Did that sound really come from a whale? We had just witnessed nine whales erupting from the sea with their mouths agape. The sound we heard was a long deep honk as one of the whales exhaled. It was so powerful it echoed off the nearby mountains of Kuiu Island. Some of us likened the sound to a table being dragged across the floor, some said it reminded them of an elephant trumpeting, while yet others thought the poor whale must be congested. What ever it reminded us of, we thought it was one of the wildest, most unexpected sounds many of us have ever heard. We were in the company of humpback whales, very happy humpback whales, as they had found a huge swarm of krill, one of their favorite foods.

We had not been in Southeast Alaska 24 hours when we had seen sea otters, harbor seals, Dall's porpoise, Sitka black-tailed deer, bald eagles by the dozens, and humpback whales. The amount of life we witnessed was stunning, and this was only our first day.

After the whale encounter, we entered Saginaw Bay, a tiny harbor on the north end of Kuiu Island where we had an opportunity to kayak, exploring remote shorelines. We even found a pictograph on the cliff. Some of us hiked and discovered fossils in the limestone cliffs, deposited in a time, before the dinosaurs roamed the earth. On this unusually warm day in Southeast Alaska the coolness of the old growth forest was welcome as we gazed into the canopy of Sitka Spruce and Hemlock. Our first 24 hours were spent creating memories that would last a long, long time.