Thursday, dad and I had reservations to go whale watching in the Kenai Fjords, while mom and Nikki had date day and did whatever they did. Before I go on about our whale watching adventure, let me just tell you this- DON'T GO ON A WHALE WATCHING TOUR, EXPECTING TO SEE WHALES. YOUR DREAMS WILL BE CRUSHED.
So here's how it went down. We got to the little Kenai Fjords dock and got our tickets and get on the boat. That should've been my first clue that the tour was going to be a rough one. There was about a solid 8 inch lift from the dock to the boat and there we had dad in his wheelchair and me trying to lift him up over this huge step. So after one of the workers saw me struggling and sweating profusely, they came and helped and we finally got dad in the boat. We waited for the rest of the world to board the boat, then we were off.
About 10 minutes into the tour, we saw some Doll's porpoises (I think that was their name). They're basically mini killer whales. Or they at least look like them. The porpoises were about the only wildlife we saw on our way to Fox Island, which is where we feasted for lunch. Seriously. We ate like royalty. There was a buffet with salmon and prime rib, then dad and I had a pound of Alaskan King Crab and continued to stuff our faces until we hated ourselves.
After lunch, we had about 20 minutes until we could get back on the boat. In that 20 minutes, dad and I looked for someone to take our picture with the cutie little mountains in the background. It wasn't until like minute 19 that we finally found someone because literally every single person looked ticked off and completely unapproachable. But oh well, we got our picture so we were happy.
We had about 2 and a half hours left of the tour once we got back on the boat. Since it was a whale watching cruise, we had some pretty high expectations of seeing, you know, whales. Yeah, not the case. The captain took our boat out onto open water for a solid 10 minutes, then decided that the seagulls near shore were more interesting. So for the rest of the tour, we rode along the coast and looked at 3 different types of birds. That was it.
Looking back, dad and I were probably a little bit more bitter than necessary. I mean we did see some sea lions getting their tan on and sea otters doing little tricks. But if you're going to advertise your tour as a "whale watching" tour, then you should probably spend more than 10 minutes actually looking for whales, you know? The scenery on the tour was neat though and the crab was delish, so I guess it's all good.
After our adventure at sea, mom and Nikki picked us up and we continued on exploring. We headed to Kenai Fjords National Park to see Exit Glacier, which is the only glacier in the park that you can drive to see. It was a cute glacier. But all glaciers pretty much look exactly alike, so it wasn't anything spectacular. Well, it was, because it was massive. But you know what I mean. On our hike back from the glacier, I'm pretty sure we almost got eaten by a bear. It's recommended that you talk or whistle while in the woods so that bears know you're there. But for the 0.2 seconds we didn't say anything, we heard rustling in the bushes right next to us. I've never seen a pregnant woman or my mom run that fast. I was pushing dad in his wheelchair and sprinting. It's a good thing he didn't fall out because we all would've probably just left him there. (Just kidding dad. Kind of).
Neat little (big) glacier.. It's the ice on the mountain, for those of you who don't know..
Cutie fam. We're still trying to perfect the selfie.
Once we were done glaciering and outrunning bears, we headed to Starbucks, got some chai, and went back to the campground to play Rummey and eat microwave s'mores. I tell ya, we're really rugged when it comes to this whole camping thing. It's a tough life.
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