Well, it didn't take us long to get into the cruise life as our Princess ship glided smoothly through Alaska's icy waters. We had been on the go for over a week, and a little bit of R & R was definitely welcome:
Our next destination was the coastline of Glacier Bay National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that encompasses 5,130 square miles or 3.3 million acres on Alaska's southern panhandle. It's a little hard to see in the map below, but our cruise starting point at Whittier is the red oval on the left and Glacier Bay is the center oval:
I think we saw about 1/10% of the park, but it was a spectacular 1/10%. No roads lead to Glacier Bay, so the only options are to get there by air or by sea. Most visitors see the bay by cruise ship (400,000 visitors/year), but the number of ships per day is limited, which made our viewing experience very nice.
There are fifteen tidewater glaciers in the park, and while we didn't see them all, we did see quite a few. One nice thing about this day at sea is that we had a park ranger on board talking on the ship intercom most of the day. I would never have guessed there was so much to say about glaciers. Honestly, this was our third trip to visit glaciers, and though every single one was gasp-worthy, they were all beginning to look alike to me. That is not to say that it wasn't a fantastic day of glacier viewing, because it was, but a second day of being on the ship all day was causing Cruise Ennui to set in.
And that is my excuse for not having taken better notes as our excellent park ranger spoke.
There are fifteen tidewater glaciers in the park, and while we didn't see them all, we did see quite a few. One nice thing about this day at sea is that we had a park ranger on board talking on the ship intercom most of the day. I would never have guessed there was so much to say about glaciers. Honestly, this was our third trip to visit glaciers, and though every single one was gasp-worthy, they were all beginning to look alike to me. That is not to say that it wasn't a fantastic day of glacier viewing, because it was, but a second day of being on the ship all day was causing Cruise Ennui to set in.
And that is my excuse for not having taken better notes as our excellent park ranger spoke.
