July 18 - Elfin Cove

July 18 – Elfin Cove

 

Happy Birthday Nicole

 

The morning sky was gray and the air temp a bit cool but still shorts weather.  We let the youngsters sleep in after all they are on vacation. Today’s plan is to explore the area around Elfin by dinghy and stay overnight in Elfin again, as we need internet access (can get it in one of the lodge’s) at midnight.  Trying to work the lottery system at Glacier Bay to tweak our permit entry dates.   We already have permits for a couple days but we want to get into the park sooner and hopefully for a couple extra days.  The process to get into Glacier Bay is a lottery system 60 days before your desired entry date that must be done at midnight and only through a website.  That means one has to have internet access 60 days before, oh, and they don’t reply to let you know if you got the permit for 24-28 hours.  A system that has lots of things to be desired that could make it easier and more fair for everyone involved.  But hey, what would you expect --- it is a government designed and run system.  We are now trying for the 48 hour before entry permit process.  In the main 60-day lottery system they hold out a number of ‘daily’ permits for last minute entries, and then there are always some cancelations, or people who don’t stay in the park for all of their permitted days.  We want 3-4 days in the park.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.  Sea Life and Magic both are headed toward Glacier Bay, while the others go exploring elsewhere. 

From the stories we’ve heard from other travelers the ice flows in Glacier Bay and Tracey and Endicott Arm are packed.  We’ve even heard that some of the cruise ships are not going into Tracy at all this year due to too much ice.   Meaning that there is a lot of ice in the water this year – global warming?   The locals in Pelican told us that in 2007 they had 28 feet of snow during the winter, since then each year has had less, with only 1 foot this year.  We have already noticed less snow on the mt tops this year, it will be interesting to see the changes in these other areas. 

Willard and Diane’s new crew/guests Ted and Jeanie arrived by air a half hour before scheduled.  Planes like everything else in Alaska run on Alaska time ….. not what the rest of us are used to.  <grin>    Once they were settled we all headed out for a dinghy exploration tour of George Island in Granite Bay.  We went ashore and hiked to up the trail.  The sign at the trail head said .5 miles but I think they meant that was as the ‘crow flys’ to the other side of the island.  Not to the historical site at the top of the hill on the other side of the island.  So we hiked up hill, downhill, across the flats and then down, up and down again finally reaching the site of a Military Gun emplacement where there was still a large 6” gun (well part of it was missing), and the remains of the metal ammo building, and remains of several wood building structures.  It was still a gray day with low clouds so we could not see Russia or Japan.  Gary discovered he had some cell service so I borrowed his phone and called Nicole to say Happy Birthday. 

 

 

 

On the way back across the island some of the group split off to go walk the other sides beach.  After a bit everyone was back to the dinghies except Willard.   Where’s Waldo, I mean Willard?    We waited, and waited and called out, blew whistles, etc…   No Willard …. Time to send out the search parties.   Shawn, Ted, Pete, Gary, Glen, and Diane all headed back out heading in slightly different directions looking for Willard.   Glen found him.   He had taken a wrong turn and was heading across the island in the wrong direction. Ooops.  Everyone came back to the dinghy beach.  Head count …. Now Willard and Diane are missing.  Glen said well if Diane comes back without Willard we’ll know for sure.  A few minutes later they came back, in one piece.  

We then headed by dinghy around the island.  Fun cruise, saw Seals, Sea Otters, Seal Lions, and went thru a tunnel.   On the way back into Elfin we saw a group on one of the fishing lodge docks doing their photo ops with their fish.  They had one large Halibut hanging for a photo with the fisherman who caught it.  I called over said ‘nice job, what’s its size’.  120 lbs for that fish and the others were all over 100 lbs.   One guy dropped his chin to his chest and said ‘I didn’t get one!’.   The group had 4 fish over 100 lbs each out of five fisherman.  They will be eating Halibut a lot this next winter.

Then back to Elfin and the big boats.  Had lunch and the Magic crew read and watched a movie. 

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