Cedar Bay

The view from the hill looking down on the bay.

Cedar bay with totally tranquil water as seen from the deck of the Discovery.

The ripples in the clear water made by the Discovery as we gently made our way into Cedar Bay.

The water was flat and mirror-like, reflecting the green mosses and red-brown seaweed along the edges of the lagoon.

The reflections made it seem like there were two worlds, one above and one below the water (which indeed there were but not at all identical).

This is looking down from up on top of the hill. The grassy-looking area is actually sphagnum bog and full of beautiful little flowers, drosera, butterworts, violets and other little gems.

The trees were all covered in lichen, giving it a really old, weather worn look. The hills were full of sphagnum, running quite deep in most places but exposed to the rock in the steeper areas. The sphagnum gives the hills rich red, greed and yellow hues.

The water was incredibly still and reflective, distorting the rocks to look twice their size. You can see how high the tide gets by the line of orange seeweed high on the rocks.

There were many small islands along the way. Many of them hosted little colonies of nesting gulls and guillemot. The island's isolation protects their eggs from marauding bears.

Most of the nesting sites were limited to gulls. This one had a nice colony of guillemot on the left side.

This rock was a little more typical of the kittiwake nesting sites, being covered in kittiwakes.

This harbor seal was one of many floating on ice bergs. The ice bergs make it pretty hard for killer whales to track them down, cluttering up the sonar.

The clouds came quite low, often covering the valleys in a light drizzly mist that keeps everything rich, mossy and alive.

You can see the green, lush, plant clogged inlets in the distance framed by these ancient, gnarled, lichen-lined cedars.

This eagle was lazily spiraling out of sight, having flown off when we walked into the area.

This Eagle, on the other hand, very calmly watched the boat go by as we headed to Cedar Bay. He didn't even flinch and, atypically, was sitting on a low lying rock as opposed to the treetops favored by his bretheren.

There was an Alaskan mountain goat up on the hillside as we hiked up the hill. He was watching us as keenly as we were watching him.

The Alaskan Mountain Goat was looking straight at us as we snapped pictures.

These really pretty speckled eggs belonged to a Surf Bird or Aphriza virgata. After whistling up quite a storm, it eventually came back to roost on its eggs.

The elusive Surf bird or Aprhiza virgata. It was hard to identify as most of the pictures show the males' breeding plumage, not the females (which is quite distinctive in this case). I finally identified it by the sound of its call with the help of an online bird reference encyclopedia.

This is a Barrow's Golden Eye Duck, distinctly marked with a white breast and white checkers on the wing. There were ducks of many types in the bays, ponds and out on the Prince William Sound.

There was lots of evidence of bears. Everything from well worn bear paths to tracks in the snow (as shown here) to bear scat.

There were a fair number of Canada Geese Pairs with occasional nesting sites.

This is a view of the calm water with ripplets from tiny drops of water off of the paddle making concentric waves across the pond.

The Common Merganser was found in some of the lagoons and is a diving duck, living off of little crustaceans and plant material on the bottoms of the inlets.

A Guillemot, backlit by the waning sun.

These are Harlequin Ducks paddling across Cedar Bay. They were a little shy, not letting us get particularly close.

Juvenile Mew Gulls.  Note that their beaks and plummage change color as they mature.

The Surf Scoter Ducks were out in deeper water as we headed towards the bay.

We went hiking in the morning and kayaking in the afternoon. There were both single and double kayaks, depending on preference and the kayaks were easy to paddle and very stable on the calm, clear waters.

The were quite a few starfish and sea cucumbers on the rocks and in the shallow water. In trying to identify these, I discovered that Alaska is home to more different Genera and species of starfish than anywhere else in America. These appeared to be Dermasterias surrounded by barnacles and some little grey predacious shells that were likely after the same barnacles and muscles that the starfish were after.

The Dermasterias looked much plumper and happier in the water (as you would expect). I wondered why there were no bears munching on them; perhaps they don't taste very good or perhaps they were far enough out in the water that the bears avoided the cold swim.

As I mentioned, there are a lot of different kinds of starfish in Alaska. If you're counting legs, this is possibly a Pycnopodia helianthoides although, based on the body proportions, it looks more like it is from genus Solaster.

There were also moon jellies and lions mane jellies drifting in the shallow water. The lion's mane jellies occasionally had small schools of fish hovering around them for protection.

The Discovery picking up the kayaks. The crew put the skiff down in the water as an easy point to get into and out of the kayaks.

This pond was melting unevenly, creating a Swiss cheese effect. The island was full of lakes and ponds of all sizes interspersed beween the sphagnum bogs.

This Happy, the Discovery mascot, was notably happiest when out playing fetch with the passengers and crew. That dog is fearless and tireless and never gets bored playing fetch.

Getting Happy to sit still for pictures was a bit tough and often required a little physical contact, some persuasive talking and a little stick bribery.

The blueberry bushes were everywhere and they were in profuse bloom. Those islands must be a veritable bear feast when the berries are ready. The bears and the birds, on the other hand, provide efficient seed distribution, if the huge numbers of blueberry bushes are any indication.

The bog rosemary has a very daintly, delicate flower and pushes up through the moss and lichens. Unlike its namesake, it is, however, poisonous.

There were many sundews, Drosera rotundifolia, in the bog, their sticky pads likely deriving nitrogen off of small gnats and ants. To the left of the picture is a small spider that snuck into the photo.

There were also occasional Pingicula vulgaris, the Common Butterwort, another carnivorous plant with sticky but deadly leaves. This one has pretty violet flowers on long stems.

In some of the shadier areas under tree cover, there was this very graceful and beautiful ferny moss.

The moss literally swallows up anything that stays still long enough. This sad little pile of feathers is probably all that is left after an eagle or hawk devoured a kittiwake. There were also salmon remains, again likely dragged up by an eagle.

These were last year's cranberries. Both the bog cranberries and these bush cranberries manage to survive the Winter and are a little juicier and a litte alcoholic the following Spring. I was told by a botanist once that each berry had a days worth of vitamin C. I don't know if it's true but they're fun to pick.

The lichen were very profuse and I was told pioneer the rock prior to the mosses, ferns and trees. This particular type of lichen was called reindeer moss and was dried, painted and used to decorate train sets as false trees.

There were all kinds of lichen and moss. This lichen had bright orange fruiting bodies that made it look like some other worldly, alien forest.

Okay, I was obviously enjoying the tremendous variety of moss and lichens. So much so that I will need to get myself a moss and lichen identification guide to figure them all out at some point.

There was seemingly no stick too large for Happy to go fetch. If it was too big, Happy made it smaller. Talk about tenacity, this dog should be in business.

The cedar, at times, grew so think that everything below was in dense shade and was basically that ferny moss and soft undergrowth.

This In the undergrowth, there were also nice clumps of ferns and this funky bright yellow fungus that vibrated like jello when you shook it.