Alaska 4: Glacier Bay

The last two full days of the cruise were spent at sea in "scenic cruising."

We were told that at 6:30 a.m. on the morning of August 4, 2016, we would be entering the area with the best chance of seeing whales. So we all got up early and stumbled out into the cold morning.

Unfortunately, this is all we could see, as the fog was as thick as pea soup.

We stuck it out for quite a while, and about all we saw was this glimpse of what was probably a sea lion.

But after an hour (and after going for some hot chocolate and breakfast), the fog finally broke (and then came back, and then broke again), and the rest of the day was perfect weather for glacier watching. The group played a lot of games that day, though Steve Duke and I spent much of the day outside enjoying the view and taking too many pictures. Here are a few of them.

Glacier Bay National Park

Being a bay, there wasn't much in the way of waves, and the wind appeared to be calm that day, too, making for wonderful reflections as we slid between the  mountains.

About 9 a.m. we arrived at John Hopkins glacier. A ranger from the National Park Service had joined us onboard for the day, and he gave a lecture over the ship's speakers so that everyone on deck or looking out the windows could hear.

John Hopkins Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska

The mountains were spectacular. Here you can see John Hopkins Glacier overlooked by Mt. Orville (with Mt. Wilbur off to the "Wright". Oh, boy. But it's true).

Mt. Orville over John Hopkins Glacier

Off to the side, we could see some glaciers that don't make it all the way to the water.

And if I zoomed way in, I could see some people camping along the shore. I don't see kayaks, so they must have hiked in there.

I really wanted to sit in this hot tub at the back of the ship while watching the view, but the time was never quite right. Too many pictures to take and board games to play. What was one to do?

John Hopkins Glacier below Mt. Orville and Mt. Wilbur

 Here's a lose-up of the edge of the glacier, where you can see the blue tint where the light shines through, due to the high pressure the ice was subjected to. One thing I learned is that glaciers aren't a "frozen river", but, rather, a "river of ice". That is, the ice cracks and shifts and compresses and pushes in order to slowly flow down the hill towards the ocean.

On the way out from that glacier, we saw sea otters swimming along from time to time. They seem so casual, floating along on their backs.

This picture gives you an idea of how near we were to the shore and how steep the mountains are. It looks from here like we're going to scrape the edge! We had a few hundred yards to spare, of course, but it was strange to look up from a ship and see land.

We went by the Norwegian Pearl, "like two ships passing in the day."

Here are a couple more otters. I thought it was cool how far out of the water the one could be when "standing up".

Then we approached the Marjorie Glacier, where the ship halted for an hour and even spun around a time or two so that people could get a look from every side of the ship.

Approaching Marjorie Glacier

In this close-up, you can see water pouring out of a hole near the bottom of the glacier.

Little waterfall from beneath Marjorie Glacier

This ice cave was cool.

The entire glacier moves forward at about 5 feet a day. The tide goes up and down about 20 feet per day, wearing away at the bottom. And there is a sheer drop-off in front of the glacier that is hundreds of feet deep. All this means that eventually everything on the front has to crack and fall off, which is called "calving".

They nature lady on the ship said that often they are there for an hour and don't see any calving. But we lucked out and saw at least 5 good ones, and I caught two of them on video. Here's a video of the event above:

The tops of the glacier were an interesting mix of jagged, cracked ice, smoothed by weather.

It seemed that everyone on the ship was on deck checking things out.

When calving happened, it was often accompanied by a deep cracking sound, which was awesome.

Steven Elmes caught stills of this massive hunk of ice falling into the water. It was 5 stories tall.

The ship did a 360 so that people could see the glacier from every window and deck.

I thought this looked like some sort of hooded guardian.

This was the biggest calving event, and I happened to be videoing when it started.

And here's the aftermath (with seagulls wondering if anything tasty got stirred up in the ruckus).

Selfie-time!

The seagulls loved the little icebergs.

The rest of the afternoon was spent enjoying the splendid views.

Waaaayyy out there is the tail of a humpback whale.

And here the whale is waving good-bye.

Meanwhile, games continued in full force.

I was enthralled with how pretty the day was.

Those two flat islands are brown because they're both completely covered in sea lions.

We also saw lots more otters throughout the day, frolicking in the bay.

As we departed Glacier Bay National Park, the ranger who had spoken to us throughout the day hopped on a little boat and off they went.

That night was our other formal night.

And then there was a show called the "British Invasion" where they played a bunch of Beatles and stuff that came from the U.K.

Linette didn't make it through the whole thing.

And, since you probably feel about like that, too, we'll take a break there.