Le Voyage Part 3

A glacial wonderland

Today we're supposed to have the opportunity to view some wildlife and see a couple more glaciers. A couple more glaciers, hah. They're everywhere, but these will prove to be special glaciers.

When we awake and look out the window, we see it's cloudy and foggy. Landmasses are visible, though, and the scenery is impressive even if you can't quite see it clearly. We're going to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve and will pick up some park rangers to act as guides. The cruise director made a comment the night before about them climbing rope ladders to board the ship, which I take as a joke. As it turns out, it's not. I don't notice that we ever come to a full stop, but in any case their boat comes alongside, a rope ladder is dropped, and the rangers clamber aboard. I hope they receive extra pay for doing that.

After breakfast, we head for the promenade deck, where the Sandra, the naturalist, has said she'll be helping passengers spot wildlife. It's raining now, and as we come to the stairs up to the bow, we meet a large group coming down. The guy in the front says, "And I got up early for that" as he goes by. We join a very small group on the deck around Sandra, who's explaining something to the group. Suddenly she shouts, "We have sea otters," and points. We rush over to the rail, cameras in hand, and start trying to shoot pictures. Other people begin seeing more otters, many in small groups, and we all stand happily in the rain and wind, shooting away.

Sandra explains that the otters float on their backs most of the time, and they have pockets of skin in which to carry rocks for cracking open shellfish. The very young ones take up position on mom's stomach as they float past. They seem to be used to seeing ship pass by, but occasionally a group  will dive if the ship comes close.

A group of otters swims by the ship

Eventually Sharon and I start to feel the cold and need to wipe the water off our cameras, so we step back and visit with the naturalist a bit. She's disappointed that so many people left. She also says they'd spotted a hunchback and an orca shortly after nine, when she'd started her stint. Don't know if any of that disgruntled bunch saw the whales, but I'm guessing not, given the reaction.

One of the park rangers is scheduled to give a lecture at 10, and we decide to take it in, as much to dry out and warm up as anything, but the talk is informative.

Afterward, we decide to visit a spot above the covered pools where the rangers have set up a display. About the time we arrive in that area of the ship, one of the rangers begins a PA broadcast from the bridge. She spots some mountain goats on the starboard side of the ship, and passenger begin a mini-stampede for the nearest exit to the outside deck. One woman shoves me out of the way just after I go through the door in her rush to the rail to take a picture.

I don't mean to stereotype, but my memory of older people is that once upon a time they tended to be more polite than other age groups. I'm used to children shoving past me, but adults living together in limited space should know better. But so far I've been far more likely to be cut off, shoved and generally treated as though I don't exist by the older people on board than the younger ones.

Out on deck, people start pointing at the shore and taking pictures. I look through my zoom in the direction they're pointing, but the only things I see look like rocks. Sharon eventually spots a group of the goats and manages to get a couple of pics that confirm she has indeed spotted the goats. Looking at her pics is the only way I see the critters.

It's not long before we're frozen again (Let it go! Let it go!), so we go back in, check the schedule at the ranger's display and head for a hot drink and snack. The materials we've been given indicate that most of the cool stuff to see will be on the starboard side of the boat, where our room is, and we go back there. The rain lets up, and we're protected better on our balcony than we were on the lower outside deck. The further we travel into the bay, the more the clouds relent, and by the time we reach the first set of glaciers, sun is peeking through occasionally. Sweet.

The two glaciers we're going to see, the Grand Pacific and the Margerie flow into the bay right next to each other, one to the northeast, the other to the northwest. The Grand Pacific is receding and doesn't register as being a glacier at first because the face is dark and looks much like land because it is covered in debris, mostly rocks and dirt from landslided. The first ranger we heard earlier had warned us we might think, "That's not a glacier."

The Grand Pacific glacier -- its that dark mass running
through the middle of the picture. No, really, that's a glacier.

