About 40 miles from Pilot Point, Alaska, there is a place called Yantarni Bay. It is the most spectacular natural paradise I have ever seen.
There are two sides of the Alaska peninsula. One side has perfectly green islands with beaches surrounded by a deep blue sea. On the other side the peninsula is gray, and though beautiful in its own way, there are no waterfalls or rivers from the hills.
The secret to getting to Yantami Bay is making your way beyond the flats, across the river, over the mountains, along the sandy beach around the hills and into the little bay. Your eyes will light up and your mind will go crazy trying to understand what you are seeing; you will wish you could spend eternity here. A great view of the mountain and a beautiful river in front of the mountains make it seem like a fairy tale, but it is real.
Yantarni Bay is a part of Alaska unknown to many people. So many surprises exist in its tidal pools. An amazing waterfall cascades onto enormous rocks covered in barnacles.
When you stand quietly and listen, the barnacles sound like a billion people snapping their fingers and whispering to each other. You can also hear waves crashing on the sandy beach. The waves are so big and beautiful that when they hit the breaking point, you wish they would go on forever so you could watch them making the amazing shapes with specks of water going everywhere.
Many creatures and plants look beautiful under water, but once you pull them out, they are just long strands of ugly brown sea grass. Jellyfish are beautiful with their many different colors, but when you touch them, they turn inside out to protect themselves.
In some spots so many snails cram into one little tide pool that it’s as if you are looking at a huge bowl of snails: it is all part of a natural paradise. The snails are shades of purple and as small as eraser tips. If you stick your arm in there, the water will reach your elbow and you’ll still be stretching for the bottom.
The beach before the tide pool is perfect; faultless hills to climb surround it. The endless driftwood piled at their base frames a great picture of the tide pool below the rock cliff. On the cliff is the beginning of the waterfall and an enormous eagle’s nest.
In an amazing place like Yantarni Bay, you would think everyone would be building houses so they could be close to the paradise, but something so perfect has to stay natural or it won’t be a paradise. ^