We drove our motorhome across Alaska for THIS!

We had one goal, drive 130 miles making it to Resurrection Bay for the very last Orca Quest tour of the season. Spoiler, we made it but on that boat we saw something so rare that most people who take this exact cruise will never see their entire lives. All right, we are headed out from Anchorage. We are going to spend some time in Anchorage, just not right now. We are headed over to Seward, Alaska. The drive from Anchorage to Seward is widely considered one of the most scenic drives in all of North America and we were about to do it in our four travel motor coach. 127 miles, the road hugging the dramatic shoreline of the Chernokin Arm on one side and the Chugach Mountains rising straight up on the other. Most people take about eight hours to complete this drive because there are just so many things worth stopping for. We made it in three because right now we have a one-track mission. Get to Seward, set up camp and be ready the next morning for the very last Orca Quest tour of the season. We waited until the very last possible minute to tell the kids what was going on because honestly we really weren't sure if we were going to make it in time. We should wait? No, no we shouldn't wait. We have to at least wait for Ezra. Daddy's going to tell us. Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad. Come on, come on, come on, come on. What'd you do dad? I broke the tripod. I booked an Orca Quest excursion. If you haven't met us yet, hi we're the Kramers, a family of six traveling full-time in a Class A diesel pusher exploring this continent from the massive windows of our remodeled four travel motor coach. The road getting to Alaska was long and a little bumpy at times. We have had our fair share of breakdowns and delays but guess what? We made it. We are in Alaska and we plan to bring you with us for every mile of it so subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss any of this wild adventure. Our cruise was to embark the next morning so it was time to get there, get camp set up and enjoy every bit of daylight we had left before a very early wake-up call and we found what might be the best RV campground in the entire Kenai Peninsula, the Seward KOA. Chad got us all hooked up while I checked out the campground. I'm staying at the KOA in Seward so Chad's out there hooking everything up but this place is amazing. If you come to Alaska you absolutely have to spend a lot of time in Seward. I had to come show you this though because this view is incredible. That tree right there has an eagle's nest in it. Let's see if I can get closer. He's not home right now. I don't know where he's at. Everybody keeps saying they see him. I haven't seen him. Oh my god! Wait! He is up there! He's there, Chad! Look! You can't see him because it's too far away but he's there. He's on a branch right under his nest. That's an amberjack. That's one of the babies. No, there's no way. That's a baby. That sucker's huge. Hold this. I'm gonna go grab the long lens. He actually has two nests which is kind of cool or she. I don't really know if he or she. One of them's there and then one of them's on one of those trees over there and it flies back and forth. I'm not really sure why but he is perched up there right now. He's so beautiful. He's looking right at me. You get a good picture? I'm videoing him. I want him to fly. I need the tripod. This is gonna be bad. They're gonna be like this is the worst nature photographer on the planet. I'm like I'll get you the tripod. Thank you. All right, here you go. He might be coming back. He's hopping trees. I've wanted to see a bald eagle in the wild my entire life. My grandmother used to talk about them. She grew up in the hills of South Dakota and when she spoke about seeing eagles as a young girl she never described them like an ordinary bird. She described them in a way that you would describe something you're not entirely sure you're allowed to see. Something sacred. Something rare enough that only a lucky few ever get to witness firsthand. I used to wonder if she was exaggerating but standing there watching these majestic creatures circle above the campground riding the updraft as the fog rolled in off the mountains behind them I understood this was never just a bird to me. It felt like something closer to magic. The kind of moment that seems to arrive out of nowhere without any warning as if the land itself decided that we had earned it somehow. It was just like the pristine white belugas we caught surfacing on the drive down. Just like the mountains that have been hiding behind the clouds all morning and chose that exact moment to reveal themselves. That is what Alaska does. It doles out its magic quietly and only to people paying close enough attention to notice. We actually stood there a long time and I remember thinking this trip, this trip's about to be something. We woke up to sun hitting crisp snow-capped mountains. It was time to go. Let's go see some whales. Let's go. Hey everybody. Oh you need your hood? All right there you go. Hood it up. Let's go. Let's hope mommy remembered her jacket. I remembered all yours. Seward, Alaska sits at the head of Resurrection Bay. A fjord so dramatic that it looks almost staged. It's a charming coastal town, a serious fishing hub, and one of the very best places in the entire state to spot whales during the summer months. Alaska is a premier destination for spotting orcas which roam the state's waters year-round. The peak viewing season though runs from May through September with the highest concentrations found in southeast Alaska. Guess where we are? Whales are actually very social creatures. I'm not like Facebook social but like yeah no they