On our approach the face of the Margerie is visible to our left, looking like a proper glacier, for a short while before we come to a halt, and the captain pivots the boat starboard. We can see the full face of the Grand Pacific, but none of the Margerie.

After some while, I check the time and see that it's just a half hour till we depart. The captain is supposed to pivot the boat so those of us in our starboard rooms will be able to see the Margerie, but I'm afraid we'll miss something so we head down to the promenade and go outside on the port side, where the Margerie looms before us in all it's glory. I ask a small group of passengers if they'd seen the ice calve yet, and one woman excitedly tells me they had, and she had video of it on her iPhone.

Not long after, Sharon sees some "small" pieces fall off. I say "small" because of that perspective thing. They could be as big as a car for all I know. Soon, we begin to hear the cracks and booms, then Sharon calls out, "Look, it's starting over there," and points to my left. I whip my camera up and see some ice falling. Then we hear another boom, and a big chunk of the face calves off. I manage to shoot three or four times and capture some of the event.

Shortly, the ship begins turning to port to head back the way we came.We scoot back up to our room for the next leg, which will take us to the Johns Hopkins Inlet to see the John Hopkins Glacier. Both are named, by the way, for the institution, not the man. The man who named it, Harry Reid, had attended Johns Hopkins. This segment of the passage is one of those "dittos" I mentioned in the first post, just one spectacular view after another. At this point, I've run out of superlatives. My camera's getting a workout. From time to time, I stop shooting so I can sit and absorb the beauty we're passing through.

The ranger broadcasting on the PA comments this area lies along a fault, and the two rock plates that come together here are composed of different types of rock. The uplift that shows where the two are "stitched" together reveals the stark contrast in the makeup of the rock.

Another thing she points out is something Sharon and I have already discussed: the sound that the ice floes make as we pass by. Ever drop an Alka Seltzer or one of those flavored fizzy tablets into a cup of water? Remember that fizzy sound? Well that's what we're hearing, along with some slushing sounds as the ice rocks in the small bow waves the slowly moving ship makes. I recorded the sound on my iPod, where it sounds more like someone left water running slowly in a tub.

Sounds of glacier ice melting

Almost every glacier we've seen has an associated waterfall. From our vantage on the ship, at some distance away, the flows appear to be rivulets wandering down the mountain. Take a close look through the zoom, and you can clearly see they are more like rivers with great crashing waterfalls. On one occasion, we're close enough to the shore to be able to hear the roar of one of the falls.

Once we turn to head out of the bay, the ship picks up speed, and our pass of the "lesser" Lamplugh and Reid glaciers goes by pretty quickly. The Reid, by the way, was named after Harry Reid, just not by him. While sitting and occasionally standing, we continue to give our cameras a workout. After passing the Reid glacier, we decide we're cold and tired and ready for a nap. We'll wind up skipping the evening session with the naturalist, when she plans to look for wildlife again.

The evening would be spent recuperating and attending some of the on-board entertainment. Two shows are scheduled, and we take in the later showings of each, scurrying from one venue to the next. The shows are good, but I'd say the talent we've had on our other cruises outclasses this bunch.

Warning: Another ageist statement ahead. I've noticed that the early shows are packed. So much so that we don't even bother trying to go at those times. Attendance at the late shows has varied but is always much lighter. Could it have something to do with the age of the crowd? Maybe more of them wan to go to bed early than want to stay up late? Who knows?

Le Voyage continues

Gaining perspective

Good night's sleep. Should be after going to bed at the equivalent of 2 in the morning, though we're three hours behind that, local time. We lie about, looking at the activities for the day in the ship's newsletter and making some plans, then we dress and head for breakfast.

We'd gone to Maine a few years back during a September, and a cruise ship docked at Bar Harbor while we were there. At the time I remarked that I had never seen so many old people in my life. That's pretty much true for this trip -- populated with old people (which I realize includes us). We do see some couples with kids, though my guess would be grandparents taking the kids on a big adventure (though why they do that during the school year, I can't fathom.) The younger adults on board either are sans children or traveling with preschool age children. Even with their presence on board, I'd put the average age in the 60s.

