Our next day was a day at sea but we were going to go and see a glacier! I wasn’t sure how close we would be able to get to it, but since I had been on an up close glacier tour while I was in Alaska in 2016 so I was excited about seeing it on a big cruise ship. Since we had an awesome room and free room service our plan was to stay in for most of the day, which we did but I will say it was really chilly the closer to the glacier we got. Beautiful views though there and back and I used my phone and my long lens to take some pictures.
Because it was late in the season we didn’t see waterfalls until on the way out and it was a beauty. It was hard to get good pictures because we were kind of far away but I loved it. Turns out this was the only waterfall of the journey, but I’ll talk about that later.
The water was crystal clear and the mountains were green, or snowy, or foggy the views really changed everywhere you looked and because we were on a smaller cruise ship we got surprisingly close to the Glacier. Then a small boat pulled up and actually picked up some passengers who for $440 got to take a smaller boat right up to the glacier.
Our views weren’t nearly as close of course but with my long lens I got some nice shots. I didn’t see any calving of the ice but the captain kept spinning the boat slowly so we all got really nice views.
I thought the captain did an excellent job given the size of the boat but when I talked to him later he was disappointed he wasn’t able to get closer. A significant amount of our time was taken up by loading and unloading the smaller boat and navigating that close to the shelf is a painstaking process.
I was disappointed that we saw no animals though because on my last glacier cruise we saw tons of otters and puffins. I don’t know if they were there and we didn’t get close enough or they just weren’t there, but I was glad I had my other experience. I will say that if you get this close to a glacier spend the extra money and get right next to it or go on another trip to Alaska and take a glacier cruise there. Although it was a very nice experience you are just lightly touching the experience when you do it on a cruise ship.
My other huge disappointment was we did not see Glacier Bay. That’s my fault not the cruise lines but I was hoping we would be able to see it. I am on a mission to visit all of the National Parks, but this particular cruise (some do) went to Hubbard Glacier instead of Glacier Bay. I tried very hard to find a way to get to Gustavus where the visitors center is but with my schedule and our itinerary I just couldn’t find a way to make it work. Oh well I will just have to plan another trip to Alaska to hit the remaining National parks 🙂
Next up we check out Haines where I heard Bald Eagles were like seagulls on the beach!
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Camper Chronicles 