Today was a great day to visit one of the jewels of the National Park System. We picked up the National Park ranger and Klingit interpretative guide early in the morning and proceeded up bay. If we had been here 250 years ago, we would have only seen a great wall of ice. When Captain Vancouver first saw this area, he named it Icy Strait due the vast amount of ice spilling forth from the small bay that would become Glacier Bay.
Our morning began with a look at the Marble Islands, which were loaded with wildlife such as Northern sea lions, puffins, eagles, cormorants and sea otters. We even had a few glimpses of a humpback whale. Later on, we saw mountain goats on a limestone outcrop known as Gloomy Knob. Further north, one of the staff noticed a brown bear on shore. It turned out to be three bears, a mother bear and two cubs! The bears gave us a great show as they moved along the intertidal area in search of food.
After lunch, the calving (or falling ice) of Marjorie Glacier gave us a sense of just how active this tidewater glacier is as it winds its way out of the Fairweather Mountain Range. This range makes up the west side of Glacier Bay National Park. Later in the afternoon, we entered Geikie Inlet to spot wildlife. A few goats roamed the shore and a sea otter swam in the quiet inle
After dinner walks were offered in Bartlett Cove so we could stretch our legs and see the young forest that has grown in the past 200 years.
