Suuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnn!!!!!!
What a gorgeous location to wake up to, and as a bonus, the skies are clearing and the sun is shining.
First thing this morning (before coffee, even!) Kevin took the drone up to photograph the exposed shoal. The bright light and shadow areas made things tough in places, but some cool shots came out of it!
No one was in a hurry to leave this morning…I think all four of us were still anchored even at 8am!
Eventually, we headed north to Warm Springs Bay. Conditions in Chatham were beautiful…a little wind chop (15-20kts on the bow) and some swell and current pushing from the south, but overall just gorgeous.
We arrived at Warm Springs Bay to some room on the dock (hasn’t happened in years!)…Ithaka on the inside, Two’s Out on the outside, and Melissa Lynn rafted to Two’s Out to wait for the boat behind them that is leaving around noon.
There might have been enough room for Airship on the inside in front of Ithaka, but tomorrow morning is a minus tide (-2.1) and it’s a little rocky, and we just decided rather than get in there to find it out wasn’t big enough, etc., we’d just come anchor over in the bay we normally use because the dock is never open. 🙂 Best for the people who haven’t been here before to have the convenience of the dock and proximity to all things Warm Springs.
We took the dinghy over to the dock after lunch and the group was very happy with this stop. Some had already gone to the hot springs bath house and hiked the trail to the natural springs and the lake. We hung out and chatted a bit and then went for our own hike to the hot springs and lake.
There are SO MANY PHOTOS. I can’t help it on such a beautiful day. It’s amazing how fast we forget about the days and days of rain after about 6 hours looking like THIS.
The public bath house on the right…individual rooms with water from the hot springs piped directly to private tubs with a view. Pretty sweet!
Public picnic shelter:
One of the three private tub rooms:
The turn off from the trail to the natural hot springs is easy to miss:
The natural springs pools are perched on the edge of this incredible waterfall:
We continued the hike up to the lake, where there was a cool float plane beached which its owners enjoyed the hot springs (I think we heard they flew over from Sitka today…what a day for it!)
Russ and Missie from Selene Melissa Lynn enjoying the lakeside sun:
After the hike but before we headed back to Airship’s anchorage, we realized it was right at high tide and thought we’d see if we could get into Salt Lagoon…the entrance is basically a waterfall at anything but high slack, and we lucked out!
It’s not that big in the lagoon, but it’s gorgeous. At the shallow entrance we saw 6ft of depth (on a 13ft high tide). Here we are heading back out.
Back on Airship, Kevin took the drone up for some shots of the cove we’re anchored in, and some of the surrounding area:
In this shot below you can see the lagoon we went in by dinghy:
What a day! Tomorrow we’ll be heading up to Takatz Bay…a whoppin’ 9nm away.