over a few million more years, sediment covered the trees so they were preserved. Fast forward a few more million years and the atoms in the trees crystallized into petrified wood. The colors they crystallize into vary from red to orange to yellow to blue to gray to white to you name it. Here are a couple of pics of the colors of petrified trees: These two pics describes the large reddish polished sample above.  I set my wedding ring on this tree to give it some perspective Here’s a pic of my Bride with Dottie at the
Read more