This morning we ate breakfast in a room full of sunshine, and pulled into Haines Point (a town of about 2,500 in the summer, 2000 in the winter) just as we finished. The passengers had been given several choices, a flight seeing trip to the glaciers, a floating trip to watch eagles, a hike and a hunting/fishing day trip. We chose the floating trip and ended up on a pastel blue school bus with a very gregarious young man named Carl, who wore shorts and sandals and a horrible loud Hawaiian teeshirt. Turns out he was from the Boston area, but had traveled with his parents to this area on a Special Expeditions tour several years ago and had eventually come back to live. He was full of jokes and stories as we bumped our way along for about twenty minutes, finally pulling off onto back roads headed towards the Chilkote River, which is fed by glacial runnoff. The waters are extraordinarily wide and quite shallow. Carl said you could generally walk across the river at almost any point, and there were places where it looked a mile or so wide.

As we pulled into the loadout area, we had to stop for a truck and a crew in front, who were, it turns out, moving the "groover" -- the outhouse -- from its present location over to the new loadout site. The river shifted constantly, and the outhouse was now too far away. A lot of jokes were made, including explanations about why it was called a "groover" (the original waste repositories were ammo cans which left distinctive "grooves" in the user's posterior). The crew laboriously picked the 4x4 wooden structure with its small peaked roof onto the flatbed, and the bus dutifully followed the "groover" to the loadin site.

It seemed that all the bathroom talk (or maybe it was the combination of several cups of coffee for breakfast and the sound of all that running water) had given just about everyone an urgent need to pee, so the men headed behind the trucks and the women lined up in a ridiculously long queue for the lone "groover". As a result, it took longer than it should to get everyone loaded into the boats. Ed and I were in Kirsten's boat, the one woman among the crew of five rafters. She had long, dark hair streaked with gray at the temples that she held back in a ponytail that was then caught in a couple more stretchy ties so it wouldn't fly away, finally covered by a baseball cap. She was golden brown and lean, wearing shorts, rubber boots and a teeshirt. She was probably in her late twenties, although it was hard to tell. Clearly, she was a classic wilderness woman type. She reported, in answer to a question, that she was from Colorado, but didn't go there much anymore because it had too many people. When questioned about what she did in the off season, she said she was a baker - in Anarctica. A delightfully interesting character, to be sure.

 The ride itself was fun. The weather was once again as perfect as thought it had been ordered from a catalogue -- sunny, but not too hot. They said it would be cooler on the river, but I was comfortable in a teeshirt. The water was so shallow in places that everyone was required to bounce up and down to help dislodge us from the rocks and move us along to deeper water.

We spotted almost twenty eagles along the seven-mile journey. For the most part it was a placid ride. The scenery was stunning, and although this was not a time of year when the eagles were around in huge numbers (between big salmon runs), there were enough of the magnificent birds to give us a sense of the fascinating ecological wonder that this national eagle preserve truly is.

We disembarked to a serving of cookies and lemonade and were instantly attacked by huge swarms of mosquitoes, jokingly referred to by many Alaskans as the state bird. I was only bitten a couple of times before I slathered myself with "Off", after which they were annoying but not horribly bothersome. Carl said they were not nearly as bad in this part of the country as they were on the Denali, where they swarmed in incredible numbers. Ish. I think that is one of nature's wonders I'll try to avoid.

Lunch was an excellent salmon bbq in Haines Point, followed by a performance of the Chilcote Dancers, who did traditional dances in a lodge a few blocks from where the ship was docked. Took some videos. Interesting, but despite the fact that Carl had warned us that the "dancers" were not natives (but not to let it bother us because the important thing was that the dances were being kept alive), it did bother me. Most of them looked like kids from Chris' (my son’s) high school.

I did a little wandering in some art shops in "downtown" Haines Point (three or four blocks), and then walked quickly back to the ship. Before dinner, the hotel manager, Judith, put on an hysterical performance on how to crack Dungeoness Crab, the entre for the evening. She donned a garbage bag by tearing holes for arms and her head, noting that the difference between man and the lower life forms was the use of tools and an ability to accessorize. For her finale, she demonstrated the "otter" technique for cracking crab by lying down on her back on the bar, placing a cutting board on her ample chest, and whapping the crab with a wine bottle, with crab detritus flying everywhere. The crew had gathered to watch, as evidently this was a first performance, and I thought they were going to hurt themselves they were laughing so hard.

The dinner was great. With us was a recently retired researcher who invented pediatric vaccines, and a physicist working at Los Alamos, most recently helping the Russians figure out how to dispose of their nuclear materials.

Then dessert was interrupted. The bridge had sited another pod of orcas. Everyone abandoned their blueberry cake and headed to the bow, where we followed the pod for about two hours, until the light faded. Steve, the head naturalist, and Jason, one of the other naturalists, headed out in the zodiac to get nearer the pod, to try to capture their calls and songs on a hydrophonic (sp?) microphone. They crept closer and closer, turning off the motor and sitting quietly for long periods.

When they finally got back, they played back what they had recorded. While the loudest noise was that of the ship's engines, the bleeps and cries of the whales were unquestionable and distinct. A spectacular end to another exquisite day.