Elfin Cove
Elfin Cove was just a short trip from Inian Cove. On the way we went by the sea lion colony again to see if they were home. They were. There was on large bull off by himself, so we went in the skiff to go get a closer look at him. As we were leaving, he decided that he wanted a closer look at us. He jumped in the water, and started following us as we went back to Carolina. The last time he dove under the water he was about ten feet behind us. Sea lions look cute and cuddly until they are about ten feet away and gaining on you. The you realize that you have about 2000 pounds of carnivore headed your way. It's not a comfortable feeling. After he dove under, we didn't see him anymore. We did see several other sea lions catching fish. They would come up out of the water with a 50 pound salmon in their mouth and with one head shake, tear it apart spraying salmon guts all over. After that, none of them looked cute or cuddly. From there it was a short trip to Elfin Cove.
Elfin cove is a small fishing village with a year round population of about 50. It started out as a safe place for fishing boats to run for cover from storms on the Gulf of Alaska. There are no streets. The whole town is on stilts with boardwalks from place to place. The only way to get there is by boat or floatplane.
We were scheduled to leave about 5:00 the next day. While we were out walking around, John came running in and told us that Haines Airlines had called him and said that if we didn't leave in a half hour, we wouldn't leave that day. A very dense fog was forming, and they weren't sure that they could get another flight out. As it was, we had to leave Elfin Cove in the skiff and go to the next inlet over, to get to a clear enough spot to meet the floatplane. It was a real Alaskan send-off; floating around in the skiff listening for your plane. And then trying to get all of our luggage from a rubber skiff into the floatplane without ending up in the ocean.