Blogs from Glacier Bay, Alaska, United States, North America

Today we are in Crab Bay, surrounded by forests, beautiful snow-capped mountains and a peaceful inlet. For the morning activity, Ken decided on another bushwhack, while I chose the “bushwhack light” or as I came to call it, the Baby Bushwhack. The normal one was a 3-hour excursion through the brush, and I just wasn’t sure I wanted to thrash through the forest for that long. Prior to landing with our skiff on the shore, we saw two small deer, which are normal for this part. They were more the size of larger fawns, but Brady, our guide said the size helps them survive when there is little to eat in the winter. Once we landed our skiff, we explored mostly on shore and saw sea stars, lots of barnacles, mussels, little crabs and some other ... read more

Day 14 19/05/2019 Glacier Bay I woke up to the most beautiful dark blue sky with almost no clouds at 4.32 to see the full moon in the sky. What an omen for today I knew it was going to be spectacular! I went back to bed but only dozed on and off. As soon as the alarm went we were up showered and off for breakfast. We were back in our room by 8 and layered our clothes, ready to adventure outside on the balcony for the views. The temperature expected for the day was 7C. The ship picked up a park ranger who was going to give us commentary whilst cruising in Glacier Bay. We headed up through the Narrows and past Gloomy Knob . On went the beanie, hat and gloves, and the ... read more

There was a lot of hype about spending most of the day in Glacier Bay national park right from yesterday onwards. They even had glacier themed desserts for lunch and dinner! At 10 am in the morning there was a program about Glacier bay area in the auditorium. It is really a national park like grand canyon. As such, you have rangers that work there. Ranger, a lady came on board this morning and she stayed with the ship till 4 pm this afternoon. It is very interesting the way ranger comes on board the ship. The ship does not stop anymore, it could be that it slows down. The ranger is in another boat parallel with ship at same predetermined speed. She gets on a ladder dropped in by the ship to come on board. ... read more

OK sorry about this but this is a long one…….. Well we headed away from Denali NP in the early hours of last Wednesday morning and drove the 340 kms back to Anchorage and met up with our Canadian friends Bob and Jen who had flown in to join us on the next leg of our journey. We all boarded a bus and headed out to the port town of Whittier which was the launching spot for our Alaskan cruise aboard the “Island Princess”. It was not a good omen when the driver of the bus told us that South east Alaska is the second biggest rain forrest next to the Amazon…emphasis on “rain!!” As we arrived into Whittier it was raining quite steadily which made for great waterfalls off the cliff faces but also made ... read more

With a day of scenic cruising in Glacier Bay ahead of us starting later in the day than three weeks ago, Sharon went off to 8AM mass. I met her up in the Exploration Lounge and we went to breakfast in the Dining Room. She enjoyed her scrambled eggs and I tried the mushroom and spinach Eggs Benedict. We entered the National Park with a pilot and Park Rangers onboard. Traversing the once ice covered channel leading to the glaciers we passed the Eurodam who was leaving after their morning visit. There were lectures prior to reaching the spectacular glaciers on this day with patches of blue shining down. We had good visibility three weeks earlier; but, today the weather had something special in store for us. The park ranger was enthusiastic in her coverage of ... read more