Kayaking in Whittier

As promised here is another post. This weekend adventure was a kayaking trip to Whittier, AK. For those of you not familiar with Whittier (which I am assuming is the vast majority of my readers), it is a very tiny coastal fishing town about an hour away from Anchorage. So we left on Friday night with the idea of camping both Friday and Saturday night. Well, the camping part didn't work out on account that I couldn't light a fire on account of it just being so dang wet, even though it wasn't raining the ground and wood were soaked.               

So the most interesting thing about Whittier is that in order to get there you have to drive through a 3-mile long one-way tunnel.

Not only is this one-way tunnel shared by in-bound and out-bound traffic (at half hour intervals), but it is also shared by the train system.

So after our sleeping experience (which involved freaking out every time the wind blew because we thought it was a bear) and my failed campfire experience we started our guided kayaking tour of the Passage Canal, which is essentially an arm off of Prince William Sound.

Here is a nice picture near the Kittiwake Rookery, where literally thousands of seabirds nest for the season (no we did not get pooped on by the birds, although it was a major concern for me).

The guide was nice enough to take some photos of me and Christina during the tour.

There was also a cruise ship that had come in during the night. A point worth noting is that the Passage Canal (which isn't really a man-made canal at all, but just an inlet) is exceptionally deep and very secluded. So during WWII the port of Whittier was actually a very strategic supply port for the Pacific Fleet,

And finally this building, I'm not entirely sure what the name of this building is but it serves as the primary housing for the vast majority of Whittier's approximate 160 residents. So yeah its an efficient system I guess, but it is kind of weird.