{"id":4933,"date":"2020-08-24T22:59:09","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T14:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/?p=4933"},"modified":"2021-02-02T06:55:21","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T22:55:21","slug":"20200824kenai-fjords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/2020\/08\/24\/20200824kenai-fjords\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 2 of 2020 Alaska Trip, Kenai Fjords Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Second day of our Alaska trip. We would be touring Kenai Fjords by boat for the day.<\/p>\n

\"Aialik<\/a>

<\/br>Aialik Glacier<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

For our two days at Seward, we planned to spend them between hiking Harding Ice Trail and taking a boat tour of Kenai Fjords. Unfortunately, weather forecast indicated two rainy days, with the next day marginally better than today, so we put hiking to the next day with better weather, and did the boat tour today. (They turned out to be equally drizzly.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Tour Choice<\/span><\/h3>\n

The two major tour companies for Kenai Fjords are Major Marine Tours<\/a> and Kenai Fjords Tours<\/a>. The former offered cheaper prices (for 2020)<\/span> and the latter had fancier websites. I bet the experiences were really similar between the two, with their boats following each other throughout most of the tour (I would even hazard a guess that both captains were sharing wildlife locations throughout the tour, for the common good of customer experience for all.) Except that we went with the cheaper Major Marine and found our boat had three decks compared with two from Kenai Fjords Tours.<\/p>\n

\"Other<\/a>

 \"Other<\/a><\/br>Other Tour Boat<\/br>We followed each other throughout the day.<\/p><\/div>\n

As for the route, the two popular day-tour routes were “National Park Tour” and “Northwest Kenai Fjords Tour”. After rounding Aialik Cape, “National Park Tour” headed North, to either Holgate Glacier or Aialik Glacier (depending on weather, but Aialik seemed to be preference as one got a distant view of Holgate Glacier on the way to Aialik), while “Northwest Tour” headed farther west to Northwest Glacier. At the end of either tour, one would be able to view some glaciers up close, with the “Northwest Tour” featuring more rocky islands as a typical fjord scene.
\nFor the year 2020, Major Marine Tours operated 1 daily “National Park” and 1 daily “Northwest”, while Kenai Fjords Tours operated 2 daily “National Park” (let’s talk about anti-trust). Since “Northwest” was much more expensive than “National Park” from Major Marine, we picked the latter, which lasted 6 hours.<\/p>\n

And since there would be lots of wildlife shots in rainy condition, I wisely packed my Sigma 70-200 F2.8 lens.<\/p>\n

Seward Harbor<\/span><\/h3>\n

Our tour departed at 11:30 in the morning, in time for the train from Anchorage to arrive at 11am. The tour company “required” everyone to check in one hour in advance, so that they could generate some souvenir sales while everyone’s waiting around<\/del>. To kill the time, I did an aerial tour of Seward Harbor with my drone.<\/p>\n