It's Good to be King

This by far is indisputably my most favorite picture that I took throughout my brief travel to Alaska.

Proudly perched on the top of his own self declared throne, located somewhere in the vicinity of 90 miles out in the Prince William Sound of southern Alaska, it was more than obvious that "King" owned this jagged, inhospitable rock sculpture as well as the two accompanying islands found near by.

While his harem of female sea lions engrossed themselves in barking in a primal attempt to protect their fertile breading grounds (at Kings behest of course) King barely exerted enough energy to pretend to care.

While female sea lions would fight tooth to flipper in order to defend the smallest nook of serrated, jagged, sharp rock, comparatively speaking, Kings domain consisted of a wide swath of flat welcoming rock exclusively reserved for the upper echelon of seal kingdom.

With his insatiable mass and domineering presence, not one junior sea lion in the local vicinity dared to challenge him.

We circled around this random rock formation in a twenty two foot aluminum fishing boat, gawking at this unreal environment. While we exchanged fleeting glances amongst each other, I felt that we were all thinking the same thing and discretely wondering if we were really in the United States proper.

Later on in the afternoon we witnessed two humpback whales performing their mating rituals while we circled around several gregarious porpoises swimming curiously around the boat.

Although fishing was a bit slow that day, I did manage to convince a small halibut to bite my hook. Please excuse the red faced look of utter constipation on my face as I had just gaffed a fish half the size of my body in a proud moment.

Later on, we decided to stop by one of the many islands in the Prince William Sound. These islands had the inviting look of paradise (as seen on TV). But after stepping off the boat with our waiters on, the bone chilling coldness of the salty water penetrated right through the neoprene protection and rested itself directly into my inner core . It was a startling realization that this environment played well on the eyes but was inhabitable. In any case, it was absolutely surreal.

This was undeniably the best part of my trip! I hope everyone in their life time gets to see something this amazing!!!