Today was Comedy of Errors, Part II. After missing most of the glaciers in College Fjord yesterday, we checked and verified that we would not be arriving at any major glaciers in Glacier Bay until 2:15 pm. So we left our cameras in our room and went to breakfast. From the breakfast court you could see out on both the starboard and port sides, unless people were standing along the rails. Which they were. Why, we wondered, were they crowding the rails so early? Then we heard the PA announcement:
"This is a rather large pod of humpback whales you're seeing." We weren't seeing, and couldn't from our table.
"Look, there's one breeching on the port side! You don't see that often!" A throng swarmed through the dining room from starboard to port.
"There are several babies among these whales, if you look closely." We just looked at each other, wolfed down breakfast, and dashed back to the room for our cameras. We were back on deck, just in time to hear "Well, it looks like they've gone. But we were certainly lucky to see so many whales this morning, weren't we?" Weren't we though.
But we arrived at the glaciers on time, and we were ready. We parked in front of the Marguerie glacier (picture, above) and waited. It was a mile wide and over a hundred feet tall. It would periodically crack (loudly - somewhere between a gunshot and thunder) and portions would fall into the inlet. Being a mile wide, it wasn't always easy to catch just where the cracking was coming from until the chunks hit the water, but we caught a few. Nothing spectacular though, but it was fun.
From Glacier Bay, we proceeded into the Inside Passage - a barrier-island-sheltered waterway that leads through southeast Alaska.
We saw darkness tonight for the first time in over a week, but we had to stay up past midnight to do it.
Tomorrow: Skagway, and some Klondike gold rush lore.