We follow our leisurely breakfast with attendance at a lecture from a naturalist, Sandra Schemp, a retired professor from NewYork, hired by the cruise line to enhance our experience. She clues us in as to the wildlife we might see see and when she'll be available to help us spot the critters. Among the things she says is that she likes to say you can't sit and watch the water for an hour without seeing something. Sure enough, while I'm writing this, Sharon spots blows in the water outside our window. We can't ID what we're looking at, but I count it as a prediction confirmed.

Later we attend a second lecture and catch Schemp afterward. She's excited to hear we saw something, and after asking a few questions says we probably saw humpbacks (insert your own Star Trek joke here.) Her questions make it possible for us to ID the next bunch of animals to flash past us as Dall's porpoises. They hang around long enough for us to theoretically get pictures, but we have a hard time finding them in our viewfinders and focusing. I point my camera in the general direction and hit the shutter. Later we'll find out that the tactic worked. I'm not zoomed all the way out, but in the bottom of the frame, you can see four spots. Blown up sufficiently you can tell that they're fins.

The big event of the day is sailing into Yakutat Bay to view the Hubbard Glacier. Off our balcony we can see enormous mountains rising through the mist and clouds. I read in something we have that this area is home to many of Alaska's tallest mountains. We won't see Denali while we're here, but these mountains are plenty impressive.

High mountain peaks along the coast of Alaska as
we enter Yakutat Bay.

We spot the glacier some distance away, which leads me to the ludicrous thought, "That's it?" I've no sense of distance, but I'm guessing that we're seeing the big ice river 20 or 30 miles away, the distance we were able to see mountains in Scotland from the coast of Ireland. Schemp told us it's the longest tidewater glacier in North America, and from where we are, you can see that it stretches quite a distance. Actually, it stretches 72 miles, and the face will stand some 350 feet above the waterline.

But the distance throws off my perspective. The glacier doesn't look that tall or that long, not that you can see the whole length. Of course it grows as we near, but at one point we decide we're too cold standing around watching as we near and need to go in for a bit, and we'll just see what it looks like when we're close to being at our arrival spot.

The face of Hubbard Glacier as it enters Disenchanted Bay.
Our naturalist says it's six miles wide, and the dark stripe
in the middle was caused by two glaciers meeting
to form the Hubbard.

We wander about the gift shop for a bit and pick up a companion for my Maine moose -- a stuffed animal I have previously enthused about as being "the cutest thing" -- then head back for the promenade deck. As soon as I can see through the glass doors, I turn to Sharon, telling her to "come see this!" Ice chunks float everywhere. Big ones, little ones. Not Titanic sized ones, but big enough, I'm guessing. Some are surely as big or bigger than some of the fishing boats we've seen.

Then we walk outside and see how close we've come to the glacier. It towers above our ship, all it's features suddenly visible. We are both suitably awed.


The captain will bring the ship very close, though how close I've no idea, especially now I've learned my lesson about perspective. But ridiculously close. He'll hold position for a while before turning the ship back and forth so people in the balcony rooms on both sides of the ship can view the glacier from their rooms. We're on the bow end of the promenade deck most of the time, watching and listening to the cracking and booming sounds the glacier makes.

Chunks of ice flow out  from a recent calving, or breaking off
of a part of the glacial face.

Sharon sees the first ice calve off the face. And she'll see several more. Takes me a bit to see anything more than the splashes that mark the aftermath, but I eventually see a chunk break off that's large even I can't miss it and watch it plunge into the water. Neither of us actually manages to get a picture of one of these calvings, though. We spend an hour, hour and a half or so before the ship heads back out of the bay. Remember "ditto" from the first post? Well, "ditto."


We've been on the water for less than two days. Long range forecasts indicate we may be in for some rain, but we decide what we've seen so far has made the trip, even if the rest is a wash.

