We were up about 5am today as we came into Bartlett Cove to
pick up Stephanie our Park Ranger and Faith our Huna Tlingit cultural interpreter
for the day. Jon came on the intercom with our wakeup call at 6:30am. There was
fruit and Danish in the lounge from 6am on. Breakfast was at 7am. We went to
the dining room. I will wish for yogurt and coffee with hot cocoa mix in the
lounge from now on and that would be perfect. We’ll see. We shared our table
with Lynette, the Orbridge expedition leader onboard with us as the leader of
the half-chartered sailing. Clay and I were out front as we set off from the
Glacier Bay Lodge dock and saw some sea otters, a horned puffin and a humpback
whale. Sadly, it was too dark yet for any photos but it was very exciting. Horned puffins have white bellies and tufted puffins have all black bodies with little colored tufts on either side of their heads.
We sailed up Glacier Bay and spent about a half hour at
South Marble Island which was covered with Steller sea lions, kittiwakes,
cormorants, pigeon guillemots, common murres, murrelets and then at sea some tufted puffins and
horned puffins. There was also a humpback whale and an orca. As we left we
passed a raft of cavorting sea lions porpoising and jumping and rolling around.
Stephanie and Faith gave talks in the lounge and then we
pulled into Tidal Inlet to look for bears. We saw more puffins and lots of
other birds, 3 bald eagles, one grizzly bear and a handful of mountain goats on
Gloomy Knob as we exited. Also on Gloomy
Knob we saw a juvenile bald eagle fledging from the nest to the ground and then
to a lower tree’s top where he stretched his wings. Good stuff.
Now we are
sailing past Jon Hopkins glacier in the distance heading for Margerie Glacier,
before we start back down Glacier Bay. Jon just announced that lunch would be
delayed 30 minutes so we can go into Russell Cut to look for more wildlife.
This evening they hope to get us back to the Glacier Bay visitors’ dock in time
to let us off for an evening hike before sunset at 9pm or so. We’ll see. Back
outside into the cold for me. The good news is that it stopped raining and
though there are still lots of low clouds the sun has come out!
We had a very substantial lunch. I had creamy tomato soup
that I really liked and chicken parmesan with fettuccine. It was too much. Clay
ordered a hamburger with chips and another Alaskan Ale. He really likes it
better than any of the 6 beers he had at Baranof Island Brewing. Alaskan Ale is
brewed in Juneau. For dessert they had sour cream blueberry pie which people
really seemed to like. We didn’t have any. They had wild berry sorbet and Clay
got it. I didn’t because I was sure it had blueberries in it, but Clay said he
only tasted raspberry and lemon. Anyway, I skipped dessert. Just as well since midmorning
during the ranger and cultural talks, I had a hot chocolate/decaf coffee/French
vanilla creamer concoction that I mixed up for myself. After lunch, the skies cleared and we had brilliant sunshine and blue skies until we had sailed most of the way back out again. Then, we got back in the grey low clouds again.
When we arrived in our cabin yesterday, we had a very dirty
and very wet open window. I touched it and found it was drippy and foggy from
the inside. So, I took a washcloth and cleaned it. I completely saturated the
wash cloth from the window and sill of, I guess just condensation. It got the
white cloth very dirty and soaked so I put it on the floor of the showerlet.
Today I had to do it all over after we slept in here and the crew very nicely washed
and squeegeed the exterior of the window. I put that washcloth on the floor
too. When we came back after breakfast the washcloths were missing entirely. So
when they told us if we didn’t want to reuse a linen to put a card on it or put
it on the floor, they didn’t mean they would replace it! The next time I used
the bath floor mat to clean the window and just hung it back up over the
showerlet door. We only have 2 hand towels and 2 bath towels left.
So we wound up seeing no more wildlife other than some birds
in the Russell Cut. We had lunch as we sailed up to Margerie Glacier. We could
see the Grand Pacific Glacier as well. But, Margerie is the big tidewater glacier
at the end of Glacier Bay. The sun was shining brilliantly and it was blue. We
sat at the face of it for about an hour and got one pretty good calf. The
captain wisely turned the nose to the glacier and rode out the big waves it
caused. Unlike our glacier falling experience in Antarctica!
We saw HAL’s Volendam going in and out of Glacier Bay. We
saw HAL’s Amsterdam going to Margerie when we left. We saw HAL’s Oosterdam in
Sitka. They have a large presence here. We saw 4 kayaks in front of Margerie as
well! Lee, our other expedition leader, who is a local Tlingit told us that the
closest they could have paddled from was 2 hours away and that they would have
to go back to camp overnight because that was the closest that camping was
allowed. That is crazy. We sailed through so much floating ice to get here that
we really expected more calving. Even now sailing back down the bay and looking
at all the ice, I would have expected to see more calving.
