Glacier Bay National Park
What a day in Glacier Bay!
6:35am- Wake up to a lone black wolf wandering along the shoreline. We see wolves maybe only a couple of times a season and we watched this young animal for over 20 minutes!
8:45am- Watch the immense Margerie Glacier calve huge pieces of ice right in front of the ship.
9:45am- Coastal Brown Bear female with two cubs of the year turning over rocks along the shoreline searching for food. It was such fun to see the small cubs desperately tried to roll rocks twice their size to look for small fish trapped during the low tide.
11:00am- Lamplugh Glacier and Johns Hopkins Glacier: We spent time gazing at two more stunning glaciers. We also saw a bald eagle “swim” with a large fish until it reached an iceberg that it hopped up onto. Not something we see very often!
11:45am- We listened to a wonderful presentation by the Tlingit cultural interpreter Alice Haldane, who taught us a few native words and we learned all about the Tlingit important connection with Glacier Bay.
2:00pm- Approached the very atmospheric headland called “Gloomy Knob” and found two mountain goats surrounded by mist. We could just see their creamy white forms deftly walking up the steep hillside.
2:15pm- The eagle eyes of the Chief Mate spotted three fast moving dots on the shoreline next to Gloomy Knob. National Geographic Sea Lion slowly approached the area to discover another female coastal brown bear and this time with three cubs of the year! We saw the cubs wrestle each other and race along the beach while the enormous mama bear foraged in the blueberry bushes. What a fantastic sighting of brown bears.
4:00pm- We slowly cruised along the shorelines of the Marble Islands which are the summer home to several thousand nesting seabirds. Horned and Tufted puffins swam right next to the ship. We had excellent looks at pigeon guillemots, cormorants plus kittiwakes while sipping glögg and munching on chocolate brownies graciously provided by our galley.
5:45pm- Off Boulder Island and surrounded by sea otters. It was amazing to see so many after the excellent sea otter presentation by the National Park Ranger, Sarah Betcher.
Like I said, what a DAY in Glacier Bay! Why aren’t you here?