A portion of the Hubbard Glacier a bit closer up.

Le Voyage Fantastique

 Our Alaskan adventure begins 

My day actually begins early when a cramp forms in my calf faster than I can deal with it. That means jumping out of bed and walking/stretching to reduce the acuteness of the pain. Once I can return safely to my bed I begin to wonder what I forgot to pack the night before, why we only printed one boarding pass for each of us when we're going to have to catch two planes -- all the stuff I worry about before leaving on a trip. Oh, and for the flight out, our boarding pass is good for both legs of the journey.

Then I glance at the clock and note it will be another hour and a half before the alarm goes off, and I've only been asleep for about 4 hours. I'll need that hour and a half to get up to the average amount of sleep I've had the two previous night, so I try to clear my mind, and for once it works. The next sound I hear is the annoying alarm I picked on my tablet the night before. Just to be sure, I had also set another device with an alarm, which sounds off a few seconds later.

We're up and making last minute preparations, but we apparently did a good job of packing, as little remains to be dealt with. I'd gotten it in my head that we were supposed to fly out at 8 a.m., and I'm surprised when I check the airport web site and discover we don't leave til 9. But that's OK. The extra hour cushion will allow us to make a leisurely arrival, something we don't often do, and that means I won't be such a pain worrying about everything while I'm driving to the airport.

Because it's the Labor Day weekend, we don't want to take our chances on the airport's remote parking having space -- they were full on July Fourth -- or spend more money on one of the interior lots, I've made reservations at an off-site lot. I may do that every time. We're given a specific row to park on, and the bus drives up right next to us for convenient off-loading of our bags. The driver gives me a card that tells me exactly where I'm parked. He gives ma a card with the info on it and says to give it to whoever brings us back from the airport. That driver will drop us off right there. Much better than the remote parking, and it's cheaper.

We pick up several other passengers, and fortuitously, we are all headed to the same terminal, though Sharon and I will be on another airline from everyone else. Once at the terminal we walk forever to the Alaska Airlines check-in and speed through the process. We're amazed at the security procedures -- no need to remove shoes or belts, just walk through the metal detector, pick up our bags and head for the gates, possibly because of the TSA pre-check stamp on our boarding passes. Just like we encountered in Ireland two years ago. Never did understand why a country that had endured more strife than ours seemed to have easier security.

Microsoft bought us breakfast at one of ubiquitous airport Starbucks locations. (If you sign up on Bing and do a bunch of worthless searches each day, you earn points redeemable for stuff. They get to brag about how many searches are done with their browser; you get free stuff. Seems reasonable to me, even though I've yielded yet more information about myself to cyberspace.) When the shop starts to become crowded Sharon says we should go sit in the gate waiting area and leave room for the customers coming in. It almost breaks my heart to be considerate of others, but I agree anyway.

While waiting for our flight, we are treated to a spectacle that comes straight out of a movie. A  flight for Detroit is about to leave, and an older, overweight man appears down the hallway, huffing and panting and walking as fast as he can.

"Detroit?" he wheezes out in a raspy voice.

"What's your name, sir?" the gate attendant asks. He replies in that same rasping, wheezing voice that now also seems to be failing. I hope he didn't have a heart attack or something on the plane.

Finally it's our turn to board. When we'd checked the seating on the website, the seat next to us showed to be empty. As passengers boarded, it appeared the seat would remain empty, but the last person down theplane's aisle -- a young man about college age -- appeared and dropped into the seat next to me. I'm sure he's a nice fella, but my hopes for extra space were dashed. Oh, well. Nothing to do now but sit back, hope we arrive in Seattle in time for our next flight, and go on to meet our boat.

The flight to Seattle goes well, a highlight coming when Sharon spots a mountaintop poking up out of the clouds. Given our flight altitude and the size of the peak, I figure it's a pretty big mountain. We'll attempt to find out which one it was later.

