Our morning wake-up call came early today, so that we could all stretch our way out of bed, rub our eyes awake and wander to the bow to take in the scenery in the aptly named Scenery Cove. We were rewarded with yet another feast of greens and blues in this peaceful inlet and the dense ice of Baird Glacier in the distance.
We cruised back out into Frederick Sound and around the corner to another morning adventure of hiking and inflatable boat cruises. Some guests went ashore, to explore a faint trail to Spurt Lake, in the Tongass National Forest of mainland Alaska. Hikers did their best to keep their boots on their feet through the rich, boot-sucking mud as it meandered through huge skunk cabbage leaves and thorny devil’s club. And they did their best to keep their hats on their heads as they crawled over and under fallen trees-turned-nurse logs. When a tree gets blown down in the temperate rainforest, it brings new life to the forest floor, by letting some light get through the canopy and by decomposing to nourish the new seedlings that take root on them. There was also a great variety of ferns and lichens along the trail, including “fairy barf,” whose name our fearless leader, naturalist/photo instructor Emily Mount, ceremoniously adopted for our hiking team.
In the afternoon, we tied up to the comfort of a dock in Petersburg, where Independence Day festivities were already well under way. In the small fishing villages of Southeast Alaska, holiday festivities and games have a slightly different spin than elsewhere. The weather in the afternoon alternated between bright, cloud-filtered sunshine and drenching cloudbursts. So, between drenchings, we got to watch the locals in relay races that involved fishing boots and planks of wood, rubber duckies and fire hoses. Tables were set up down the main street with local patriotic-themed baked goods, local art, face-painting, and lots of high spirits.
There were guided dock walks in the afternoon, to check out the fishing fleet that has come to Petersburg to restock and to celebrate the holiday. It was a perfect opportunity to see the seiners, crabbers and long-liners that naturalist/photo instructor Max Seigal had taught us about earlier in the day. There were also some colorful invertebrates making their home on the dock and dock pilings, some of which we’ve looked at more closely in the amazing footage from our undersea specialist, Tamsen Peeples.
Petersburg is on Mitkof Island, south of the “A,B,C islands.” So, in the afternoon, our naturalists Sharon Grainger, Jason Jones and Emily Mount took a crew across to Kupreanof Island (with all of their rain gear on) to get a look at the Southeast Alaska bog, or muskeg. They got to see the insectivorous plant known as the round-leafed sundew, and walk on the Alaskan boardwalks that make it possible to walk across the saturated surface.
After another of many incredible dinners this week, our fearless expedition leader Alberto Montaudon got the inside word that fireworks are going to be happening, rain or shine. So we will all try to stretch ourselves awake for just a little longer, to gaze up at the pyrotechnics light show of Southeast Alaska.
