Alaska # 6: Icy Strait Point

Our next stop was Icy Strait Point!  I actually didn't take ANY pictures at this stop!  I don't know why... I was just busy enjoying it.  I really loved this stop! It's near the town of Hoonah, and it's Alaska Native owned-and-operated, and all of the profits from this stop directly support the community of Hoonah, which is Alaska's largest Native Tlingit village.  We were the only cruise ship there, so it was actually really quiet and peaceful!

Kevin and I signed up for some kayaking, which was AMAZING!!!!  It was so much fun.  I absolutely loved it, and it was beautiful and fun and peaceful, and we saw about a million bald eagles, and we also saw a bald eagle nest.  That was in the afternoon though, so in the morning we were able to spend a lot of time wandering around Icy Strait Point, and we checked out some of the shops which had a lot of locally-made items.

My dad signed up for the zipline at Icy Strait Point!  It's North America's longest and highest zipline. He LOVED it, and we were able to find my mom and be there when my dad finished up!  We went and grabbed a beer with him after that.  When we were walking out of the restaurant after our beers, this lady started yelling and pointing at the water so we all turned to look, and we saw SO many whales!!  It was amazing!!  I don't think any of us got pictures of it (we were all just amazed and we were staring at them watching them), but it was SO unbelievably cool.  Here's almost exactly what it looked like: 

This is what they looked like!  I think there were 4 of them though.  It was SO cool. 

And this is a pic I found online of the zipline at Icy Strait Point!  This is what my dad did! 

And here's a pic of the kayaks we were in!  They're the closed top kayaks, so that was really interesting!  And Kevin sat in the back and I sat in the front, so he did all the steering with the foot pedals. 

Such a fun day!!  It felt like we had the whole place to ourselves!  It was really quiet and beautiful.