Icebound

May 21 and 22, 2023

Two Postscripts to my May 20 post:

First, our ship is the Majestic Princess. It’s the same ship we sailed on last year.

Second, there is a tragic addition to what I wrote about the dangerous mudflats of Turnagain Arm. A 20-year-old man visiting from Illinois got stuck in the mud near Hope and drowned in the incoming tide on Sunday. So horrible.

Sunday

Today the Majestic Princess sailed into Yakutat Bay to visit Hubbard Glacier. It is an enormous glacier, 6 miles across at its face. And, it is one of the very few glaciers in Alaska that is advancing. 

Unfortunately, the weather today was not nice. It was cold (upper 40’s) and rainy. It was also unfortunate that there was so much ice floating around near the glacier that it was not safe to approach it. 

That’s really too bad. I remember our visit last year. It was a nice sunny day and we got very close to the glacier. It was really spectacular.

The third unfortunate thing is that neither one of us took any photos today. None.

We did have a nice evening, though. We very much enjoyed the production show, Encore. It had a lot of popular music (mostly “oldies”), and some opera pieces. The lead soprano was awfully good.

Monday

The morning started out cold - in the upper 40’s - but as we entered Glacier Bay, the sun came out, it warmed up, and the water was almost like a mirror. 

Some rangers from the National Park Service came out to our ship on a boat and climbed up a rope ladder to board, along with all of their equipment. They gave a talk in the theater and then set up a little shop in the conservatory. You could ask them questions, stamp your National Park Passport, and buy various souvenir merch from them and from a representative from Alaska Geographic. The highlight for me was the live commentary from the navigational bridge provided by one of the rangers. He probably had a script, but it was a very good one and it added a lot of richness to our visit to Glacier Bay National Park.

Everybody - from the Captain to the park rangers, to the passengers to the crew - couldn’t stop marveling at the wonderful weather today. It was so warm in the sunshine that we were able to stay out on our balcony all afternoon in shirtsleeves. The water was smooth - there was no wind. It was just stunning in Glacier Bay today.

Near the entrance to Glacier Bay

Margerie Glacier

The fascinating blue ice of Margerie Glacier

Johns Hopkins Glacier

Lamplugh Glacier

The astonishing blue ice of Lamplugh Glacier

We spent almost 12 hours in the National Park. We saw lots of ice: icebergs, bergy bits (the size of a house), growlers (the size of a car), and brash ice (less than 2 meters across). We saw dozens of sea otters and five or six gray whales. It was fantastic. It was wild. It was glorious. It was absolutely majestic.

Obviously, today’s color is glacier blue.