Today we landed at Icy Strait Point, a small town that was formerly a fishing processing town, with an old factory turned into a museum and a lot of quaint shops where the local aboriginal population sold their wares, both tourist-y and authentic. Lots of furs, as this had been a fur trading town as well. Here we joined a shore excursion (well, not exactly a shore excursion, rather another boat ride) on a large double-decker catamaran to go out whale watching. Having never been, we were very excited at the prospect. The seas were (thankfully) calm and almost without ripples, though the boat was designed for maximum smoothness anyway. It wasn't long before we saw wildlife, including a bunch of sea lions crowded on a buoy. Not much further ahead, the boat settled down in a promising area, and we soon saw the telltale signs of whale blow and dorsal fins, and eventually huge tails as they made their big dives. We soon learned the pattern, blow, blow, blow, tail, blow, blow, blow, tail. Once we saw that tail, that would be it for another five to ten minutes before they came up again. In the deeper parts, they can be down as long as 30 or more minutes, but in the shallows of the bay, it wasn't necessary. We saw what seemed like dozens of whale signs, and we very happy about the outcome of the trip. We certainly felt like we had made up a lot for missing the Kenai Fjords tour that was canceled, and we got to see whales! We stopped in a few more places to observe more wildlife and more whales before finally heading back to Icy Strait. Since we still had some time before we were due back on the ship, we took a wander around town, going through the museum, taking some pix with the big wooden bear and generally seeing what was there. Eventually Hubby had enough walking, so he parked himself on a bench while I decided to go on a nature trail I had noticed earlier. More like a dirt sidewalk than a trail, but what can one expect from a town that caters to tourists? It was an old growth forest with some big trees and lots of moss, reminding us again that we were in a temperate rain forest. The trail looped around to the beach where I could see our ship anchored just off shore, as well as to a boardwalk that passed several small private houses that had great waterfront views. Eventually I got back to the dock, met up with Hubby, and jumped the next tender back to the ship, where we enjoyed a nice meal at one of the specialty restaurants and a quiet evening resting in our stateroom.
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