Glacier Bay National Park

This was the day that we had been looking forward to and one of the reasons that we had decided to take a cruise to Alaska.

We started the day with breakfast in the dining room.   Then we spent a really relaxing day scenic cruising through Glacier Bay National Park.  National Park Service Rangers boarded the ship and gave a commentary on what we were seeing.  We went up to the deck to start with while the glaciers were on one side of the ship then went back to our balcony when the ship turned around to watch everything from there.  It was pretty cold in the morning but by the afternoon we were sitting on the balcony in shorts.

Margerie Glacier is the biggest glacier that we could get closest too, it was amazing.  We spent about an hour there just watching the ice calving (where the ice falls off the glacier).  It probably happened about 8 times while we were watching and it makes an amazing noise like firecrackers as it falls off and hits the water.

It's difficult to see the scale of the Margerie Glacier from photos, this photo helps to show how big it is compared to a boat...

I took hundreds of photos of the glaciers so here are just a few of them...

I think the one below was the Lamplugh Glacier.  The cruise ship next to it helps to give you an idea of its size.  Only 2 cruise ships are allowed in Glacier Bay every day, this was a Holland America ship which was the other one there that day.

Below is the John Hopkins Glacier, one of the most impressive.  Unfortunately the ships aren't allowed to get very close to this one but the view was still amazing.

I think this one was the Reid Glacier..

As we sailed out of Glacier Bay we were told to keep an eye out for whales as the shallower waters meant that there was lots of fish for them to feed on.  We were so lucky, we saw loads of orcas (killer whales) and humpbacks.  The orcas tended to swim in pods and jumped out of the water lots but too fast to take photographs.  The humpbacks moved much slower and were really easy to spot as they blew water up.  A few came really close to the ship.  It helped that the waters were so calm it was easy to spot anything disturbing the surface.

Below was the only time that we saw a full breach but unfortunately I didn't quite manage to capture it on camera!