We woke up in the morning surrounded by a quiet mist hanging like a blanket over calm waters. National Geographic Venture tucked into a small, protected cove lined with tall trees, and we got started with our morning activities. We split up into groups and took turns going ashore for hikes and exploring the inlets on Zodiacs. Hikers explored the intertidal zone and found a diversity of animals that flourish in the boundary between the ocean and forests, including sea stars, mollusks, barnacles, shorebirds, and even a mink! Some hiking groups went farther inland to explore the deeper parts of the temperate rainforest. They found big trees, thick beds of moss, berry shrubs, and a huge diversity of understory plants. In some places, patches of forest were in the middle of an ecological transition towards a bog ecosystem, with an open canopy and thick, squishy, wet forest floors. We found trees and plants in these boggy areas that we can’t find anywhere else in the forest, including yellow cedar, Labrador tea, and a carnivorous plant called the sundew. After a busy morning, we travelled farther north up narrow and winding channels and fiords, going deeper into the mountains. We passed a majestic waterfall as the last of the mist burned away to reveal large, towering peaks around us. As we approached the very end of the fiord, we noticed a family of brown bears in a nearby meadow. A mom and her two cubs played in the sunny meadow while we watched through our cameras and binoculars until they headed into the forest, and we headed back inside the ship for dinner.