Here comes the sun!

This last week, we had the first sunny days that I had ever experienced in Sitka and, boy, was it gorgeous!  Perfect weather for our week of training, couldn't have asked for better.  We spent days paddling around the harbor and close islands, learning routes and histories of Ft Rousseau, and even taking half day paddles both north and south! Never have I enjoyed training for a job so much!

I will freely admit that my favorite days so far have been the half day paddles.  Both times we have seen amazing things and some beautiful places.  On our route headed south, we were lucky enough to see TWO humpback whales breach very nearly simultaneously! I can't even begin to tell you how rare it is to see a single breach in Alaska, usually the whales are all business about eating; play is usually a warm water behavior.  But to see two??? It was beyond incredible!

My other favorite day was the day we paddled north.  The weather was perfect, only a light breeze from the west and no swell.  We saw sea otters eating and just chilling on the surface enjoying the sun, same as us.  We also saw two grey whales, not at the same time, but still!  Hopefully our whale luck holds for the summer.  The islands that we visited were just gorgeous.  Chichei is my favorite.  It looked almost tropical that day (if you could ignore the snow capped mountains haha).  

The other really neat trip that we have is a paddle to Ft Rousseau.  Sadly we didn't get to paddle it because of time constraints and tides, but we did take the skiff out there and get to explore it.  The fort was built during WWII and was abandoned almost immediately at the war's conclusion.  For 70 years, the forest has been reclaiming the islands that were bulldozed to create the causeway that the fort was built on.  It is truly incredible to walk through all the bushes and suddenly stumble upon a moss covered gun emplacement or find a fire hydrant, a remnant from their fire fighting system, placed amongst a grove of trees or get to clamber on a rusted engine from a crane that was used to place the gun batteries!

All in all, I hope that the summer runs as smoothly and as awesomely as training has!