funwithOneelio: July 2013

Friday, July 26, 2013

Amazing two days!!

The past two days (7/25 & 7/26) have been RIDICULOUS. Weather has been fairly warm and sunny, but the wildlife has been AWESOME. Yesterday, I saw my first dead whale. Don't know why I'm excited about that, but I am...we were watching some humpbacks and some passengers called me over to check something out that they saw in the distance. I thought it was a rock at first, but a passenger worked at a landfill and said "I know what dead things smell like, and that's a dead whale." I looked through the binoculars and sure enough, it was a bloated & decaying humpback. Check it out.

Later on in the day, we came across 3 humpbacks that came THISCLOSE to the boat- I swear, if we jumped off the boat we could've landed on them. They were doing pec slapping, tail lobbing, and deep diving- two of them were synchronized a lot of the time too!! All I kept saying was, "holy shit!"

Look at the piece missing on the right pectoral.

A dorsal fin, pectoral fin, and a tail fluke. SO MANY ANIMALS!

Synchronized diving.

Notch in the tail fluke of this one.

Tufted puffin.

After the awesome show of humpbacks, we saw some orcas at the end of the day. I haven't seen them in a long time and they came close to the boat too!!

So, Thursday 7/25 was an awesome day. Passengers loved me (of course!), we made good tips, and the humpbacks were freaking awesome!! I didn't think today could beat yesterday, but it did! The passengers were pretty chill and we had an AMAZING humpback show in the Chiswells. We were in the middle of 7-10 humpbacks that were circling the boat. I am out of adjectives to describe it.

After we were surrounded by lots o whales, we had to get going towards Seward, but only traveled about 1/4 mile before we saw a mom & calf frolicking.

Here's the calf doing a head lob. YOU CAN SEE IT'S EYEBALL!!!!

Mom slapping her tail.

Baby again.

Overall, these past two days were FREAKING AWESOME. These are the days that make me love this job!

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Happy 4th of July!!

By some miracle, I ended up with July 4th and 5th off! Lucky me. Seward does their fireworks at midnight on the 4th, which I thought was weird at first, but it makes sense. It's darkest out around midnight- still not completely dark, but good enough for the fireworks. Before the fireworks, I went to a small (both in terms of people and size of the fire!) bonfire, then some of us drove to the other side of the bay to watch the show. The fireworks were good, but of course I was comparing them to Disney and the great show they always put on :) After the fireworks, I went back home and then ended up going out to a bar called The Pit. Fun times.

July 4th is a big deal in Seward- the town goes from a population of 3000 to over 20000! The big draw is the Mount Marathon Race, which is essentially a 5k that includes climbing up the mountain, 3022 feet to the top. I went downtown to watch the men's race, and the streets were all closed off, with food booths and people selling stuff. It was really amazing to watch the racers climbing the mountain-granted, all I could see of them was little dots moving upward, because I didn't bring my binoculars- but it was awesome nonetheless. The men's winner set a new record- he finished in 42:55! Unbelievable.

When Teres & I were here last summer, we tried climbing the mountain- totally not successful. So my goal for this summer is to get to the summit (without hurting myself). I haven't even tried it yet, so I better get on it! I certainly do not plan on going up & down in 40 minutes- I'm thinking many hours!