So Kevin and I have stayed away from cruises in all our adventures so far. Other than a 45 min boat ride in Wales that turned into three hours (thanks Todd), we’ve pretty much intentionally said no to any others. But this feels like the boat to try, so we booked a six hour dinner cruise that was cancelled because of rocky waves and rescheduled as a day lunch cruise. We could have rebooked up to a nine hour cruise for the same price but we had a feeling six hours was going to be good enough. Plus I get motion sick in a car and Kevin gets motion sick on roller coasters. Feels like this could be a disaster.
7am arrival and four dramamine later, we are on the boat. All in I was actually pretty okay on it and the animals made up for any stomach dropping waves. Kevin can not say the same. When it was calm at the beginning and end, he was okay and would move around to see the sites. But in the open ocean, I think the waves were more lulling him to sleep and just made him feel off kilter which he didn’t like.
Highlight was definitely the orcas swimming beside our boat, the humpback whales group feeding and the glacier view (we saw it calve even). Plus Kevin was able to hold glacier ice.
Honorable mention is definitely seeing the horned and tufted puffins — we’ve now seen all the breeds of puffins in the wild. Second honorable mention were the sea lions just hanging out.
Obviously all of these things with the beautiful mountains and landscape made it so picturesque.
This brings our time in Seward to an end and so we headed back to Anchorage. Dinner with Kevin’s friend Jill and her friend.
Tomorrow is our last day to explore and they are planning to take us into the mountains to hike (and hopefully not kill me this time). I’ve still not seen a moose, so that is the goal.
Animals we came to see:
Grizzly Bear – ✅
Moose – ✖️
Bald Eagle (and eaglets!) – ✅✅✅✅✅
Horned Puffin – ✅✅✅✅✅
Tufted Puffin – ✅✅✅✅✅
Humpback whale – ✅✅✅
Animals we did not consider we would see:
Sea otter (a raft with babies!) – ✅✅✅✅✅
Golden Eagle – ✅
Sockeye Red Salmon – ✅✅✅
Red Breasted Merganser (and babies!) – ✅
Other black and white bird (and babies!) – ✅
Seal – ✅
Sea lions (and baby!) – ✅✅✅✅✅
Fin Whale – ✅
Orca – ✅✅✅✅✅
