Altogether we made seven brief stops, several of them to treeless, gardenless villages of fewer than eighty people but zillions of wildflowers. Akutan, above, has seventy-five residents. During World War II, Cold Bay was home to 20,000 troops and now has a population of seventy-six. According to the National Weather Service, it is the cloudiest place in the United States.
The utterly hopeless photo far below is for certified whale geeks only. We cruised alongside the largest pod of humpbacks I've ever seen. How many must have been there if ten were spouting simultaneously? (My lens could only capture four in this frame.) The best book on humpbacks is Roger Payne's Among Whales, packed with boogling details such as scientists still have no idea how or where whales generate the sound of the "songs."
I'm dying to know what those wildflowers are.
Posted by: bob Smith | July 31, 2011 at 12:04 PM