Alaska 2016 - Day 6 (8/25/2016) - Glacier Bay

This morning was one of the most anticipated events for me for the trip – cruising in Glacier Bay.  I was dressed around 9:30 as the ship approached Russell Island.  I went up to the Promenade Deck (7) to view the couple of glaciers (Lamplugh Glacier and Reid Glacier) that were visible from our initial stake-out spot.  I then grabbed a bit of breakfast while the ship sailed into the Tarr Inlet toward the Margerie Glacier.  I briefly met up with Christine in the buffet as we approached Margerie, but left to go take pictures on the top decks while she had breakfast.  I ran into Eric and Stacy while the ship was twirling in front of the awe-inspiring glacier, and hung with them for most of the hour or so that the ship spent there.  We luckily got to witness a couple of fairly large shards calving from the glacier while our side was facing it.  There were park rangers on board during our time in the bay, and they provided some interesting information over the PA system during some of the viewing time.  One nice tidbit I picked up was that it was (to the day) the 100th birthday/anniversary of the National Park Service – Glacier Bay is a national park.

After the ship left Margerie around noon I grabbed a veggie burger from the grill and took it back to my room to lunch on.  I wandered around the ship for a while, grabbed a soft-serve cone from the ice cream bar, and unsuccessfully tried to find a good spot to look out for ocean wildlife.  Later on I met up with Christine to try to spot some of the dolphins, sea otters, and whales that she had been seeing from her balcony.  Unfortunately, the fog set in as soon as I went over there, so I didn’t get to see anything.  We went to afternoon trivia at 4:30 and teamed up with Helen again.  Our respectable 19 points (out of a possible 29) put us just one behind the co-leaders so we didn’t get to participate in the tiebreaker.  After trivia Christine and I met up with Eric and Tracy at the Wheelhouse Bar, where we killed some time before dinner.

Dinner was a formal affair.  I crashed the Zemke table in the Provence dining room, where there was assigned seating at an assigned time (7:30 in their case) – they arranged to add an extra seat for me to join Christine, Eric, Stacy, Eric’s brother Ryan, Ryan’s wife Nell, Eric’s dad Bob, and Eric’s mom.  In the end, though, Eric’s mom was a no-show due to sea-sickness so I essentially took her place.  Speaking of sea-sickness, the ship had encountered some fairly rough (but not alarmingly so) waters by this point, so her absence was understandable.  The rolling of the ship would continue throughout the night and into the next day.  Thankfully this didn’t affect me.  After dinner I swung by the Universe Lounge to catch the end of the Marriage Match Gameshow (their take on the Newlywed Show) before retiring to my room.

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My favorite photos from the trip can be found here:
https://goo.gl/photos/4ikrCSuPvRpRkXTKA