Well we have completed the Inside Passage. It was a wonderful experience and the Teardrop is the perfect camper to do it in. Mike will put in a separate section tips on what we learned by going on the Inside Passage. See our cute little Raindrop nestled in between the trucks. He had to back it into this spot so he has had a lot of practice backing up on this trip. To think he couldn't even back it in our driveway before we left. Haha!!
We arrived at Whittier early in the morning. We were suppose to move on to Portage for three days but the weather was so beautiful we decided to take the boat tour of Prince William Sound while we were there. The picture below is Whittier. There is not much here except boat ramps and train station.
The boat tour was 5 1/2 hours long and was well worth it. We saw lots of wildlife, glaciers and glaciers calving. They had a Salmon and Prime Beef buffet on board that you could pay extra for. It was well worth the money.
We saw three humpback whales on our tour. They were pretty hard to photograph but here is the best shot Mike got.
We saw at least 15 to 20 glaciers. There are 100,000 glaciers in Alaska, 12 are still getting bigger, several are staying the same and the rest are all receding. Every single one is beautiful in its own way. We saw Tiding glaciers (glaciers that meet the water), Alpine Glaciers (glaciers that are in the valleys), and Hanging Glaciers (Glaciers that stop before they get to the water). Below you can see three glaciers together.
Below is a picture of Surprise Glacier which was the highlight of the boat tour. We sat there for a long time watching the glacier calve several times. They scooped up glacier ice from the water and made Margaritas from the ice.
Below is a picture of Surprise Glacier calving
Here's Mike drinking his Glacier Margarita.
We saw 100s of sea otters. They call them sea otter rafts. They were pretty amazing to watch. They float on their backs. They have 880,000 hairs per square inch. Their fur is so soft.
We also saw sea lions and the stellar sea lion before who owned the rock. We saw Bald Eagles and thousands of Kittiwakes. There was a rock ledge and it was covered with these Kittiwakes (Alaskan Birds).
The interesting thing about Whittier is that they have a one way tunnel to get out of Whittier that is 2 1/2 miles long. They time leaving Whittier based on the tour boats coming back in. At six o'clock they open it up to cars, trucks and RVs. After they go through, then the train goes through to Anchorage. So if you don't get right off the tour boats and get in line you could have to wait up to 2 to 2 1/2 hours to get through.
We decided to go on to Seward because of my eye appointment that stop was being cut short. The first day here was another beautiful day so we walked downtown which is a really cute little town with lots of restaurants. Food is very expensive here. For example, a regular breakfast was $30 for the two of us.
Since it was so beautiful we hiked up to Exit Glacier. You can get pretty close to it but not as close as we at Athbacus Glacier. We got spoiled there.
Yesterday was on the cool side so we went to the Sealife Museum which was pretty cool. They had an Octopus that had just had babies. It looked like little specs floating around.
The Stellar seal below was there putting on a show for everyone. Actually Mike put this picture in. It's a bull steller out in Pr. William Sound. He was preparing for his harem!
They also had a bird section with a lot of Puffins. We are hoping to these in their natural habitat.
We are off to Anchorage today for three days and then on to Cooper Landing.