On the way out, we stopped briefly at 2 more tidewater glaciers.
We saw a brilliantly sunlit Lamplugh Glacier with Mount Cooper behind and
Russell Island to the side. It has an ice cave with a river flowing out of the
center at water level and there was a muddy water/blue water boundary at some
distance from the ice. We sailed across it and into the brown water area so
there must have been a whole lot of melt water coming out of there. Stephanie,
the park ranger, called it a melt water river. The last glacier we saw was Reid
Glacier, it was the least impressive as it was smaller and you couldn’t get as
close to it.
Margerie Glacier was a mile across the face and 200 ft. tall
above the water with another 100 feet below. Lamplugh Glacier was about ¾ of a
mile across and about 200 ft. tall again. The Grand Pacific Glacier is receding
into Canada and you can see Canada from where we sat at the top of Tar Inlet.
The day is still chilly especially in the wind on deck, but
the sun is shining brightly with clouds clustered around the mountain tops. It
is spectacularly scenic.
I went and looked at the dinner menu. Not good for me! First
course is cream of broccoli soup. Second course is roasted pepper, mushroom and
asparagus salad. Choices for main course are grilled lamb chops, rock fish and
grilled lentil cakes. I hope dessert is not blueberries!
So, we just had an announcement that Faith, our Tlingit
guide for Glacier Bay, was going to give a PowerPoint presentation in the
lounge. We went and Clay got a cookie but I missed the window of opportunity.
It seems to be getting cloudier out there the rain is still holding off.
Hopefully, it will continue to do so, so we can get our hike this evening. It
is now after the talk and Jon is announcing that there will probably not be a
walk because we will get there too late. We really slowed down during her talk,
almost to a stop and we crept along on glassy water. We were trying to figure
out why and now I guess we know. Anyway, they are setting up tables in the
lounge for snacks and Social Hour which I assume is the same thing as cocktail
hour, so we cleared out of there. Dinner should be around 6:30 to 7pm. I didn’t
understand what he was saying and it was a convoluted explanation about why
they haven’t told us the plans for the day because they don’t know and we’ll
have to wait and see, but not to expect a walk now and maybe not even to get
off because they can use the skiff to take Stephanie and Faith back ashore.
Anyway, whatever happens I will report it here later. It has been a pretty
amazing day.
For dinner, I had creamy broccoli soup and a chicken breast
with roasted potatoes. Clay had rock fish and roasted potatoes and cauliflower.
We both had a warm apple dumpling with vanilla ice cream. It was good but I had
to pick out walnuts. We sat with an Australian woman and had a nice chat. She is traveling alone across Europe and now the US for 6 months by herself. That is a big trip! Right
before we finished our meals, Lee one of our expedition leaders came in and
announced a big pod of orcas off the starboard side ahead. We mostly stampeded
out there and it was a really good sighting. I actually saw one breach enough,
close enough, that I could see the white part and tell it was a black and white
whale and not just a huge black fin.
After dinner we did have about 45 minutes to walk ashore but
it was full dark so there was no forest hike and it was so dark that we
could hardly see to walk. But, we did walk up to the Glacier Bay Lodge where
the interpretative center upstairs was open and the gift shop downstairs. They
were both very tiny and we were only ashore maybe 30 minutes. It gave everyone
a chance to use the magnet board of checking on and off ship though before
Juneau tomorrow.
Juneau is our only actual “port”. We should go ashore at 8:30am.
Wake up at 6:30am, breakfast at 7am, all ashore at 8:30am. They will bus us
from Auke Bay to Mendenhall Glacier and around 11am bus us to downtown Juneau.
They will give us vouchers for the Mt. Roberts Tramway and for 2 open (& 1
closed!) restaurant for lunch. I think we will go to The Hangar. We were also
given another option to take a whale-watching tour for 2.5 hours instead of the
Mt. Roberts Tramway. You had to sign up for that right
then if you wanted the boat. We figured we had enough boats and had enough
whales too even if we don’t see any more this week. All aboard is 4:30pm. I guess they will tell
us where to meet the bus back from Juneau to Auke Bay. Admiralty Dream will then take
us to an Allen Marine-owned private island called Colt Island where we’ll have
all you can eat king crab legs at Orca Point Lodge. I already know how many I
can eat = 0! Our documents say salmon and crab, but onboard they just say crab.
Clay was looking forward to the salmon, so I guess we’ll see. I’ll be having a
protein bar. Followed I hope by the promised campfire roasted marshmallows or
even s’mores.
