Glacier Bay

Glacier Bay was a glorious experience. We awakened to a thick fog bank Wednesday morning. Since we had been warned that this was likely to happen, we calmly went about having breakfast and heading to the top of the ship. Sure enough, by eight the sky was beginning to lighten and we were beginning to see glaciers.


After breakfast we went to the briefing by a member of an indigenous tribe, the Askayisawaa. The name of the speaker was Xeetli or Alice Haldane. She was a member of her tribe’s wolf clan. She explained that the child took the name of the mother’s clan. Clan members are not allowed to marry any one in the same clan because tehy are all considered to be part of the same family and are brothers and sisters. She talked to us about the history of her people and the problems they have had holding on to their culture since the Europeans first started showing up. It was quite interesting to hear her. She and two rangers came on board early in the morning from a boat that pulled along side the ship and left the same way each afternoon in Glacier Bay.

I staked out a chair on the Lido deck where I could observe both glaciers and tourists. It was fun watching them run from side to side and then up and down the stairs and back around. I was bundled up with two deck blankets and my polar fleece, so I was fairly warm. The light rain stopped not long after I went out on deck. I stayed there and watched the majesty of all the glaciers slip by until we reached Margerie, the last and the most spectacular one that we would see. By then Klep was back from running around and we went into and found a window table. We lunched overlooking the Margerie glacier as the captain turned the boat all the way around giving everyone an excellent view of the glacier.

After naptime, we headed up to tea which was an absolute delight with cupcakes, finger sandwiches (including salmon, of course) and scones. We than promenaded a couple of times around the promenade deck and found us deckchairs in a protected area. We enjoyed using the binoculars to watch the birds and search for other wildlife. The most we saw were 44 geese which were headed south.

We came in to warm up and dressed for dinner. It was captain’s night, so Klep had to wear a tie. We had a fantastic dinner which included surf and turf for those who could eat lobster. I had a rack of lamb. The dinner from appetizer through dessert was quite spectacular. We sat at our table and swapped stories with our new friends from Iowa and Michigan until it was too late to make the show.

We returned to our cabin, inspected our towel animal, looked out at the water, and fell into bed. The boat put us to sleep quickly.