White morning, visibility zero, foghorn! A really white morning with very few views of animals, and these were birds. Gulls, a loon, two marbled murrelets. Then a few small birds began to circle the ship, probably migrating. One was definitely a savannah sparrow, the other one a small yellow-breasted bird. Many couldn’t be identified.
Then suddenly we were at our morning anchorage site, very near the entrance to LeConte Bay. After breakfast we began our ice tours. Into the fog, in groups of three inflatables, going fast to get further into the bay, where a good number of BIG icebergs were to be seen. We visited quite a few, of course maintaining a certain distance from them. And eventually we landed in a small cove, where we walked to three stranded pieces of ice, and touched them and smelled them, as well as tasted them! On we went and eventually returned to our ship. And as the fog lifted slightly, we were already underway to nearby Petersburg. The fog disappeared and we had sunlight!
Founded in the late 1800s by Norwegians, the city has prospered fantastically. Three Alaska Airlines flights a day and the fifth-largest fishing center of the United States. Part of the fleet was in, showing off a largess of different types of fishing vessels. Immediately after lunch we began our different activities: cycling into town, dock-walking to see the boats, flightseeing to gaze over the LeConte Glacier and Stikine IceField, as well as hiking at next-door Kupreanof Island to a bog, also called a muskeg.
All these activities brought good comments from everybody. And soon we were all on board, and sailing away from this small, real fishing town, through a small section of Wrangel Narrows (also called “Christmas Tree Alley” due to the numerous red and green navigation lights along its shores) and back to Frederick Sound, to begin tomorrow’s new adventure.
