Glacier Bay

Glacier Bay began with the fog horn and not being able to see a thing to bright sunshine with beautiful blue skies but freezing temperatures and biting winds. Everything here is so beautiful that it is hard to know where to begin to tell you about the beauty here. We picked up our naturalist/speaker before we were able to see them in the thick fog when we entered Glacier Bay National Park at 6:30 AM this morning. It was a similar day to the Panama Canal as we were on our own balcony and then running out to the bow ( which was down our hall across the stairwell to the port side door), downstairs, upstairs and exhausted by the time the day was over but it was so worth it. We were first told there was a bear feasting on a whale carcass on the port side…by the time we ran from our balcony to the port side bow we had missed it. We did stay out there for awhile but it was so windy and cold (I had a long sleeve shirt, fleece vest, jacket, scarf and gloves and I was still freezing after just a few minutes) so we went back to the cabin and the protection of the balcony. They also have nice wool blankets in the cabin for us to use on the balcony while out there. This scenery is beautiful and the color of the water in the glacier areas is like nothing you will see anywhere else except at glaciers. We didn’t see whales here but did see the playful sea lions and lots of birds. Kay even caught a photo of a gull pulling a good sized fish from the water and other birds chasing him trying to take it away! We experienced “calving” at the Johns Hopkins Glacier which is when huge pieces of the ice break off and fall into the sea and make a thunderous noise..it was amazing to see and hear. Even the clouds were beautiful and Kay and I would describe what we thought the icebergs, bergie bits (small chunks of ice that float by) and clouds resembled. It was a fun day and when we dropped the naturalist/park ranger back off at the pilot boat at 4:30 PM yesterday, everyone on their balconies waved to her and the ship’s captain saluted them by blowing the horn 3 times as they pulled away and we headed back out into the Pacific. We had reservations at the Pinnacle Grill tonight which is the “pay” steakhouse. Kay has a coupon because we bought the wine package that we get this free. It was just ok and the service was not what we would have expected. The dining room service on this ship has left a lot of room for improvement. Kay thinks it may be because we are not in assigned seating but that was not our fault as we were wait listed. They need to open more assigned seating since they have more people that want it rather than do it this way and have the service be so slow. The first night was fine but it went downhill after that. We ended the day the same as it started with the fog horn but we have added rain to the mixture. We also get back to our cabin to find that Luki our cabin steward skipped our cabin on the one night we really needed him so we said it was like camping out. We had no clean glasses, no towels, we had no diet Cokes left in the frig, no ice and it was so hot in here we had to sleep with the door open most of the night until it got so windy I thought it was going to blow the flowers off the table.

We woke up this morning to rain, fog and rough seas. There are a lot of things going on today and we haven’t decided what we are going to do yet. Tomorrow is Anchorage and we still haven’t decided what we will do there. I hope you enjoy the photos.