Glacier Day Cruise
Photos - Alaska Trip - Glacier Day Cruise
Our day cruise to the glacier was awesome. It was gray and gloomy when we left, and it did rain a couple times while we were out but we still saw a lot.
We managed to find an espresso store for our lattes before we left. So far we've managed to find one everywhere we've gone. I like trying out the local places. This one is called "Little Chicks" for some unknown reason. Besides selling espresso they sell t-shirts and sweatshirts. One t-shirt said, "Behind every man is a woman rolling her eyes." Randy and I agreed that our motto would be the other way around. He often thinks I'm absurd; I don't know why that should be.
The captain of the boat was named Stan Stephens and he seems like quite a character. He was very knowledgeable and interesting to listen to as he narrated things. He and his wife own the operation. A woman we met told us that he had retired and sold the business but then after several years bought it back. I guess the other people weren't doing a good job. During the cruise we wondered if he would talk at all about the Exxon Valdez oil spill but he never mentioned it at all. I wondered if he didn't want to bring it up for some reason. Rose, our B&B owner, said he was quite influential during the event. Then at the museum and also in a book Randy read we saw that he was pretty angry at Exxon. Maybe that's why he didn't talk about it on the cruise. Or maybe just because it was 20 years ago now.
We met two women on the boat who were high school friends and retired teachers. One had moved to Fairbanks after college and been there ever since, the other still lived in South Dakota and was visiting. They were fun to sit and talk with. The one from Fairbanks seems like a true Alaskan. She has a cabin in the Arctic Circle and she and her husband hunt and fish. She talked about bringing bear and moose meat to the cabin when they went.
We saw lots of wildlife and scenery from the boat. It was great. Sea lions, way more otters all together than we ever have seen in Monterey, doll porpoises which I had not heard of before and who look like mini-Orcas.
And the glacier truly was awesome. The blue ice was something I hadn't expected. When we came to the edge it was pretty quiet, but we waited around and saw a few pieces "calve" off. Even when nothing fell, we heard the booming cracks.
The big excitement was whales. First a humpback,...
...Then orcas! One orca came quite near the boat. He would dive and everyone would wait for him to come back up, watching where he just had been. Suddenly we'd hear a big puff of air and he'd be coming up on the other side. We'd all run for that side then. It cracked me up. A couple movies are just of the backs of people running and me laughing.
I had to take movies of the orcas with my own little camera. By then I had run the battery out on the other camera. When we were back at the B&B and I mentioned that, Rose laughed and said, "You were really in the moment!" Nice way to say I went totally overboard. :) (Haha, didn't mean the pun there.)