Lu-Lu Belle Cruise

Good morning, my friends. As I mentioned yesterday we took Mike's truck in to have the air conditioner looked at this morning. We're hoping we can get it going again for the trip home. Now, we wait for the verdict. So, I'm a little late with my post this morning, but I have so much to tell you. You'll probably want to fill your coffee cup for this. Let's get started.

Unlike our previous cruise, this one started at the very civilized hour of 10:30. We arrived early to collect our boarding passes and then waited in line to board the boat.

There's our boat, the Lu-Lu Belle.

On the other side of the dock, these kayaks. While we waited a group of kayakers took off in these. I think they were on a tour as well.

This is the route we'll be taking.

As we left the harbor, I noticed this small boat behind us. Look to the right side of the image, and you'll see a playful sea otter. We would see lots of sea otters on this trip, so prepare yourself for some cuteness.

Heading out...our tour was to last more than three hours, but we still hoped we wouldn't end up like Gilligan. Thankfully, the United States Coast Guard is stationed here.

Inside, this was a fancy boat. This was a sort of sitting room, for lack of a better description.

Through that door were some dining booths. There was food provided, but none included with our tour. We packed along some sandwiches and snacks. Nevertheless, we took advantage of their fresh-baked muffins and brownies.

And, as always, the mountains were spectacular.

We'd originally scheduled our tour for today (Wednesday), but then changed to Tuesday to take advantage of a better weather forecast. The day started out cloudy, but then the clouds burned off, and it was perfect weather for our cruise.

Shortly after leaving the harbor, we came upon this grouping of sea otters, sleeping there in the water. 

We woke them up...strrreeeeeeetch.

I probably took 50 pictures here. Eventually, I forced myself to turn off the camera. 

They were irresistible to this photographer's eye.

We saw many more as we traveled along, but this was the largest grouping.

We passed by Anderson Falls. It looks small, but it was very large. 

We spent some time watching fishermen working their nets. The nets are very large. If you look at the image below, you can see that it stretches around from the large boat to a smaller boat near the shore.

We watched a different crew haul in a net full of salmon.

This next picture was only taken because the boat is from Newport, Oregon. Howdy, Neighbor!

This next picture is about the horrific oil spill from the Exxon Valdez. Where I've pointed that red arrow is a tower marking the channel. At the time of the Exxon Valdez spill, this was a red buoy, and if you know your nautical phrases, then you might have heard "red, right, returning," meaning that when you're returning to port, and you see a red buoy, you need to be on the right side of it. 

There were lots of reasons for the disaster of the Exxon Valdez, and fatigue of the crew was one of the reasons. Captain Hazelwood was scapegoated for the whole incident. He'd been drinking the night of the disaster, but his blood alcohol content (.061%) was below the legal limit for driving in Oregon. On the other hand, it was over the Coast Guard limit of .04% for piloting a vessel. Whoever or whatever is to blame, the Exxon Valdez was on autopilot when it drifted 6 miles off course and ended up on the wrong side of the buoy. It ran aground on Bligh Reef. Bummer. 

We could see no remaining evidence of the spill, however, we were told by our boat captain that evidence can still be seen on some of the smaller islands. There's much more to this story. If you're interested, you can read more right here. We're also told that some half dozen empty tankers and tugs are offshore when tankers come in or leave. If there's a spill, they can drain the tanker into the empty ones and avoid losing all the oil into the waterways.

Our next stop was to see these caves that surround one of the islands. Our captain was obviously very skilled at maneuvering the boat. He took us in this narrow inlet.

Getting farther and farther into the narrow passage. We were looking for puffins. Also, notice the color of the water. If we were in the Caribbean, we might think this water looks warm and inviting. Here in Alaska...not so much.

And this made us nervous. We were close enough to the rocks I could have reached out and touched them. In this next picture, I'm showing you how the side of the boat was about two feet from the rock.

We visited several of these inlet caves, seeing only just this one puffin.

Moving on to the beaches, we came upon a large grouping of Stellar sea lions. They are on the endangered species list, but there were hundreds on the beaches here.

There were plenty of young ones too.

This guy posed nicely for his picture.

These two were behaving aggressively...or maybe it's just the way Stellar sea lions show affection.

This guy had an itchy cheek. I'm guessing a mosquito bite.

We saw lots of gulls too. We saw several dive down and snatch a fish from the water.

The real pinnacle of this tour was seeing the Columbia Glacier. It's one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world. We came upon HUGE icebergs on our approach.

It was explained to us that the blue color comes from ice that is so densely compressed that it will refract the blue color of the light spectrum.

The glacier used to stretch from side to side in this section of the Chugach Mountains. Now, it has an east and west side. We're looking at the west side here. Our captain told us it's sometimes not possible to navigate around the floating ice to get close to the main part of the glacier. On those days, he goes to this western side, which he calls the "chicken" glaciers.

There was lots of ice in the water as we approached.

I loved how the mountains reflected in the smooth waters.

Below, we were approaching the larger glacier.

There were even bigger ice boulders floating in the water here.

Our captain reassured us that he knew exactly what he was doing. His father taught him everything he knows. And his grandfather taught his father. His grandfather's last command was the Titanic. (I'm just telling you what he said. Believe it or not.)

Here's a big wall of ice. We were about a quarter mile away. I'm guessing that wall was at least 20 feet high. We waited here for around an hour, hoping for a big calving event. Nothing happened while we were there.

It stretched all around the inlet here. I took this next photo to show you the very blue color of the ice, indicating it is highly compressed.

Of course, we had to document our visit. A fellow passenger took this photo.

It was late in the day by the time we headed back to the harbor. Here, we passed by 18 oil holding tanks. Our captain told us each tank occupies a full acre of land. He told us quite a bit about the pipeline, and I can't remember all the facts and figures. If you want to know more, you can read about it right here.

So that was our day. It was nearly 8:00 p.m. by the time we returned to our camper. We had to take the camper off the truck for our appointment this morning. It made a long day even longer, but it was a good day. We were very fortunate to get such good weather. It's a nice day today...nothing like what the forecast predicted a few days ago. Still, rain is supposed to move in later this afternoon. Our plan for the day is to visit the Valdez Glacier. It can be seen by car, and our captain recommended it. Aside from waiting for the verdict on our truck, that will be the day's activity. 

Tomorrow we'll move onto Chitina, Alaska. We'll have two or three days there to visit Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. There's a road out to McCarthy and Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark. The road is notoriously bad, especially after it's been raining, and so we're only hoping to take that road out to the mine. As always, fingers crossed for some good weather and a passable road.