When we crashed
last night (again, before dark), we had left the curtains open
on the sliding glass door to our private balcony (!!). So when
dawn broke (picture to the left), the bright morning sun came
streaming through our window, awakening us to the awe of the
Alaska dawn. At 4 am. We each grabbed our cameras and recorded
same for posterity (without getting out of bed), then went back
to sleep.
When we awoke officially, there were ice flows passing by our private balcony (!!). We were in College Fjord, with 14 glaciers named after Ivy League schools (which funded the expedition that discovered them). After watching a while from our private balcony (!!), we got dressed and grabbed a buffet breakfast at the food court (good!) and went out on deck, only to discover that we were headed out of College Fjord. We had missed most of the glaciers. But we did get some good pictures, and we saw a family of sea otters playing on the ice flows. A pod of killer whales was spotted on the opposite side of the ship, but had vanished by the time we got there.
We watched them drop the pilot in Prince William Sound, at the precise location of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In relating the tale, the guide books and the crew were rather kind to Exxon, considering the havoc they wreaked there. We spotted a humpback whale shadowing the ship for a while.
We ran into some folks we met on the train and went down to the pizzeria for lunch. Good pizza (from here on, all onboard food will be considered to be delicious, unless noted otherwise), and returned to our room.
We discovered that there was internet access onboard, but it was limited to e-mail text only. No uploading to websites, no pictures to send as attachments. So we fired off about 20 e-mails to the folks back home in slightly less than an hour, for the modest sum of about a buck each.
Y'know, you could really get used to this all daylight, all the time concept. :)