Prince William Sound

With my parents in town, Mont and I set out with them by train to meet a boat in Whittier for a glacier tour of Prince William Sound. My parents sure plan perfect trips, because not only was the train ride nice and easy, but the weather was unbeatable. I have never, ever seen Whittier in the sunshine. It was glorious: 

Right? Look at those trees! This was right where we waited to hop aboard. 


Once on board, we saw quite a few rafts of sea otters. They are so hairy - let me explain. They had a pelt on board (I didn't touch... you didn't see who else was on board this boat - another story that I can tell you in person if you'd like) and 'Ranger Cassie' said that they have 800 million to 1 billion (ONE BILLION!) hairs per square inch. That would take one serious bottle of Nair to get rid of THAT. 

Going a short ways past the sea otter raft, we pulled into a shallow alcove so the passengers could get a photograph with this waterfall. We were mere FEET from the rocks on the side and below the boat. I was a bit nervous.. but the captain must have some hours logged or something, because he was great. See the man in the picture? If you were to ask me, I'd say he looks a bit nervous, too. 

On trips with my family, I am usually "the spotter" of animals.. bears in the Yosemite forest, dolphins at Laguna Beach, and now whales in Prince William Sound. Here was the location of my spotting. I had just come out to stand on the bow of the boat with my dad, and I happened to be looking around at the surroundings behind the boat, when I see this black fishing boat that has mist coming off it. In a second, these are all the thoughts I had: 
- "Why does a fishing boat have misters on it?" 
- "That's a big fishing boat."
- "Wait.. boats don't have misters.."
- "WHALES spouting look like mist!"


That was when I shouted, "LOOK! a whale!!" At that moment, the back of the huge, black whale, curved, dove, and up came its huge HUGE tail, then down it went.. 


Then I thought to take a picture:

I was so glad my dad had been there with me to see it too... otherwise I'm not so sure anyone would have believed me! In fact, it happened so fast, that no one knew what happened, other than the fact that someone (... me) shouted "Look a whale!" The captain stopped the boat for a few moments and when no one fessed up what they saw (... me again), the captain decided to keep on going [because he spent a few moments too long at the waterfall for people to get scary close pictures!]. ha!! My dad said Humpbacks can hold their breath for around 10 minutes, so I didn't want to have all these people waiting and then looking at me when it resurfaces somewhere no one can see (around the mountain). I'm so glad I have it imprinted on my memory!


On to the glacier... these were even more breathtaking than they were on the first one. Because we were on a slower, more leisurely boat this time around, we were able to wait to see parts of the glacier calve. We saw one big piece fall off near the bottom. It did a "belly flop" maneuver into the water, and I was sure we were going to feel the wave.. but we were farther away than it appeared. My mom was quite nervous, asking me, "What would happen if a HUGE (meaning half of the entire glacier) piece fell off?" I said, "We'd capsize." When she didn't laugh, I had to. We were further away from it than it would seem, even in person. By the way... this picture is completely unedited. The ice still was that blue even when in full sunshine. And just to prove we were pretty far from the glacier, look at the picture beneath this one: 

When we were waiting for calving pieces of the ice, we saw about 10 harbor seals. These chubby seals can weigh from 330 lbs. to 375 lbs. They are huge! AND, this is how small they were compared to the small rocks next to the HUGE glacier: 

Oh, sorry... you can't see them? 


Here they are: (major zoom and crop) .. Mark just told me they look like rocks in the water. There's one on top of a rock (you can see its tail, and two heads in the water next to it (they were looking for room to hop on and get some sun as well).

So.. to put it all in perspective, this is what we were looking at, nearing the glacier. The ice "spot" in the seal picture is visible in this picture: 

The face of the glacier we were told was at least 1200 feet tall.... that is CRAZY!!!!! ... update: I just had to convince Mark of this. I said, "I doubted it too at first, then I put it all in perspective. I thought to myself, 'Okay.. how big is that seal, away from that rock, which is how big... next to the bigger rock... how big would I be... then I tilt my head back and gawked at the glacier.' It's easily that tall." He nodded his head - meaning two things. 1: He did believe me or 2. he just wanted to get back to his Pawn Stars show 


I love family outings. Thanks, mom and dad!