We went to the Lido buffet for breakfast. Jonathan recognized us and offered me a decaf coffee right away. Then I had my usual 5-minute egg and muesli, although I was sorely tempted by a chocolate croissant. Maybe tomorrow... :)
Ross made himself a bagel with smoked salmon.
We hastily ate our breakfast because we had to meet in the Statlite lounge for our excursion on a catamaran up the Tracy arm fjord to view the South Sawyer Glacier.
We took a very short bus trip from the Symphony to the catamaran. And I do mean _very_ short It was about 500 feet.
When we it on the catamaran, Ross and I went to the top floor. On every seat was a couple of pairs of binoculars and field guides waiting for us
None of the Crystal excursions have been very full. They were expensive, but have been worth it because there is always a window seat. You can see from the picture below how much room there was on the catamaran to move around and take in the scenery. The crew said the boat was running at about 1/3 capacity.
Our boat driver stopped by this beautiful waterfall so we could take pictures.
After about an hour, we began to see icebergs so we knew Ww were getting nearer to the glaciers. The icebergs are just smaller pieces of ice that have broken off from the main glacier. I did not edit the color on the photo below. Can you see how blue they are?!?
The naturalist who was on board said that the blue color is partly because of the way glaciers are formed. The ice gets so compressed that it squeezes all of the air out The air is what makes ice look whiter. So the glacier is a much purer ice than the kind in your freezer.
Once we started getting close to the glaciers, it became very cold outside. We really had to bundle up before we went out on deck.
In the photo below, we are standing in front of the South Sawyer glacier. It is hard to get a sense of how just large these glaciers are because we are so far away. We are at least 1/4 mile away.
I did not have a good understanding of what a glacier looked like before our trip to Alaska. Note how the icy blue glacier appears in the valley between the gray mountains. The ice appears to be flowing out of the valley in the same way an actual river of water would (albeit much more slowly) which is why glaciers are sometimes called an"river of ice". When a glacier meets the ocean, it is called a tidewater glacier.
This is a picture of another amazingly blue iceberg.
The water in the fjord was a beautiful aquamarine color. It reminded me of the water in Bermuda.
The ride back to Juneau took another couple of hours. We saw a black bear and a couple of whales. I actually got a picture of whale tail, but it was with my real camera so you'll have to wait to see it.
It doesn't matter where we are, Ross's afternoon nap finds him.
Stay tuned for part 2. :)
[My internet access is spotty and slow. It takes a long time to upload the posts from my phone, so I am going to try breaking this day into 2 posts and see if that helps.]
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone.
Location:Tracy Arm Fjord
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