| Day 3, Sea Kayaking in Cordova (5/16)
The weather was great, near 70 with lots of sun. We met our guide, Seewan, at 9 AM and kayaked with her and a local artist, Erin Cooper, out in the Orca Bay. We were in a double kayak with spray skirts. We saw seals, sea lions, and many sea otters and cubs. A seal surfaced about 15 feet from our kayak. Birds included oystercatcher, loons, geese, harlequin ducks, many bald eagles, yellowlegs, and sandpipers just to name a few. |
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| The water was like glass the whole time. We traveled about 2 miles out, skirted an island and stopped for our snack. Then we rode the tide back into the beach. The bay is encircled by mountains that come right out of the shoreline and extend to snow covered peaks 2-3k high. The sun sparkles off these peaks. Our guides allowed us to set the pace and control how much paddling we did. |
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We returned from kayaking and took a ride ‘out the road’. The road is the 48 mile Copper River Highway that travels over the Copper River Delta, a vast area of 700,000 acres of glaciers, delta, mudflats and wetlands. Cordova was the terminus for the copper ore from the Kennecott mines, from 1902 until 1938. The highway is part of the old railbed from Cordova and ends at a bridge that was destroyed in the 1964 earthquake. There is a controversy among the town and the state as to whether to continue this road inland. Many townspeople don’t want this road and the access it would bring. |
| We made a lot of stops along the road, looking at dusky geese, trumpeter swans, many beaver lodges and dams. At the Alaganik Slough park, the boardwalk’s interpretive signs were illustrated by Erin, our kayak companion. We made another stop and hiked up the ‘haystack’ trail. A haystack is an old hill left by a receding glacier. We walked over 2 haystacks through a forest of spruce and ferns. We only saw 4 other people on the trail. At the top, we looked out over the delta and saw our first moose, knee deep in a stream, munching the vegetation. Continuing on the road we made another stop where we heard the strange sounds of stipes, which seemed to be making their call with their tail feathers on the descending flight. We continued to the point of Long Island which is in the middle of the mouth of the Copper River. We were stopped by 12 foot snow drifts, so we only made it to mile 28 of the road. We didn’t get to see the bridge known as the Million Dollar bridge, but we had a great day for wildlife. It was about 7 PM so we headed home. The constant daylight is great for sightseeing. |