Advertisement
Published: September 20th 2012
The whole family..
..what the hell's with that hat!! (the red one)Woke up to find had a bit of a roll on happening. Unfortunately it was just the boat! First real movement in the boat...and this is now all sounding wrong. Weather was overcast and cold as. First real cold snap we have experienced but we are at the northern most point of our travels.
Had breakfast in the Aqua restaurant which is the health type bar / cafe on the ship. Funnily enough only a handful of our companions seem to frequent it. Things like orange rind and zucchini muffins and similar along with whites only omelettes with mushroom and spinach kind of explained the limited patronage. The food was great here also and we managed to sneak some healthier food past the king of pizza although it did involve lying. Missy found heaps to go with and we had breakfast looking out over the approach to the Hubbard Glacier.
The glacier is situated at the top of what I guess is a Fjord. After turning into the fjord (lets pretend thats what its called. Okay, Steph?) we started picking up large pieces of ice flotsam coming down the fjord (leave it Steph!) heading for the open sea. The
...and round the next corner
the glacier continues further upstream or around into a bay not accessible for ships. higher into the thing starting with F we went the thicker the ice floes got. Amongst it all is this Sea Otter just lying on his back staring up at the ship as it passed.
Talk about brass otters. The glacier loomed larger, strangely, the closer we got. Our esteemed Captain (can't remember his name its all Greek to us, literally) seemed to be having a dare with an Italian counterpart about how close he could get to shore without sinking his tug and chose to use the glacier instead of a sand bar outside his sisters house. Regardless, for 3 hours we edged closer, and sat alongside, we kid you not, okay a little, the glacier while Mon Capitaine slowly put the boat through a couple of 360 rotations so as to ensure that heaven forbid, some of those with balconies got to see the whole show without venturing out of their staterooms. The bridge did some rough measurement and approximated the height of the glacier as 167 metres. The ship is around 50 metres. Difficult to describe how amazing it is without actually seeing it, the glacier not the bridge.
The morning had started out freezing
Dropped something...
The pictures do not portray how big the ice chunks are that are breaking off. Some are the size of trucks and bigger. And the noise. When its quiet you can hear the whole glacier hissing as gas and air escapes... but by 11 am the sun was fighting a battle with the clouds and slowly winning but heated the place up significantly during the struggle. The kids were a bit cool on it to start with but even they started to warm to it all as time passed and they caught the excitement that everyone had. Every 10 or 15 minutes there would be a huge crash and tonnes of ice would career off the top or side of the glacier into the ocean. One caused a bow wave the crew estimated at around 10 feet. We had been looking forward to seeing the glacier but were surprised just how special it was. Why was it special? I don't know it just was.
All too soon we turned for the last time and headed back down to the open sea. Its interesting, or maybe it isn't, that the preamble that came over the PA talked about the glacier being the largest it has been in some times but only a few days ago some scientists on the news were concerned it was shrinking. Who knows but this puppy has got a ways to go as it is enormous and
Cool moment...
Mum and the kids soaking up the sight of something a little bit special... stretches for miles back it seemed.
On a rocky point we past on the way out was a large group of sealions just lying around on the rocks. The cold rocks looked a damn sight warmer than the ice floe that was sure.
After a late lunch, kids went to hang out at Kids Club and we read and moved between cafes. Saw our kids a couple of times. Reuben running with his new Australian mate on some kind of scavenger hunt and then Caitlins group invaded the cafe as marauding pirates. All the Ma and Pa Kettles loved it - we hid under the table. At dinner tonight heard an English table tearing a strip off the maitre'd for the appalling food and bad service. So wanted to intervene and point out that outside of Manchester or whatever whinge centre they had momentarily popped out of there was other meals beside cod and chips and pie and chips and because you didn't recognise a food didn't make it rubbish. Further wanted to point out that their is an informal contract where good service generally is ensured by simple civility to the service personnel, rather than just grunting.
Yep, it was cold...any guesses why?
It had actually warmed up dramatically by this point but the fridge door was still open... But I didn't cos Sandy said not to.
Kids then disappeared back to kids club at 7pm, its now 9 and I've just seen Reubs run through the main bar for the second time. I'm pretty sure his stagger is just from the movement of the boat at the moment. Point of interest for those onboard encroaching on their three score and ten is why the kids aren't at school. Have supplied the inquisitive souls a varied array of reasons depending on the tone of their inquiry, none of them the truth. Might try witness relocation next or that their actually 40 year old Dwarves.
We are now tracking south again and in the next short while will turned into the Alaska Inside Passage. You would think with its grandeur some one could come up with a name slightly more imaginative than this. Sounds like something from your inner ear canal.
Another great day, tomorrow is Skagway and we have nothing planned there. Were going to go whale watching in Juneau on Friday because we didn't expect to see any in Sitka (yeah right on that one) so changed that trip for a few hours at a
A hell of a splash!
Difficult to comprehend the size of the ice blocks falling off because the glacier is just so enormous.. dog musher camp and a ride through some forest on dog pulled sleds. Hope the weather holds but really doesn't matter that much.
Gotta go and find the kids now!
P.S. Sandy lost $1 in the casino and is now cured of all gambling urges.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.178s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 12; qc: 57; dbt: 0.0611s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
The Swampies
non-member comment
Would you like ice with that?
Holy cow thats a big piece of ice!! I have spoken to Steph and you're safe calling it a fjord but make sure you put an inflection on the Jord bit when speaking.. Looks amazing to say the least and everyone looks like they are having a great time..When you get home you are gonna have to open a kids club in the street cause they wont know what to do without it. Keep up the blog and keep having a good time and a quick word of advice for mushing....dont eat the yellow snow!!