In June of 2001 Ellen and I went on a two week trip to Alaska, a group tour with Lindblad. The first week we were cruising the inland waterway on Alaska’s lower coast aboard the ship Sea Lion, above. The second week we were in interior Alaska mainly around Denali. In 2003 I put together a slide show with captioned pictures, about 160 of them, to show on my first laptop. In the years since, that show has become jumbled and some pictures went missing. The last few days I’ve been restoring it, and since the pictures are now back in order, thought I’d put some of my favorites up here. This post covers the first week, the second week will be in part 2.
Lindblad is a tour company that focuses on nature, and their small 62-passenger ships in Alaska are perfect for that. You get much closer to nature in a small ship, they have many expert guides and naturalists aboard, and we loved our experience with them. They’re very expensive, but we felt well worth it.
The cabins were small, but we didn’t spend much time in ours. Mostly we were on deck or doing off-ship expeditions when not eating excellent meals below.
We got close to Humpback Whales the first full day, very exciting.
Alaska in June meant it never got very dark for long. This is about 10 PM.
On the second day we were out on these inflatable boats to get close to icebergs.
Love the blue ice!
The third day we landed on an island to explore kelp beds and go for a hike.
Later we watched Salmon being caught in Chatham Bay, only allowed one day each year in these protected waters.
A voyage into Glacier National Park was a highlight of this week.
Even on a sunny and relatively warm day, the cold water kept us dressed like this.
Another day, another adventure!
That’s us, out on our own.
Our small ship could get closer to things than the big ones.
One last amazing iceberg. More tomorrow.