What an excellent tour! The ship was an enormous catamaran that made sailing a dream. There were less than 200 on board, but the ship must hold many, many more. The meal wasn't so much to speak about. It wasn't what we thought it would be. It was simply a box lunch that had a small packet of smoked salmon, cream cheese, colby cheese, bagle, apple and a soft drink, with unlimited tea, coffee, bottled water. Some tour companies said a full meal served. It didn't matter much since we were both a little queasy anyway. The tour regular price (Renown Tours) is $139 pp plus tax, but we had that ol' 2 fer 1 again! Most places in Alaska have no sales tax but this was one of the exceptions. They have a city and a borough. If anybody reading this is planning their own trip up here, that $100 coupon book is a real bargain!
The seas were really calm through the bay, just a little rough once out of the bay. The sky was overcast all day, but it was pretty cold. We spent the entire 6 hour trip inside. But that was okay because there were so many large windows. Our booth was forward on deck 2. A pretty good spot of seeing everything that came along. Had to move to get the picture of the humpback whale. Boy, he was something! That's his tail. The captain stopped the ship for the time he was surfaced. When he went under we left...he could have been under a half hour. The sea lion picture isn't sideways, he really climbed that rock up to where another one was. Whole lot of sea 'pups', and a couple old males talking things over. That's Holgate Glacier, one of more than 100,000 glaciers in Alaska. It wasn't "calving" too much that day, but we did get to hear it go once. He stopped the ship about a quarter mile from the glacier, but it seemed much closer! We saw beau coup tufted puffins. I didn't know there were so many! They're funny to watch. The scenery of course was magnificent...just as it has been everywhere in this way north land.
Once back onto land, we headed out of town toward Exit Glacier, not too far away. We found a terrific place for the night, off road, next to Resurrection River where we saw these two eagles sitting like bookends on an arched log. Must have been fish in the stream, but we didn't see any. I think they were already full of salmon, it seemed like they weren't flying very high when they finally left this spot, maybe they were so full they couldn't. Eagles are really remarkable...and huge. I recall one display in a museum somewhere that had a basket of rocks that matched the average eagle's weight. 14 lbs!
Next day we drove into Exit Glacier, so called because people who were trekking across the Harding Ice Field found this to be the best way off the glacier. It is an easy hike up there, and it was sort of busy with fellow tourists. There's a visitor center at the trail head, but there are no films. They had the ever present gift shop, and a ranger there could tell the serious hikers how to get into the back country. It was amazing how far the glacier had retreated in so few years. There were markers along the way to show where the glacier had been at various years. Even from as recent as 1957, it had moved an extraordinary distance. This year's run off has blocked the passage to the foot of the glacier. We were disappointed that we couldn't walk right up to it as people have been able to do in previous years. We had sunshine that day and it was wonderful.
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