After I had gotten the bug in my head about going to Alaska, one thing I kept seeing was “get a route that goes to Glacier Bay National Park”. And I was like, how does a ship go to a National Park. Well, today we would find out.

Previous posts:

Vancouver: Days 1 and 2: Sneaking out in the Middle of the Night

Vancouver: Days 3 and 4: Eating our way through Vancouver

Day 1 of our Cruise: The Zaandam!

Zaandam Continued: Calling on the Ports

Day 5: Glacier Bay National Park. Not to be confused with Glacier Bay toilets, sold at Home Depot.

We had attended a talk the previous day I guess about what to expect at Glacier Bay, but it was still sort of confusing, but we figured we would figure it out as we went along. Early in the morning some park rangers were going to board the ship AS WE WERE MOVING and then we would be going up into the Park, and then at some point stopping, turning around, and then headed back. Very exciting. Lots to see. This was the day that people said you would really want your balcony but Louie and I figured we would just have to be out on the decks with the other commoners.

We had thought we might wake up to see the rangers board at 6 am but we did not. Oh, and that is a picture of the daily newspaper we got every night for the next day. There was also an app with all the information–even without buying wifi you could use the app and you could also use the app to message other guests on the ship.

It was a foggy morning. Louie and I started the morning walking around the promenade deck outside–it was cold and brisk, the coldest day yet.

A good view of the promenade deck.

There was a real buzz in the air, as we were in the National Park and it was to be an exciting day!

At some point, they started making announcements and talking over the speakers, pointing out interesting features and animals and telling us what we were seeing. Everything was so large and some things were very far away, it was nearly impossible to understand the scale of things. A mountain might seem small and right near you and then you would realize that was actually over a mile away, or more. We would look with binoculars and realized we were looking at tiny specks that were Dall sheep.

It’s kind of hard to tell, but this was the first glacier we saw.

As we got further into the park, we slowed down and the water definitely changed quality: it looked much more icy. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t that clear, it was cloudy and a bit rainy.

Look, a glacier! And look at the color of the water at this point. It was surreal. This was Margerie Glacier, I believe.

We ran into Ben and Roz on the bow. It was crowded out there, and that’s where they started serving pea soup, which was a highlight of the day. Then it started raining, cold rain, and people started scattering until Louie and I were practically the only ones left.

It looked like you could reach out and touch it, but it was still over a mile away. The captain opened up the bow of the ship so we could go out and see from the front. He stopped the ship and we slowly turned around 180 degrees.

If you squint, you can see there is a seal on the ice floe in the middle of that photo above.

This looks different, so it must have been the Johns Hopkins Glacier.

Anyway, we started heading back south again after all of that, and eventually we went in to eat lunch, which I sort of regret in a way, because the water was looking so amazing and then by after lunch it was looking normal again, but oh well, it was also late in the day and either way we were heading south, lunch or no lunch!

Somebody was out in a sailboat!

And then we watched the park rangers leave the ship. They got onto a smaller boat, while the ships were moving. It was fairly exciting.

After that we decided we needed to warm up a bit so we hit the hot tub for a bit before our classical trio concert and dinner. Tonight’s dinner would be a bit different: we were going to the specialty restaurant called Morimoto by the Sea.

Louie ate an entire fish! The meal was nice, but we ended up feeling like it was overrated. We definitely overordered, and some things were very good and others not as much. In retrospect we would have been happy just to go to the regular dining room and saved the upcharge, and there weren’t any windows in the restaurant, which we also missed. It was dark by the time we got out of dinner!

And thus ended Day 5, Glacier Bay Day.

One more Blog Post to go. I’ll finish up my next post with Days 6 and 7 and then disembarkment. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments and I’ll answer them in the next post as well!