Glacier BAy

Friday, June 17, 2023

We hopped out of bed this morning to go look at the Margarie glacier in Glacier Bay National Park. It was raining and 40 degrees, so we were a little slow with our hopping. Our ship was anchored quite close to the 250 ft tall sheet of ice. I took some pictures – close up and distant shots. We stood there a little bit. After a little bit longer, I asked when we could be done. Keith stood up very straight and looked directly at the glacier and said, “It’s like Clark Griswold looking at the Grand Canyon. We’re done.” We went back inside and looked at the glacier out the windows.

It turns out that I am not really that interested at staring at ice. The ship started to sail back out of Glacier Bay after about an hour. We were invited to keep a lookout for wildlife – seals, sea lions, and maybe goats. Or was it sheep? It was sheep. Mountain sheep. No, goats. Oh my God, I don’t know. One of them. And the thing was, I didn’t care if I saw mountain sheep/goats far away on a mountain through binoculars. Everyone else seemed to be quite excited. I didn’t tell anybody about my apathy. It was raining pretty hard and visibility was low. Keith and I played a great game of Scrabble – no score kept and we used great trip words like maul, moult, talon, deer, coon, badger, lure, and trunk. As we played, we boated up to the Johns Hopkins glacier. We stopped playing and went out in the rain and looked at it. We did not binocular for goat/sheep through the rain.

At noon, I was feeling super sleepy (because I keep waking up at 5) so I went for a nap. I told Keith to look for wildlife and to be excited. He came back to the room for a nap in 15 minutes. Mid-afternoon, we went by Marble Island and summoned up some interest in rain and possible wildlife. Things got really exciting when there were puffins floating all around the island. Hi Puffins! There were a bunch (8?) of whales blowing whale puffs and teasing us by flipping their tails at us. People gave up as we boated away. Keith took me to the sundeck which is covered with awnings (if it was sunny, you wouldn’t get any sun under the awnings. It’s a bad name). He had me stand in a certain spot, then he went over and stood under an awning. He suddenly took the go-pro on its stick and poked it up into the awning. Gallons of water fell in a torrent off of the awning. It was fabulous. I was totally surprised. We did it on the other side of the area. We waited a while and did it again. I jumped and jumped, but I just couldn’t reach it. It didn’t matter. It was great fun.

At 5pm, we docked at the national park headquarters. We all got out and went for hikes. We joined the casual group and it was just lovely. The forest is so covered in moss and lichen. I took a gazillion pictures, and none of them even come close to showing how great it was. That is why you go and do things, instead of just looking at pictures! We trailed along, then got on a boardwalk. We went out onto a pull-out on the boardwalk and the information sign there had a big picture of a moose. I said, “This seems like a good place to see a moose,” and one of our group said, “Speaking of moose, MOOSE!” Right across the pond from us was a moose. A moose with a necklace. We didn’t know if he was wearing his alma mater’s colors or if he was the park’s mascot, but the red banner around his neck made him easy to see. He was playing hard to get (pictures of), because his head was down while he was eating from the ground.

Moose are just so way better than goat/sheep. I was very interested in seeing a moose. We also saw a squirrel. So, moose and squirrel. Doesn’t need to try to be better than that.