Captain's Choice Wildlife Watching Cruise

4th of July this year was spent out on a boat in the ocean – I can’t think of a better way to celebrate!

I drove down to Seward with Rich, my guest from the Denver Zoo, on Thursday evening, checked in to our B&B that night, and got up bright and early Friday morning to get ready for our trip.

We booked our cruise with the Kenai Fjords Tours (www.kenaifjords.com) and chose to take the Captain’s Choice Wildlife Watching Cruise with Mariah Charters. Several people we met along the way to Seward told us that we’d chosen the best one, so we were pretty stoked for our day by the time we got there.

At 8:30 am, we boarded the Misty, with Captain Andrea and First Mate Liza (yes, both females) and 12 other paying customers. The brochure said they had a maximum capacity of 23 people, but I honestly don’t know where they’d put all those people – it was crowded enough with the few we had on board that day.

The weather was typical Seward weather: slightly rainy, mostly cloudy, with seas that were just about to make one sick – but not quite. Rich had his bracelet that uses acupressure points and I had a pocket full of fresh ginger, so neither of us were too worried about getting sea-sick.

After going over the safety features of the vessel, the captain made her way up to the wheel house while the first mate went below to get breakfast ready, and we all settled in to watch Seward pass by us on our way out of the harbor. There were, of course, several sea otters there to wave us on our way – that’s almost a given.

This was one of the best cruises I’ve ever been on for animal sightings: we saw the otters, harbor seals, sea lions, humpback whales, orca’s, birds of all types, and spectacular scenery.

Rich was like a little boy in a candy store: he kept running from one side of the boat to the other, with all four of his cameras at the ready so as not to miss a single shot. I can’t wait to see what he came up with, too – he is a great photographer (despite what he says) and has promised to send me a CD once he gets home and has the time to go through the millions of shots he took on his week-long vacation up here.

9 hours later, we trudged back to the car from the harbor; tired, cold, and worn out – but grinning from ear to ear.