Glacier Tour
We kept our eye on the weather, all week, waiting for the perfect day to go out on the tour to Meares Glacier, when it wouldn't be raining and cold..we wanted blue skies... and according to the weather reports, it was suppose to be mostly sunny 20 % chance of rain, on Saturday, so we booked our 9 hr Glacier Tour. WRONG...the weather report was not what it was suppose to be. We knew it would be cold by the Glaciers, we've been to glaciers before. Luckily we took our winter coats along just in case, and we just happened to have gloves in our pockets, and boy did we need them! Waiting in line we didn't need a coat, a jacket would have worked...Gene said to take the winter coats anyway, we can take them off if we need to. This boat holds 140 people, and we think it was mostly entirely booked, seats for everyone, some inside, some outside. Once the boat was out in the Narrows, a few miles from Valdez, it really started to get cold, and it stayed cold. The closer we got to a couple of different glaciers it got even COLDER!! Sure glad Gene decided on the winter coats.
The fjiords were so green, so beautiful and oh sooooo many waterfalls. Somel of the largest waterfalls anywhere. We saw bald eagles.. (my eagle pictures NEVER turn out. ...actually most of the pictures we've taken of anything do not EVEN come close to the actual beauty of this place. It is sure stashed in our memory though, just not easy to share it.) We saw many families of Sea otters, a humpback whale, puffins, and was able to observe some commercial fisherman putting out their nets and hauling them onboard their boats. I'll try to post videos but I don't think I can do videos in this blog. I'll try though...
The fjiords were so green, so beautiful and oh sooooo many waterfalls. Somel of the largest waterfalls anywhere. We saw bald eagles.. (my eagle pictures NEVER turn out. ...actually most of the pictures we've taken of anything do not EVEN come close to the actual beauty of this place. It is sure stashed in our memory though, just not easy to share it.) We saw many families of Sea otters, a humpback whale, puffins, and was able to observe some commercial fisherman putting out their nets and hauling them onboard their boats. I'll try to post videos but I don't think I can do videos in this blog. I'll try though...
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| This was our tour boat, 'Glacier Spirit'
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| This is the ramp we had to walk 'down' to get on the boat, the tide was low tide at a minus 2. Extremely steep!! And coming back at around 8 P.M. it was the same...12 hrs later basically is how the tide fluctuates. High tide and low tide. Had it been high tide their wouldn't be a ramp, just a walkway going straight onto the boat. |
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| The harbour |
I fell in 'love' with the sea otters.... they have the cutest faces.
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| Sea Otters |
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| Sea Otters |
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| Sea Otters |
These are seals, and they love laying on chunks of icebergs......................seriously???
A 'puffin': they're small and very hard to get pictures of because they fly in and out of the sea cliffs so fast.
Can you spot it??? an eagle? Hard to take pictures of, but they're were lots of them. They say look for a white golf ball in the trees...
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| Sea Lions |
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| Do these look like houses? trucks? trailers?......They are actually icebergs broken away from the glacier and have started melting in odd shapes. |
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| Do you know that only 10% of an iceberg is 'above' the water? That means that 90% of it is below ..... |
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| Such Beautiful Scenery |
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| First glimpse of the Meares Glacier in the background |
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| Meares Glacier |
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| See the black 'logs' laying on the ice at the bass of the Glacier????? |
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| Those are Seals |
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| Oh so Beautiful with a little fishing boat out in front of it |
Now on to the commercial fisherman. There are 3 fish hatcheries in Prince William Sound. The commercial fishermen pay 2% of what they make to the hatcheries, just to keep the hatcheries running, so they'll have plenty of fish to catch in the future. Most of the fish are Pink Salmon.
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| The fishermen put out their nets in big circle using a small boat attached to the nets |
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| then..........the crane on the fishing boat winches in the net and it folds into a nice neat organized stack, so they can repeat the same operation, (actually the little boat starts taking out the net to arrange in that circle before the prior load is even unloaded)......the end of the net contains their catch, and it is dumped onto the boat and into the belly of the boat......then they do it again and again. |
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| If you look close you can see some of fish hanging thru the slots on the lower side of the boat. |
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Smaller fishing vessels can pull up alongside a bigger fishing boat and 'sell' their load. It is an amount according to the market price. The big boats like this one have a big huge vacuum hose that 'vacuums 'out the fish, then weigh it, from the smaller boats.
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Now I'll try to post a video of the fishing operation...
Nope, it won't upload... I'll try another time.
OK, this is a little off the subject...... A couple who boarded our tour boat at the docks where we left, boarded with suitcases and travel bags.... We were confused about where they'd be staying overnight..on OUR boat. Here's the story..........
It is a different way of travel to visit your son, who is working in a fish hatchery on the shores of Prince William Sound, away from ANY town, about 20 miles out of Valdez. You see the only way to get to the hatchery where the he works and lives (I'm sure he doesn't live IN the hatchery, but close by it) .....is by boat, or sea plane. The son made all the arrangements for his parents and with our boat captain of meeting his skiff, on our journey to see the Glacier, Although...........I'm not sure his parents knew just what was in store for them, and did their son actually inform his parents just what kind of boat he was picking them up in......or the conditions there might be at the time. I didn't even see an umbrella either. However they were excited to see him!
You can see the parents' nice, dry, luggage they brought with them, in the front of the skiff, to visit their son, I'm sure that lugguge didn't stay dry very long, as it was rainy when they got off our boat. After their days with their son, they'll do the same thing, meet the tour boat, they'll get back on board and continue on their journey to see the Glaciers and return back to Valdez. We didn't find out how many days they'd be staying with their son. But they'll have great adventure to tell their family and friends when they get back home.
Hope their time with their son was worth it!!!!!
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| Gene wanted me to take this picture, so you could see he was 'COLD'. (What a wimp.) He said he acutally finally warmed up the next MORNING!!! ha. |
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| Our view from our seat on the boat.We stayed dry when we were in our seat because of the little overhang above. |
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| You can see ALL the people inside..we didn't want to be in there. There is also a lower cabin that is bigger, and it has lots of booths with tables, snack bar, where we bought hot chocolate. Coffee and tea were free. A very good hot meal was served on the tour around noonish, and it was 'Chicken Alfredo, on a bed of white rice, long green and yellow beans, and a french bread stick with butter. Yummy. We chose to eat in our chair, they brought it to us on a tray. Then around 5 o'clock they brought us soup, you could have you choice between vegetarian minestrone or clam chowder. Gene and chose minestrone. It warmed us up, just holding the cup, and it was good too. (extra bonus) |
It was a beautiful Glacier, and loved the Wildlife, but the time it took to get there, TOO LONG.
