FINALLY

Ok so first of all, I hope that you guys havent stopped checking my blog for updates since i havent updated in a month. But if you did decided to check it out, I have a lot of things to update you on.

I am still in Alaska doing my thing...the season ends at the end of september so I only have another 3 weeks at my kayaking job then I'm out on my own again. I have been taking a lot more time off than I did before to enjoy myself here. The perks to being the manager is that you get to do other tours for free. SO I went on a flightseeing tour on a float plane over two glaciers, the Taku and Norris glaciers. It was gorgeous and so surreal. I went on a whale watching tour where the whales were jumping out of the water (or "breaching" is what they call it) and bubble net fishing. Bubble net fishing was one of the few things that I really wanted to see here and the whales did it at least 10 times. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries on this tour so I dont have very good pictures of it, but there is one that you can sort of tell that they were bubble net fishing.

(bubble net fishing, for those who are wondering what I am talking about, is when humpback whales get together to feed. So they dive underwater and blow a ring of bubbles to trap the fish. The fish get disoriented in the net of bubbles and then one whale will swim underneath and trumpet upwards making the fish swim towards the surface. All the whales then swim upwards with their mouths open and catch all the fish. Now the coolest part about all of this is that they all come up out of the water, one in the center, probably about half of its body is out of the water, and all the others lunge around the center one. Up to 15 or so 50 foot whales may be feeding on this same bubble net so thats a lot of weight all breaching the water at the same time...its unbelievable to watch!)

Other exciting Alaskan adventures include white water rafting down the great Mendenhall River. A river guide friend of mine took Lisa, Jack (her dad), and I down the river on a float trip. It really is a float trip cause the tour is about 2 hours long with only about 8 minutes of rapids. It is fun though, and the river guides are ridiculous. I also went Kayaking off of Sunshine cove which is about mile 32 out of 40 miles of road. My friend Dan and I stole a tandem kayak and headed out into what we soon found out was a humpback whale highway. We were surrounded by at least 7 whales. It was amazing until at one point we heard a whale grunt under water and lets just say, its a little unnerving to be in open water and not know where sounds are coming from. We quickly paddled back towards shore at sunset and enjoyed the last minutes of the day on the water before heading back to the car. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience...