Prince William Sound

We took a small 50 passenger boat out on the Prince William Sound. The Sound is irregular shaped with forested islands, fjords and jagged peninsulas, coves, bays and lagoons.

We saw "rafts" of about 30 sea otters floating on their backs. Every once in a while they roll under the water and back around. There were hundreds of stellar sea lions in a colony on the rocks. They would swim up to the boat and perform for us by diving, rolling around and then pose for a picture! People in Valdez don't like the sea lions because they eat the salmon. Most of the world sea lions live in Alaska. But since the 1970's the population has declined by 70%. And no one knows why.

We spotted 3 humpback whales which I photographed only tail shots. Humpbacks are not big jumpers especially since they were swimming in shallow water. One was spotted right along the shore in only a couple hundred feet of water. I did get her spraying through her blow hole!

We could tell when we arrived at Columbia Bay when the icebergs started to appear just before the Columbia Glacier, which is one of the largest tidewater glaciers in the northern hemisphere. The boat attempted to find a path through to the glacier castoffs, some as big as a house, with no luck. We were able to witness a few giant slabs of ice calve with loud, gunshot-like cracks into the water....then a slash. The temperature was about 36 degrees, not to bad since the sun was out. Although we did dress in many layers, and needed all of them. The tour was suppose to be 6 hours long, but we were gone for seven and a half just taking our time watching the wild life and the beautiful blue ice. Well worth the trip.

Leaving this area in the morning and heading north to the Alaska Highway. Not looking forward to that drive back to the lower 48.