Glacier Bay, Alaska
We awoke this morning to an overcast day and the somewhat alarming, but innocent sounds of ice scraping on metal. These were the sounds of icebergs in Johns Hopkins Inlet rubbing against the side of our ship as we slowly made our way past Jaw Point to the tidewater glacier at its head. Named by its discoverer after his alma mater, the Johns Hopkins Glacier was lying before us, sloping down the steep valley it is still carving to this day. The only advancing glacier in all of Glacier Bay National Park, it was a wonderful way to welcome the day, its living blue color brightening our morning vista. Just as we were about to turn away and leave her, she let go with her signature white thunder, as if to say “Don’t go, I’ve got so much more to say.” Judging by the amount of ice in the water she had been speaking a lot lately, but we had lots more to see and bid our farewell.
Johns Hopkins wasn’t the only glacier to give us a booming welcome. We rounded the corner and headed north to the end of Glacier Bay. After a brief stop to watch a lone brown bear hunting for breakfast at the beach by rolling over some very heavy boulders at the water’s edge, we found two glaciers awaiting us, the Margerie and the Grand Pacific. Although some cloud cover partially coated the blue sky above, it hung like a curtain just above the mountains, still revealing the snow-covered peaks and many unnamed glaciers that rolled down their slopes.
The 65-mile return trip out of Glacier Bay was punctuated by several stops for wildlife, including seven mountain goats at Gloomy Knob that were unusually low for this time of the year. We also enjoyed watching many sea otters and birds, including large rafts of surf scoters, tufted puffins, cormorant colonies and gull rookeries. A stop at South Marble Island delivered a full sensory experience with the many Steller sea lions wrestling for sacred space on this popular haul out.
Bertha Franulovich, cultural heritage guide for the Huna Tlingit, gave us some informative lessons on the native Tlingit and their language and Ranger Janene Driscoll awarded several new Junior Rangers their well-earned badges. We topped the day off with an exploration of Bartlett Cove and then were off the dock and underway as darkness settled on yet another day of memory making in Alaska.
