When we woke up, it was pouring down rain. I didn’t mind (much) since we were going to be on a covered boat, cruising up to a glacier, and seeing what there was to see.
Fortunately, the sun broke through even earlier than yesterday.
Just on our journey out of the bay we saw plenty of wildlife.
Our route, and what the ranger saw (I didn’t see the goat. And the whale was too far enough away to merit mention.)
We passed by South Marble Island for our first good look at puffins and sea lions.
The ranger said the cruise ship must have seen something interesting, since they don’t normally come so close to shore.
Yes, indeed — bears! There were four near the stream (speculation was it was a mother and three cubs) and one further down the beach.
A little further, one of the spotters saw a wolf on the shore. (This got the professionals much more excited than the bears.) He was pretty hard to see, though.
The closer to the glaciers we got, the more barren the land was of vegetation.
We turned a corner, and started seeing glaciers. Our destination was the Johns Hopkins Glacier — one of the few glaciers still growing. (95% (or more) of the glacier in Glacier Bay are shrinking.)
We spent about 30 minutes floating in front of the glacier watching it “calf” — sections falling off. Unfortunately, you hear the splash (sounded like loud thunder) before seeing anything , so I didn’t get lucky enough to see the start of the fall. Just lots of splashes.
We headed back to the lodge. A beautiful day on the water.