This was by far the most spectacular day of the cruise, and we didn't even get off the boat. Glacier Bay is a national park and the ship just goes into it, stopping in different channels for us to enjoy the view.
For us the day started with waking up around 8:00 AM, opening the curtains, stepping into he verandah and enjoying beautiful scenery. Tall snow-capped mountains, evergreen forests, meadows and beaches of shale and pebbles. After a satisfying breakfast, Sharon and I made our way to the aft deck wearing sweaters, coats, gloves and hats to protect us from the 40-50 degree outside temperature. We found chairs, sat down with our cameras and binoculars and began to enjoy the view.
Soon we were seeing small pieces of ice floating in the water, a sure sign we were approaching glaciers. By 10:30 the ship had stopped in front of the Margerie glacier. It was impressive, Big, multi-colored, you could see the whites and blues of the ice and the back and gray of all the rock it brought along with it on its way down to the coast. It looked big, but I bet it would have seemed bigger if we had been able to get closer to it, and not see it from the 8th deck of a cruise-ship.
At some point during our stay a bunch of kayakers showed up, dropping by to enjoy the calving glacier. that gave us a better sense of the size of the behemoth, but they too did not get too close. The park ranger (apparently we picked one up as we entered the park) told us it was over 600 ft thick, which makes it tall indeed.
There was another glacier facing it, the Grand Pacific Glacier. This one is bigger and wider (about tow miles wide), but it is retreating and no longer touches the water. It also looked black because of all of the silt. Had we not been told so, I would not have thought it was a glacier.
Sharon and I went down to our verandah to enjoy the glacier in some privacy. The view was slightly different, but in the silence of our room what really captivated us was the crackling of the glacier as it shifted and moved. There was almost constant noise of something breaking, sometimes close, sometimes far. It gave us hope that we would see some major calving, but we were disappointed in that: we did see several parts break off and plunge into the bay, but none bigger than a person (it's hard to judge, though, given how far away we were).
After one hour Jean Claude started moving again, taking us to see other parts of the bay. We visited two more glaciers. At one of them I saw the most spectacular calving so far, but it was far away and could only be properly enjoyed through the binoculars.
By late afternoon we were on our way to Sitka, our next destination. The show that night was "Songs of the South", performed by the same people who brought us "Love on Broadway." Not my kind of music, but still a fun evening.
Wildlife sightings: 2 bald eagles, 1 brown bear, numerous gulls and puffins.
Pictures can be found here.
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