Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula has a lot going for it, photographically. It’s incredibly diverse with dramatic mountains, rugged coastlines, tidewater and alpine glaciers, abundant marine wildlife, and the wilderness of Kenai Fjords National Park. It’s also conveniently close to Anchorage, which is both a blessing and a curse. The Kenai Peninsula is easy to access, and that makes it popular with Alaskans and tourists alike. Fortunately, if you know how to go about it, getting away from the crowds is easy.
And the best way to avoid the crowds, is to get on a boat, and motor away. So that’s what my two clients and I did on my custom photo tour of the Kenai Peninsula in July.
I love helping visiting photographers come up with their ideal trip to Alaska. For this adventure, the clients, two Australian wildlife photographers, reached out to me over a year before. They were looking for something different, and to get away from the hubbub of the popular sites without roughing it too hard. The solution? A yacht charter in Kenai Fjords National Park.
Kenai Fjords National Park
I picked the two up in Anchorage, and we made the 3 hour drive south from the city to Seward. There, on a sunny afternoon, we met up with Laura Schneider of 60 Degrees North Adventure Charters, and captain of her boat, the Caroline. The Caroline is a 65 foot custom Bertram motor yacht. With capacity for just 6 passengers, it’s spacious, with generous deck space for photographers to watch the passing landscape and wildlife. The galley and salon is perfect for lounging, and the spacious bridge is a great place to watch the ocean flow by as we motored from one location to another.
The Caroline is a live-aboard, so when we pulled away from the dock in Seward, we wouldn’t be returning for four days. Much like my aurora workshops, and my autumn Brooks Range trip, this journey would have few distractions, allowing my clients and I to concentrate on little more than making images and focusing on our experience in Kenai Fjords.
We spent the first afternoon exploring Resurrection Bay. Since my June trip, unseasonably warm water in the bay had forced many of the resident Humpback Whales to search for food elsewhere. Though we did managed to find one that first afternoon, the highlight was a pod of transient Orcas, which lingered within spitting distance of the Caroline’s rails for over an hour.
We anchored the first night in a small cove of Resurrection Bay where we fell asleep to the sound of water lapping on the hull and the grunts of Steller’s sea lions.
The following morning, before even raising anchor, we watched a sea otter enjoying a breakfast octopus, a sighting which set the tone for the rest of the day. Otters, eagles, seals, sea lions, more whales, puffins, and tidewater glaciers were all on the menu. We visited the remote Chiswell Islands where we drifted beneath seabird colonies watching both Horned and Tufted Puffins come and go from the cliffs, spent some time exploring ashore, photographing Black Oystercatchers, and watched the Holgate Glacier as it calved chunks of ice into the sea.
Without subjecting you to a continued blow by blow of our time aboard the Caroline let’s just list a few highlights: One of the biggest calving events I’ve ever seen at Aialik Glacier, glassy water on a beautiful foggy morning, a tail-slapping and breaching Humpback Whale, catching fresh sliver salmon, and walks on remote beaches where Semi-palmated Plovers posed atop driftwood logs.
Oh, and food that was truly knock-your-socks-off. In addition to being an amazing boat captain, Laura turned out to be a remarkable cook. I’m still thinking about the macadamia nut crusted halibut, and the fresh coho salmon tacos…
On the afternoon of Day 4, we pulled back into Seward, waved goodbye to the Caroline, and headed off to our on-shore lodging.
Homer and the Southern Kenai
From Seward, we headed south on down the Kenai toward my favorite town in Alaska: Homer. We made some explorations on the way down, venturing up some side roads, trying and failing to find moose. But we made up for it with a stop at Anchor Point, just a few miles up the road from Homer, where we spent a couple of hours photographing some very accommodating Bald Eagles.
The next day, a full day in Homer, we spent a few hours out on a small boat charter, where we were able to get up close with the abundant Sea Otters of Kachemak Bay, more puffins, murres, eagles, and seals, and the dramatic forested mountains of Kachemak Bay State Wilderness Park.
On our final day, during the drive back to Anchorage, just as I was about to give up a hope, we found a beautiful cow moose grazing in the wild flowers right next to the Sterling Highway.
Whew. I’d hate to have a trip without finding a moose…
Interested in seeing the Kenai Peninsula for yourself? Check out my Autumn on the Kenai workshop coming up next September. After the tourist season, but with abundant autumn colors, wildlife, and epic sunsets, it’s the ideal time to visit the Kenai.
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