don't have their little cell phones but they're very social meaning they love interacting with other whales. The resident whales highly social traveling in large stable pods of 10 to 15 individuals and they feed exclusively on fish especially salmon. So if Grayson was an orca he'd be a resident orca. Highly social and loves feeding on salmon. Six species call these protected waters home for at least part of the year. Humpback and orcas are what you most likely see in summer. Gray whales pass through in the spring and then there are three species that almost nobody gets lucky enough to see. The fin whale, the sei whale, and the minke. The sei whale is critically endangered and stays almost exclusively in the deep offshore water. The minke, the smallest of the baleen whales, famously shy and the fin whale prefers that same deep open water. Rarely coming close enough to shore for anyone to see it at all. Seeing any of these three is not something that you plan for. It's something that just happens if you're fortunate enough. My fingers were crossed for the orcas. We have chosen to do the orca quest. Orca quest. I'm just praying that I don't get seasick today because that's generally a thing. But you know I took an extra B vitamin in hopes that it'll keep the nausea to a minimum. And when you're looking out on the water what you're looking for is uh you're looking for the air because they'll come up they are mammals so they breathe air. They have live babies. I don't think they nurse their young though. Do they nurse? I'm gonna pick that one up. We're gonna ask google. Is that a classification of being mammal? Do orcas nurse? They have mammary glands hidden inside of skin folds called mammary slits. So they absolutely do nurse. Wow. Orca milk is thick like toothpaste so it doesn't dissolve in water. That's interesting. It is. So like if they miss it they can just like run behind and grab it. Fifteen dollars per space north lot. Um right here it looks like you might be able to use this one and then back. Oh no it's a yellow curb. Never mind Ellie. Just kidding. Even though we were basically last in line we got pretty lucky. Table 20 down on this main deck. You might have some new friends to make a table 20. Actually scratch that. It is a table of six and you guys are a group of six. So you do have that table all to yourself. There was a table right in the front of the boat for all six of us and I'm not gonna lie to you I was a little nervous. Every boat I've been on since I was a child I've gotten seasick on. Dramamine does absolutely nothing. My dad gave me some advice before we left. Eat pretzels and drink coke all day you'll be fine. Well I guess we're about to find out if he's right. The cruise out was cold and wet and breathtaking. Our clear morning had folded into clouds and mist by the time that we had cleared the harbor but you know what it didn't feel like a loss. It actually added something. The mountains surrounding this bay held their secrets close revealing only pieces of themselves through the fog as if daring us to and then the captain spotted something. Yes we're going to turn and parallel this and we'll be off our port the left hand side. Now humpback whales are massive. They can get to 55 feet in length and weigh just under one ton per foot. All crowded together like sardines in a metal can we shivered along with the rest of the crowd and we waited. The vessel we were on was a high-speed catamaran carrying somewhere between 150 and 175 passengers. It's a genuinely more affordable way to experience the Kenai fjords but we learned quickly that affordability comes with a trade-off. My kids were taking turns at the rail just to catch a glimpse of anything. We stepped back so that they could see and that's the whole point of any of this right? It's why we sold everything and moved into a motorhome so that our kids could stand at a rail and watch for something wild to move through the water in front of them. If our turn was meant to come it would come so we retreated into the warmth of the cabin and we waited for the next signal. There are a couple of real perks to a group cruise like this. They hand the kids activity books to keep them occupied between sightings and there's also the snack bar and the restrooms to consider. Whales aren't the only thing living in resurrection bay and I can't come to a full stop here but there's three separate harbor seals on the rocks at our three o'clock position. Oh there he is! There's two! Oh my gosh! He's like laying on his back. You're just as likely to see sea otters floating on their backs, dull porpoise cutting through the wake, harbor porpoise, stellar sea lions, harbor seals hold out on the rocks and puffins darting along the cliffs like they're late for something important. Most of the kids were tired of waiting in the cold so they went inside while Grayson and I refused to give up. You're gonna have to mute the mic if it has a little bit of wind noise because we accidentally just lost the little cat off the edge. It is quite windy. I've learned though that if I stay really close to Grayson it's less of a windstorm because over here I'm like wow we're getting into the west but this is so cool. Literally it's freezing but it's beautiful. We're passing a bunch of mountains right through the fjords. There's a ton of snow up on the mountains. You can see waterfalls up on the top in the distance. Grayson thinks they're frozen. He has the big binoculars. So far we've seen a few sea lions, seagulls, uh no no sea lions, otters. Oh my bad, otters. I was actually taking Sloane to the bathroom when they saw it so I saw nothing but it was a small little otter and he was laying on his back going this backstroke. This water I