The Rese & Jim Adventures Continue!

Hi, Everyone:

To continue on with our adventures of Rese and Jim (our current visitors), yesterday we drove down to Whittier to do some sea kayaking around Prince William Sound.   We were, once again, joined by the awesome company of Aesha and Bryn.

Whittier is this neat little town down by Portage Glacier.  The weird thing about it is that it is located on the other side of a mountain, and so there is a tunnel connecting it to the rest of Alaska.  This is no ordinary tunnel though; it is 2.5 miles long, it is one way, and it is shared between cars and trains (you literally drive on the train tracks).  This means that there is a set schedule for when cars can go into or leave Whittier depending on trains and when the other traffic is going through.  Needless to say, it's pretty cool.

Anyway, we got to Whittier and hopped into our 2-person kayaks.  Here's a view of the water from when we stopped for lunch:

We ended up using Alaska Sea Kayakers for all of the rentals and guidance, which was an amazing purchase.  We had two guides that did an incredible job showing us the landscape, pointing out wildlife, teaching us how to paddle and kayak generally, and giving us historical information about the area.  The lunch they provided was also delicious, and really well catered to us vegetarian folk (although the smoked salmon they brought was also really really good). I would HIGHLY recommend this company to anyone who is in Alaska and looking for a fun sea kayaking adventure:  http://www.alaskaseakayakers.com/prince-william-sound-day-tours.html (we did the passage canal tour).

We took some pictures while kayaking too.  Here's Aesha and Bryn:

Here are Jim and Rese:

And here's us!!!

The guide made sure to take us into these neat little coves along the way.  I think one of the most amazing things to see is how quickly the landscape changes.  Around Whittier itself you have tons of mountains and rock.  Once we got into the Sound and off onto the beaches, it quickly turned to temperate rainforest.

Although we didn't get pictures of it, we also saw lots of wildlife, including cute seals, otters doing the back-float, and a few bald eagles.

After a fun 6-hour tour (not 3 hours, as Jim would say, because that is just itching for disaster -- who would go out on a boat tour for 3 hours after Gilligan?!), we headed back to Whittier for a beer before the tunnel changed to the "out-of-Whittier" direction.

So there you have it; another bucket list item crossed off: sea kayaking.  Today Jim and Rese went for a bike ride where they ran into 5 moose along the way.  Pictures may be forthcoming . . . .