The Last Day in Alaska

Sunday, June 30, 2019

One thing that I had enjoyed on this cycle tour compared to others that I have taken in the past was the later start each morning.  Rather than being on the bicycles by 7 o’clock, which meant a very early breakfast and loading of our luggage, the Alaskabike tour generally had breakfast at 8 a.m.  Then when we finished we had another 15 minutes to go back to our rooms, get our luggage and bring it out to the van.  So we often didn't get riding until sometime in the 9:00 a.m. hour. 

That’s why my final two days in Alaska were a bit of culture shock!  Yesterday we had to be ready to leave the hotel shortly after 6:00 a.m. to get to the ferry in time.  Today I took the Alaska Railroad Coastal Classic train to Seward. The hotel shuttle was at 5:45 a.m. for the train departure an hour later.  However, they had told me on Friday night when I checked in to be in the lobby at 5:15 because they sometime needed to make two runs with the van
due to the crowd for the train exceeding the van's capacity. However, there was nobody else so I was up at 4:30 a.m. for nothing.

I had reserved the Alaska Railroad’s Gold Service (first class) where passengers ride upstairs in a bi-level car.  There is an attendant in the car who provides complimentary beverages, including up to two “adult drinks”. At the back of the car is an open air observation platform (neat!), and on the lower level is a dining car where complimentary breakfast in served on the way to Seward, and dinner on the evening return.  A very nice service for sure (although like many things in Alaska the price tag is a bit hefty) running through some fabulous scenery.

On the train down a lady from the State Tourism organization was sitting next to me and her parents from Texas across the aisle.  Her parents lived only a few blocks from where we lived in Plano.  They had been in Alaska for several days and they had yet to see a moose!  That became quite a topic of conversation for all four of us, and we dubbed the unseen Alaskan icons the “mythical moose.”

In Seward I took the five-hour Kenai (pronouned "keen-eye") Fjords National Park cruise.  It turned out to be fabulous.  At first vision was obscured by smoke from wildfires nearby, but as we got further out into the water we saw sea otters,

What's that Sea Otter doing in the water?  The backstroke!

sea lions sunning themselves on the rocks and puffins (birds).  But Captain Steve Martin came on the P.A.(no, not THAT Steve Martin!) and said that a humpback whale had been spotted nearby and he was going to that area.  A few minutes later we saw the spray come up from the whale’s blowhole and then the whale broke the surface.  He did that two or three times but then disappeared. 

As exciting as our brief humpback whale sighting had been, the best was yet to come.  We headed off to Aialik Glacier.  As we approached the massive wall of ice, the captain stated that there had been some cracks in the wall that he and the other captains were guessing it meant that some significant calving, when large chunks of ice break off the glacier and fall into the waters below, were not too far into the future.  A minute or two later a small area of ice fell from what looked to be a couple of hundred feet up the glacier.  It crashed into the sea, and a few seconds later the sound reached the boat. 

Ice "calving" from the glacier crashes into the water.

 

I hold a piece of glacial ice while
the wind blows my hair around. 
Why didn't I bring a baseball cap?

As he talked about what we had just seen there was a sudden shout from the crowd at the first glimpse of a much larger section of ice thundering downward.  We saw the much larger splash this time, and then a crashing noise that sounded like a large peal of thunder.  And that was just the beginning. Over the next 20 minutes we saw at least half a dozen more calves born from the glacier.  One of them was so large that it left a visible round hole in the ice wall, and sent a wave toward the boat that rocked it.  The captain had already begun to turn the vessel toward the glacier so that any waves would be taken face on, rather than at the side of the boat. 

Finally when Captain Martin apologized for having to leave and head up back in, he said that was the most impressive calving event he had seen in a long time.

The Orca whale breaks the surface.

As we headed back toward Seward, people were saying that even if we had seen nothing else that day, what we saw at the glacier was by itself worth the time and price of the cruise.  I agree with that, but there was even more to come!   Captain Martin again came on the P.A. again and said that another captain had spotted an Orca whale.  We sped toward the spot out in the water, and very soon we saw the tall dorsal fin break the surface.  The fin was much higher and the visible part of the whale’s body much larger than what we had seen the earlier humpback whale encounter.  The orca surfaced about four times before it finally headed off and we headed back to Seward.

On the train back to Anchorage I was seated for dinner at a table with a couple from the U.K. who had cruised up to Alaska.  They’d already seen a moose, and when I told them about my lack of any moose sighting they said not to give up on the moose yet.  Maybe I’d see one from the train.  

Unbelievably, it was just a few minutes later when the young lady providing commentary over the P.A. system noted that there was a moose off to the left of the train. Sure enough there was a large moose running across a marshy field off to the left.  It took every bit of self control to keep from crying out “Awright!” as I watched the huge brown beast gallop away from the train. 

It had been 48 hours since completing the bicycle tour. But NOW that I had finally seen what Alaskans joke are as common in their state as squirrels are in the Lower 48, I had truly completed my Alaska journey and could get ready to fly home Monday morning without the feeling of leaving uncompleted business behind in The Land of the Midnight Sun.

Obviously Not the Moose That I Saw From the Train.
This is the Anchorage Airport moose!

Goodbye Alaska! 

Next on tap?  A trip to Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maine in either late July or early August to bring the state count up to 35.  I'll be back at this blog to tell you about that trip when it occurs.  Thanks for traveling with me on my journey to "Bike All 50."

Bruce