bet is so cold. Oh my gosh yeah. So we're gonna be very careful today to not lose any kids over the side because that would really be terrible but I'm gonna go back and warm up for a few minutes. How about you? Uh okay. All right let's head inside. Along the coastline we got to watch stellar sea lions stacked on the rocks like they were arguing over territory and puffins bobbing along the surface like little clowns of the sea but then the freezing paid off. A pod of humpback whales was spotted just ahead. Here's a tip if you ever want to take a whale tour in Resurrection Bay. Watch the seagulls. A swarm of them circling low over the water almost always indicates that something is happening beneath the surface and this time it was. Oh there he goes. He just dived. You see it Freya? Nice. I'm like forgetting to film because it's so cold. Mom there's two. I see them. They're spraying. Okay looks like the whole group did change direction so we're going to turn now and then follow along with this one's started sign. You see it? Do you see it? I see it. You see it? Yeah. Is that the wind or motion? The wind is blowing in my eyes Chad. I see that. We got to watch this entire pod bubble feed. Here's what it means because it's one of the most remarkable things you will ever witness in the wild. A group of humpbacks will dive together beneath a school of fish and then working in perfect coordination they'll spiral upwards blowing a continuous ring of bubbles as they rise. The wall of bubbles becomes a trap a shrinking cage of confusion that pushes the fish into a tight panicked ball near the surface and then on some signal that none of us will ever fully understand the entire pod lunges up at once mouths wide open swallowing thousands of fish in a single coordinated breath. It takes trust and it takes communication between animals that can't speak the way that we do and watching it unfold just 20 feet from your boat is something that none of us are ever going to forget. And just when I had almost given up hope on seeing those orcas we saw something else. A fin whale was spotted close to the rocks. The lady said that the fin whale is extremely hard to find because it likes to stay really deep inside the water. Oh is it hard to study? Yeah. They don't know a whole lot about it huh? Yeah. The elusive fin whale. I didn't understand what a big deal it was until later but then I started reading about them. The fin whale is the second largest animal on the entire planet. 80 tons that's roughly 160,000 pounds of animal moving through the water with a grace that makes no sense for something that size. Unlike humpbacks fin whales tend to avoid shallow bays and coastlines altogether. They prefer the deep open water they rarely breach and when they do surface you get a single tall blow followed by the briefest glimpse of a small curved dorsal fin before they vanish again. They remain listed as vulnerable worldwide and endangered here in the United States and somewhere beneath all of that they're still singing. Fin whales produce some of the lowest and most powerful sounds of any living creature on earth. We had no idea sitting on that deck just how rare this animal in front of us actually was and guess what we actually got to listen to them. They will drop a microphone down below the boat and turn off the engines so that you can hear these majestic creatures communicating with each other. It's a sound that I cannot describe to you you have to hear it with your own ears. For some reason these sounds went straight through my soul and I can't even explain why. Standing there watching my kids listening to something that ancient that enormous moving through the dark water beneath us I felt something close to reverence a kind of quiet humility that I wasn't expecting to find on a tour boat crowded with 150 strangers but this moment I knew we had driven thousands of miles for this moment. I was still sitting there wrapped in my own thoughts when a squeal of excitement from my kids snapped me back to the present. A pod of dolls porpoise had surfaced not 20 feet from where we had just witnessed the fin there's a whale like right here porpoise they're like dolphins they're like dolphins right very social oh my gosh we were on a roll otters humpback whales a fin whale stellar sea lions puffins and now dolls porpoise this is insane the kids celebrated the only way they knew how with an impromptu little shanty about a shipwreck belted out right there on deck like we were part of the we didn't see orcas on this cruise and somehow that didn't feel like a disappointment it just felt like unfinished business this little taste of resurrection bay was nowhere near enough to satisfy what brought us here in the first place if anything watching a fin whale surface where we least expected it listening to a whale song rise up from the depths beneath us standing shoulder to shoulder with my kids as they waited their turn on the rail all of it just confirms something that we already suspected some things are worth chasing even when you don't catch them the first time if you haven't subscribed yet i really hope you'll join the journey as we keep exploring this beautiful state next week we're taking you deeper into the heart of seward incredible seafood mile one of the iditarod trail the kenai fjords national park and an ice field that you can reach right off the highway and guess what that's just the beginning thank you so much for coming along we'll see you next week there once was a ship that put to sea in the name of the ship was the billiard team the winds blew hard about it down blow me pulley boys blow soon may the to bring us sugar and tea and rum one day when the talking is done we'll take our leave and go