Alaska Cruisetour - Day 7

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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. We were attempting to watch this but somehow missed it. There are multiple inlets in Glacier bay and our ship went up the “Tarr Inlet”. There are mountains on either side and ship moves through sometimes these narrow inlets. It is dramatic to watch as you can see the land on either side sometimes shore and waterfalls in the mountains. John Muir visited here way back when he was exploring the area. They have named an area to honor him. After you cross Tlingit point, the ship went left toward Lamplaugh glacier first. The captain sent about 45 minutes facing the glacier first on the port side and then on the starboard side. Folks on the deck were trying to be quite to listen to the calving. By the time we hear the sound, the pieces of glacial ice had fallen into the water already. It was an awesome experience to see the ice wall so thick. We also saw another cruise ship in this area. Next, we moved to Marjorie glacier. You can get a better view of this glacier as it is at a cul-de-sac. Mark the naturalist pointed out that beyond that ice is a long icefield and Canada. We were barely 30 miles from Canada at that point. The day was very bright by now and no rain in sight. There are also lots of small islands along the way when we go through these inlets. Today’s evening program was piano by a Ryan Ahern and the Princess Archestra. THat was an excellent show as they performed lot of familiar songs we know both in pop and rock and roll. This is very talented! We chose to have our dinner tonight in the food court itself. Our vegetarian order in the formal dining tends to be very high and our thinking was to go there every other day.

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