Since 1999, Betty Sederquist has led photography tours to Southeast Alaska. A former resident of the state, she has traveled widely in Alaska and western Canada. Here's a description of her 2000 trip. For more information on future trips, please get in touch at betty@sederquist.com
Alaska 2000
How does one describe perfection? Our Alaska experience on the 50-foot vessel Delphinus hardly begins to come close to the real thing.
Slowly motoring from Petersburg to Sitka over a period of seven days during the first week in August, our six passengers and four crew experienced some of the best of this northern paradise during this special photography tour.
Southeast Alaska is truly a waterworld, with skies and forests usually dripping moisture. Rain is the norm, with 100 to 150 inches a year typical for this part of the coast. And the sea itself, entwined in numerous coves and passages and framed by majestic snow-capped mountains, is the core of this magical place. We came packed for rain, with stout boots and head-to-foot raingear. But for our trip we had sunshine almost every day. Often the sun would be fleeting, playing peekaboo amid rainbows and sunsets. The rains, when they came, were usually gentle.
Dressed in raingear on some days and t-shirts and shorts on others, we traipsed the beaches, lakes and forests of this wilderness. And it's a good thing we hiked, so as to offset the effects of cook Megan's rich and exquisitely prepared food aboard the Delphinus: king crab and lobster newburg, caviar munched during a glorious Alaska sunset that glistened on the spruce and hemlock rainforest that hung close over Neva Strait, lunch of hamburgers and gourmet sausages between bear-viewing adventures at Pack Creek. Dessert on one evening was literary trivia questions from naturalist Tom Johnson followed by cheesecake. Evening entertainment also consisted of exquisite sunsets, Robert Service readings or slide presentations.