Mt. Ranier from our plane window as we fly into Seattle

We arrive a little later than planned, but the gate we arrive at is a change from the schedule, and we wind up very close to our connection gate. That gives us just enough time to grab a sandwich at one of the nearby shops and get on our next plane. (Alaska Air doesn't include meals in the ticket fee, and their selection of food for purchase is limited on our flight.)

We're seated almost in the very back of the plane, and our seat mate in the back of the plane is a young man who just graduated law school in Oregon and is traveling to a job clerking for a judge in Barrow, AK. He a chatty thing who has spent some time living in Alaska and tells us what he knows (or says he knows) about places we're going to and points out features visible through the plane window.

Sharon shows him the picture of the mountaintop, and he says he thinks it could be Mt. Ranier. I'll check it when we have access to some sort of map.

Our fare also doesn't include any in-flight entertainment we're actually interested in -- some Discovery and NatGeo shows and some indie stuff for free, but everything else carries a fee. I'd ripped some of our DVDs and brought along a selection of movies to watch on my tablet, so we plug it all in and watch a movie, which helps pass the time.

Our arrival in Anchorage puts the last of my worries to rest. On our first cruise 19 years ago, with Royal Caribbean, we arrived at the airport, picked up our bags, and then had no idea how to find our transportation to the ship. In Anchorage, the Princess people are stationed right outside the baggage claim area and give explicit directions on how to proceed. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

The ship anchors in Whittier, and the shuttle ride is supposed to take an hour and 40 minutes. As soon as we jump on the coastal highway, the whole trip seemed totally worth it. We are treated to some kind of beautiful scenery. And, though it's cloudy when we arrive,  the clouds clear as we travel so that by the time we reach the ship, it's mostly sunny and the views are stunning.

While on the way, our driver points out a bald eagle sitting atop a dead tree. We'll see at least one other but fail to photograph either. Still, a bald eagle. Pretty cool for a small-town Texas boy like me who missed a sighting of one several years back in Cleburne.

The driver determines that we're a bit ahead of schedule so he turns into a pull-out with a view of Explorer Glacier and lets us take pics. Most everyone takes pics with their cameras or tablets(!), and the most common pic I see being taken is the selfie. No more need to grab a stranger to take a pic of you in front of whatever interesting background you encounter. Though why people use tablets to take pictures with, I don't quite understand. They never seem to use the smaller ones, and it seems ungainly to me to take a photo with an iPad or a nine or 10 inch Android tablet with the cover hanging down.

The driver tells us that Whittier used to be the location of a secret military base during World War II, and was only accessible by sea or air. The powers that be decided a land route was needed, so they commissioned a tunnel through a mountain to Whittier.

Whittier at twilight as we're pulling away from the dock.

But they only built a one-lane-wide tunnel that provides both road and rail access to the town. That's right, I said one-lane and road-and-rail in the same sentence. Inbound traffic goes through the tunnel on the half hour, and outbound traffic goes through on the hour, assuming a train doesn't need to go through.

Then traffic, which shares its roadbed with the train tracks, stops both ways while the train goes through. And according to our driver, the atmosphere inside the tunnel is cleared before traffic goes through. Plus, traffic is spaced out so the truck in front of us is about half way through before we start in. Our driver's a bit of a wag and plays the theme music to Raiders of the Lost Ark while we travel through the tunnel.

As soon as we emerge from the tunnel, we see the ship. Another great view. If I write "ditto" in the future notes, take note that it will mean "another great view."

Our check-in is the easiest we've ever gone through. Maybe it's because we're sailing in September; maybe it's the hour we're checking in, but I'm happy. I like low stress, especially on vacation. We haven't eaten in a while so we head for the buffet. After that we explore the ship and enjoy one "ditto" after another whenever we step outside.

Eventually, after taking the first of way too many pictures, we return to our room to crash for the evening. By the time I've sifted through all the material provided passengers and decided to call it a day, it's been almost 21 hours. Sharon checked out a bit earlier, but it's safe to say neither of us has been up that long in years.