All it takes is ONE question. :)

Sunrise over the dock at Bartlett Cove.

The Baranof Wind: our home for eight hours.

Today we took our eight hour cruise of Glacier Bay. Our boat was the Baranof Wind, which had two levels to enclosed seating plus an open-air upper deck that was CHILLY. We got to see a lot of wildlife today, starting almost immediately after we left the dock. The first creatures we saw were sea otters floating on their backs with their heads and tails in the air to keep them out of the cold water. The water here, too, was almost a Caribbean blue. Our first stop to look at wildlife was Marble Island, where we finally got to see some puffins flitting around the rocks, and there were several sea lions lounging on the rocks. A little farther along where a little stream dumped into the bay, we saw four bears swimming and fishing for salmon. We saw silver salmon leaping out of the water, we saw the spray from humpback whales spouting, and we caught a glimpse of a bald eagle sitting on the shoreline.

Heading up Glacier Bay, luckily toward that patch of sunlight!

Sea lions relaxing on the tip of Marble Island.

Flocks of birds and sea lions on Marble Island.

More sea lions - there had to be hundreds of them!

Bears fishing for salmon in a little stream dumping in to the bay.

Another tour boat dwarfed by the mountains surrounding the bay.

The Baranof Wind was kind enough to provide binoculars for all the passengers. Gavin made me pose for this pic in the freezing cold wind of the top deck. I wasn't actually looking at anything. :)

Two distinct colors of water - the Caribbean blue of the bay water and the muddy brown from the silt of the glacier melt flowing into the bay.

At the end of the bay, we got to see both the Grand Pacific Glacier and the Margerie Glacier. The Grand Pacific Glacier was so dirty that I wouldn't have been able to tell it was a glacier if we hadn't been told. But it was the glacier that originally had carved out the entire 60 mile stretch of Glacier Bay. The Grand Pacific Glacier has been receding for a few hundred years. The Margerie Glacier, on the other hand, is still advancing and was a vibrant blue. We waited around the two glaciers for a while to see if they would calve (drop chunks of ice off into the water), but the biggest calving we saw was about the size of a snowball.

Our first view of the Margerie Glacier (on the left) and the Grand Pacific Glacier (on the right.)

The beautiful Margerie Glacier, an advancing tidal glacier.

The crystal-like ice of the Margerie Glacier.

Gavin and I in front of the Mendenhall Glacier - a bit windy... :)

The Grand Pacific Glacier: the one that originally carved the entire 60 miles of Glacier Bay, but now is receding and is so dirty I wouldn't have known it was ice!

On the way back we saw the Lamplugh and Reid glaciers, and also, my favorite part of the trip, we passed through a pod of killer whales! We got to see them coming up out of the water for air, and one even breached! (launched itself all the way out of the water)

The Lamplugh Glacier.

Wow, we actually managed to get a pic of the orca!

Gorgeous Glacier Bay at the end of our trip, water like glass...

After we got back we had a few hours before our flight, so we sat in the Glacier Bay Lodge lounge and relaxed for a bit. Upstairs from the lodge was the Glacier Bay Visitor's Center, which had several preserved/stuffed native wildlife, as well as the skeleton of a whale, which had vertebrae twice the size of my pelvis!

We loaded the shuttle to the airport, and we shared it with a family of Japanese tourists. The first few minutes of the ride were dead silent, and Gavin leaned over to me and whispered jokingly, "I wish the shuttle driver would shut up!" I made a bet with him that all I had to do was ask him one question and he would talk the whole rest of the way. I asked our driver, "Have you lived here your whole life" and I won the bet... By the time we reached the airport ten minutes later I knew about his ex wife, his new wife, where he was from, that he had a sailboat, that he was building his own house with his wife in Gustavus after living mostly on the boat, and more! I have observed that in general Alaska people are very talkative, but they will not say a word until you ask them ONE question to bring them out. :)

The shuttle dropped us off at the airport, which was barely more than a barn with a desk and a coffee shop inside. :) When our plane arrived, I asked the pilot if I could sit in the copilot seat, and he said yes! The flight back to Juneau was even prettier than the flight to Gustavus! We flew THROUGH the snow-capped mountains, not above or beside them. Also, another interesting fact about flying in Alaska; people can get their pilot's license at the age of FOURTEEN, and that is two years younger than they can get a driver's license! That explains how our pilot on this flight looked like he was about twenty... and it also makes Gavin and I want to get our pilot's licenses; if a fourteen year old can fly a plane, surely we can! :)

Flying through the mountains.

When we got back to Juneau, we headed back into downtown for dinner. We ate at the Twisted Fish, which was right on the cruise ship dock. I was really tired of salmon, so I ordered halibut tacos, which were actually pretty good. Gavin had cedar plank salmon that was definitely served on a cedar plank, but it definitely wasn't COOKED on the cedar plank - the distinct flavor of the plank was conspicuously absent. I guess they figure the tourists won't know the difference... :) After dinner we walked back through the town, which had gotten decidedly seedier in the darker hours after all the tourists were safely tucked back into their ships. We headed back to our hotel and safely tucked ourselves in to prepare for our dog sledding adventure tomorrow!

Flying through the mountains.

 

Posted with Blogsy