Glacier Bay National Park
What a delightful day in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve! Our morning adventures with the sights and the sounds of this magical place started far earlier than any of us had expected. At 5:30 AM, Captain Graves’ gentle wake-up call let us know that if we crawled out of bed, or at least over to our windows, we would be able to see sunrise at Johns Hopkins Glacier. Yes, it was true. On our fifth day in Alaska, after assuming that a few specks of blue in an otherwise cloudy sky was a “clear day,” we were treated to blue sky and sunshine beyond our wildest dreams. To top it off, we were surrounded by some of the finest scenery in southeast Alaska!
Although we were still four miles from the glacier, its immense size made it look much closer. We were able to enjoy bits of it up close as the icebergs and bergy bits floated by us. After spotting a few of the 3,000 – 5,000 harbor seals that call Johns Hopkins inlet home and watching the shadows dance across the walls, we headed for two more rivers of ice: Margerie and Grand Pacific Glaciers. Here we were able to sit a quarter mile away from Margerie listening to the sound of white thunder (as bits of the glacier calved off the face into the ocean) and the sound of the black-legged kittiwake colony. The recently glaciated rock benches with sparse vegetation, reminded us of the process of succession that must be completed before a new forest can grow, like the one we saw yesterday.
The rest of the day kept up with the high expectation that was set so early. By lunchtime we were watching a brown bear on the shore, and soon after lunch we found a mother brown bear and two cubs on the beach just north of Gloomy Knob. The limestone knob was also a nice place to watch several mountain goats scrambling on a hillside that looked way to steep for any of the rest of us to walk without suction cups. Later in the afternoon, searching the shoreline of Geike Inlet rewarded us with another bear, this time a black bear!
Nearly back to Bartlett Cove, we made a final stop at South Marble Island to test our sea bird identification skills. We saw pelagic cormorants, tufted puffins, pigeon guillemots, kittiwakes, glaucous-winged gulls, common murres and a large group of Stellar’s sea lions.
The day ended with sunset walks through the 200 year old forest at Bartlett Cove and games on the beach for the kids. Bull kelp, by the way, makes a very good jump rope!
As the day comes to a close, the quote read to us by Melanie Heacox, our Park Service Ranger continues to sum up the day perfectly. “I’ve never been embossomed in scenery so hopelessly beyond description.” John Muir
What a delightful day in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve! Our morning adventures with the sights and the sounds of this magical place started far earlier than any of us had expected. At 5:30 AM, Captain Graves’ gentle wake-up call let us know that if we crawled out of bed, or at least over to our windows, we would be able to see sunrise at Johns Hopkins Glacier. Yes, it was true. On our fifth day in Alaska, after assuming that a few specks of blue in an otherwise cloudy sky was a “clear day,” we were treated to blue sky and sunshine beyond our wildest dreams. To top it off, we were surrounded by some of the finest scenery in southeast Alaska!
Although we were still four miles from the glacier, its immense size made it look much closer. We were able to enjoy bits of it up close as the icebergs and bergy bits floated by us. After spotting a few of the 3,000 – 5,000 harbor seals that call Johns Hopkins inlet home and watching the shadows dance across the walls, we headed for two more rivers of ice: Margerie and Grand Pacific Glaciers. Here we were able to sit a quarter mile away from Margerie listening to the sound of white thunder (as bits of the glacier calved off the face into the ocean) and the sound of the black-legged kittiwake colony. The recently glaciated rock benches with sparse vegetation, reminded us of the process of succession that must be completed before a new forest can grow, like the one we saw yesterday.
The rest of the day kept up with the high expectation that was set so early. By lunchtime we were watching a brown bear on the shore, and soon after lunch we found a mother brown bear and two cubs on the beach just north of Gloomy Knob. The limestone knob was also a nice place to watch several mountain goats scrambling on a hillside that looked way to steep for any of the rest of us to walk without suction cups. Later in the afternoon, searching the shoreline of Geike Inlet rewarded us with another bear, this time a black bear!
Nearly back to Bartlett Cove, we made a final stop at South Marble Island to test our sea bird identification skills. We saw pelagic cormorants, tufted puffins, pigeon guillemots, kittiwakes, glaucous-winged gulls, common murres and a large group of Stellar’s sea lions.
The day ended with sunset walks through the 200 year old forest at Bartlett Cove and games on the beach for the kids. Bull kelp, by the way, makes a very good jump rope!
As the day comes to a close, the quote read to us by Melanie Heacox, our Park Service Ranger continues to sum up the day perfectly. “I’ve never been embossomed in scenery so hopelessly beyond description.” John Muir
