Blue ice hung from the hilltops along the Holgate Arm.
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The fjord was filled with tiny icebergs that had broken off from the tidewater glacier ahead. Steve seldom slowed down. Instead, he piloted a fast, weaving course around the larger chunks.
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Holgate Glacier is a tidewater glacier, meaning it extends into and calves off into the sea.
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Steve drove our boat up to within a quarter mile of the glacier's ice face.
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Once there, he cut the engines and let us drift around, listening to the constant cracks, pops, and rumble of the glacier breaking up. The branch of the glacier to the left is called "Surprise Glacier."
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There was one nice ice cave at the base of the glacier. That's one I don't think I would like to explore.
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We didn't see any spectacular ice calving, where entire walls of ice come crashing down at once. What we saw was just a frequent stream of small rocks and ice pebbles raining down the face of the glacier.
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What Steve couldn't drive around, he drove through. You could hear and feel the impact of the ice chucks throughout the boat. I was amazed that the tour company would subject their ships to that abuse day after day. The forward hull near the waterline must have the texture of a golf ball.
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Tufted Puffins were everywhere. They were a lot smaller than I expected. Mostly I see them in tightly-cropped photographs.
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Puffins are pretty versatile animals. They can't fly all that efficiently, but they can swim like a fish.
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Cormorants at rest on the rocks. There wasn't much sunshine to bask in that day, but they did their best. These birds do not produce oil that other waterfowl use to keep their feathers from getting soaked. This allows Cormorants to dive deeper than they could otherwise, but means they must periodically stand and extend their winds to dry them.
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The coastline here is beautiful. Everything is extreme. The mountains slice out of the water to towering, cloud-obscured heights, with little in the way of shorelines.
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Rocky and seemingly and inhospitable to anything, these forbidding islands house sunbathing sea lions and birds in every nook and cranny.
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Gulls, gulls, and more gulls.
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And even more gulls. Kenai Fjords is certainly not lacking in sea gulls.
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These Sea Lions on Natoa Island are TV stars. As I was flipping through the 5 or 6 stations in Hotel Edgewater's cable system, I ran across a feed almost identical to this picture. I was curious what program was on, so I watched it a while. The scene never changed. Apparently, there's a camera mounted on the rocks nearby that feeds a continuous live signal of this habitat. Seward has its own real-life Sea Lion channel. Who needs MTV?
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The only concern Captain Steve expressed involved the controls on the bow end of the upper deck. They are live throughout the cruise, even when he's piloting from within the interior cockpit. He said someone once tripped and got hung up in the levers, sending the boat in merry, full-throttle circles. As a result, he placed black & yellow caution tape all around the controls, and instructed us not to go near them.
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The 8.5-hour Kenai Fjords National Park tour (Resurrection Bay portion not depicted).
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