Glacier Bay National Park

Glacier Bay is a natural lab, a wilderness, a national park, a United Nation biosphere reserve, and a World Heritage site. Just 250 years ago, Glacier Bay was all glacier and no bay. A massive river of ice, roughly 100 miles long and thousands of feet deep, occupied the entire bay. Today, that glacier is all but gone, having retreated north. Fewer than a dozen smaller tidewater glaciers remain. The blue ice is still impressive.

The blue ice was amazing to see.

Our cruise ship traveled up the bay outlined on this map to the Y. The left side was closed at the time to protect birthing sea otters so we could only see the John Hopkins glacier from a distance. The right side gave us a close look at the Grand Pacific glacier. On the west side we pass the Reid glacier - see below. During the Glacier Bay cruise, National park rangers were on the ship to provide cultural, history and environmental lectures,

Carolyn at the Reid Glacier, with big chunks of the glacier floating in the bay.

We had to stay on the ship for two days during this part of the cruise in Glacier Bay National Park. Then we went onto Whittier, Alaska for the land portion of our journey. During our long onboard time, we found plenty to keep us busy, including dueling piano concerts, bingo, movies, shopping, a massage, and an occasional visit to the work out room. Every night there were music and dance stage performances, a Holland America “Orange” party and dancing late into night to the BB King tribute band. The ship’s five different restaurants also provided wonderful opportunities to dine in style and meet some interesting couples. We chose specialty restaurants on the two dressy nights.

Fresh fish every night was a real treat.

But there were too many tempting deserts. Above was a mango meringue delight.

It was also great to sip wine and watch whales and the Alaskan sea coast go by.

Cocktail hour offered a beautiful views. It was also nice to relax and watch the world go by.

BB King’s eight-piece band performed almost every night of the cruise. They were great to dance to and even better to listen to as you can probably tell from the sample video above.

Alaska is said to be the land of the midnight sun. This photo was taken at 11:00 o’clock at night with all natural lighting from our private belcony.

Lessons Learned

1. Global warming is in evidence everywhere with 95% of Alaskan glaciers melting. There were numerous ice chunks floating that had broken off of the disappearing glaciers.

2. Holland America food offerings are great but do not come calorie free. Our thousands of steps did not offset the pounds gained.

Next stop Whittier, Anchorage and Denali National Park.

Click To See Denali and Points In Between

Appreciate

Credits:

Created with images by kristirubino - "alaska glacier bay" • steve7183 - "alaska glacier bay usa" • dennisflarsen - "glacier bay ice alaska" • MICHOFF - "canada margerie glacier nature"