Afternoon Paddle

Took off work early and headed out the inlet towards the Behm Canal.

View heading out of George Inlet

Gem Cove

Right across the inlet is a small protected area called Gem Cove. It’s an awesome place to kayak and snorkel through, because it’s shallow with lots of wildlife! Although no gems have been found there in recent history, I’m always hopeful! It’s great too if you’re just going for a short run.

One of the entrances at high tide

Pretty : )

It was a beautiful day out…too bad LaMont was working and not me!

-Tes

More of our Alaskan Sunrise Paddle

Yes Tessa dragged me out of bed way too early and yes she had to keep telling me to speed things up or we would miss the sunrise, but it was worth it.

Well worth getting out of bed early.

We waited for what seemed like forever for that sun to come up over the mountains.

And when it finally did all I could think was how lucky I was to be out paddling with my best friend in such a beautiful place!

~~Alaskan Sunrise~~

There is nothing more beautiful than a sunrise that reflects off the ocean as it rises over the mountains in Alaska. Especially at 3:30 am in the middle of the summer! Yes, I dragged LaMont’s sleepy butt out of bed to watch a two hour sunrise, but it was more than worth it! We paddled out to the middle of the inlet and sat in silence as the sun slowly came up over the mountains.

We are going to do a week long “sunrise” theme, so there are more pictures to come, I promise!

Probably around 4:00 am – the beginning

There’s no colors, but this picture is so peaceful to me

-Tes

The Salmon Run at Herring Cove

The end of June to the middle of July are both awesome times to be in Alaska because this is the primary time that the King Salmon swim upstream to spawn. About 4-5 miles down the inlet from the lodge is where Herring Cove is nestled – a small cove that happens to be located in front of a king salmon hatchery. So as you may know, once salmon are ready to spawn they will head back to the place they were born to lay there eggs and die. Because of this, herring cove is an awesome place to see vast amounts of wildlife, including eagles and bears. And of course, the ideal way to view them is in a kayak!

Here are a few shots that we got of our adventure…enjoy!

Immature eagle scoping out some fish

Stopping to admire all the wildlife

All those little dots are eagles!

-Tes

Mahoney Falls

So while LaMont was stuck in the office on a beautiful alaskan day, I took my cousin Tim, and co-worker Molly on a short paddle down to Mahoney Falls. This waterfall is huge and feeds into a fresh water lake near the ocean called Mahoney Lake – a location with is ideal for Sockeye Salmon to spawn! Too bad we didn’t catch any. Still a great paddle!

Wow, I am glad that I wasn’t the one doing paperwork this day!

You can barely see it, but the falls are behind Molly!

And this is the stream where the Sockeye run

-Tes

There is always a rainbow somewhere!

As many of you have noted we lost several of our older postings and a few of the new ones. Unfortunately we have been unable to recover the lost posts and need to start over. We will do our best to duplicate the ones that were lost and will be posting a new entry from our 3am sunrise paddle very soon!

Just another rainbow out in front of the Lodge!

Kayaking with the Lady Crystal

So a good friend of LaMont’s called one day and offered to come and pick us up in his yacht and take us out! We went down George Inlet and LaMont decided to test out his new greendland paddle – custom made by Joe O’Blenis. Of course I had to test it out, and it was amazingly lightweight and felt great!

LaMont showing off — Check out that edge control!!

LaMont next to the Lady Crystal

And maybe there was a little too much edge control? Or not enough… either way, it’s an awesome picture

Playing with the Orcas!

We went out kayaking one day, trying to make it to the Behm Canal, and ran into some orcas feeding on salmon! There was a mom, a dad, and two little calves who decided to play with us for over an hour. It was pretty amazing, they swam under our kayaks and kept coming up behind us and spraying us, which in turn caused LaMont to scream like a little girl…But they were less then two feet away – it was the experience of a lifetime!

Introducing the Newest Member of the lamont2020 Team!

Hi! My name is Tessa Minicucci and I have been officially titled as LaMont’s assistant! In other words, I am the one that takes all the pictures and does all the updates while LaMont just sits back and looks good. Thanks for all your support, there are many pictures from the summer to come soon!