Peter and I decided to try a new format for our travel log. For domestic trips, we will post a photo+story of something interesting that happens each day (or almost every day). Yes, dad, you may finally get your wish, I will attempt to write shorter posts.

Yesterday, we witnessed the Bore Tide at Alaska’s Turnagain Arm. It’s a serious thing. One woman was very concerned that we were leaving one of the view points too early and that we would miss it (it was 3:30, and the bore tide was not scheduled to make its appearance for another 2 hours). When we arrived at our selected viewpoint there was already a crowd of people, waiting in their warm cars, with eyes glued on the water. I was getting ready to rush out at the predicted time, but Mark told me to slow my engines. Bore tides are so slow moving, they make tortoises look like speed racers.

A few hearty, and perhaps insane, Alaskans will muscle their way out into the freezing cold water with paddle boards and try to surf the wave. Wave as in singular. The bore tide is one wave, that moves slowly down the Turnagain Arm. It moves so slowly, you can get in your car and drive to the next viewpoint in enough time to see it come back again. If you are really committed to viewing this phenomenon, you can can jump in and out of your car preceding its arrival for 5 1/2 hours – the time it takes the tide to travel the 50 mile length of the arm.

You may be wondering, “what on earth is a bore tide?” There are only 60 of them in the world, and Alaska’s is the only one that occurs so far north and is bordered by mountains. It is also one of the biggest. It is created when there is a rush of seawater into a shallow inlet from a broader bay. And while they happen everyday, the magnificent ones are created by extreme low tides by a full or new moon. Sometimes Alaska’s bore tide can reach up to 10 feet tall, and races down the inlet at 15 miles per hour. We estimate our little tide was about 3 feet tall, as it crawled itself up the inlet along the Seward Highway.