Southeast Alaska Day 2 – Cruising

Edge of Land in Fog, Johnstone Strait (Sony NEX-7, Voigtlander Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 II)

Today was spent just cruising northwest.  Nothing too spectacular, but plenty to see along the way.  At breakfast, we passed right next to a pod of about 50 porpoises surfacing in tight rings, likely feeding.  The scene reminds me of a Planet Earth episode, with David Attenborough saying “Working together, the porpoises encircle their prey, keeping the bait ball contained.  Only one porpoise feeds at a time so as not to break up the bait ball.”

We saw a couple more porpoises jumping just off the bow, and a couple dozen bald eagles.  The further north we go, the higher and more rugged the mountains get.  There is still quite a bit of snow, starting at about 2000 feet elevation.  The ferry went up some narrower passages than normal, pausing at a scenic lighthouse, and at a 75 foot waterfall next to a dilapidated and abandoned cannery.  Dozens of waterfalls along the shore fall right into salt water.

One thing I’ll be adding to my bucket list is to “explore the Inside Passage by small boat or kayak”.  There are clearly hundreds of miles of shoreline that would be interesting to explore and photograph, with the weather providing a variety of moods.

Commercial fishing vessel Iver P Nore in Canada's Inside Passage (Sony NEX-7, Sony 18-55mm f/3.5 lens)

Boat wake (Sony NEX-7, Sony 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens)

Light on Alaska Marine Highway vessel MV Columbia (Sony NEX-7, Sony 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens)

 Continue to Day 3 – A Rainy Day in Ketchikan

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2012 at 11:18 pm. It is filed under Featured, Travel and tagged with Alaska Marine Highway, British Columbia, Canada, Inside Passage, MV Columbia, Pacific Northwest, Southeast Alaska, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.