Monday 28th of July: No one shall say the Alaskan’s don’t get up in the morning

We had a good nights sleep, at least until the humming of outboard engines started about 0300. Alaskans certainly get up early in the morning.

No alarms went off and there were no tracks in the intra tidal zone in the morning.

We planned for a slow start after a long yesterday. And we planned to go back up to check on the carcass. From the kayaks. Then a small boat with one person on board came from across the fjord and steered right to the beach where the carcass was, taking some caution on the last fifty metres in. He (?) was there for about twenty minutes, then left the same way. We’ll never know what he was up to. When we paddled up the carcass was still there. Was it some sort of bait? Why no ravens? In any case it certainly was depressing and we had miles to paddle. We left without further investigation.

We will investigate when we get to Juneau

Otherwise it was a glorious day to paddle, no dry suits and a couple of dips during lunch break.

After lunch the currents turned against us and it took a bit of effort. Our planned camp sites were partly not as good as they looked on googles and partly “occupied” by leisure boats. So we ended up with a 36 km paddle, instead of the planned 25 or so.

We eventually found an OK site, no morning sun, but no problem: tomorrow will be a wet day anyway.

Aa bonus the first whale of the day appeared just before we went ashore. Otherwise this would have been the first day without a sighting.

Wilderness is ending.

Tomorrow we must cross Chatham strait, which is a busy shipping lane and find a campsite near Auke Bay, without trespassing onto private property. New type of challenge..