Tracy Arm Fjord

Monday, June 12, 2023

When we came to Alaska on a Princess cruise 6 or 8 or 10 years ago, while we were looking at the Sawyer glacier, I saw people out in a black rubber boat up close to the glacier and the icebergs. I said, “How do I get on one of those black rubber boats?” The answer is What is win a cruise from jeopardy?

We were told to wear every single thing we brought along, including our suitcase. Apparently, they expected us to be cold while we were out zooming along in our zodiac boats. I wore all my layers and was quite warm (although during the zoomy parts the wind was wonderfully cold on my face).

It was more comfortable to sit on the boat than we expected. They said we would have three points of contact- a place to tuck our toes under a rope and two ropes to hang on to. We just sat there. We didn’t have to hold on (although one time we made a sudden stop and it would have been fine to be holding on then). We first zoomed off to see a cascade not far from the boat (and I do mean zoomed – it was windy and delightful). A waterfall technically needs to have water falling over the edge of a rock; a cascade is when water is flowing down on the rocks. Then we headed around the bend toward Sawyer glacier. We had to zigzag around a bit of ice, which made it all the more fun. As we got closer to the glacier the ice increased and with that increased ice came lots of seals. Since it is spring, lots of those seals had baby seals with them.

The sun came out! I said that with an exclamation point because this is a rainforest and it rains all the time and the guides said they rarely see the sun. I said I lead a charmed life and the sun usually shines on me. Everyone in my boat was very happy to hear about that.

We did lots of looking at the glacier and then spent lots of time looking for a harbor porpoise. It dolphin dived (porpoise dived?) out of the water pretty many times for us to see. One of the things that Lindblad Expeditions is supposed to offer is time to stop and look at animals when they appear- that was certainly true today.

When we finally headed back toward the boat, the tide was coming up and the ice was gathering. We got a radio message from the head of zodiac boats recommending that we travel together to help get through the ice. There was one private zodiac boat (it was white) and he had the idea to push a fairly big iceberg in front of his boat to break through the smaller ice. For a while, we trailed behind him and it worked pretty well, then we set our own course. We spent about 20 minutes being sort of stuck in the ice. I think it was my favorite part of the day.

We joined lunch already in progress and it was delicious. So far the food on this cruise has so far surpassed the Viking Cruise I can’t even believe it.

We spent most of the afternoon out on deck looking at waterfalls and looking for bears. There were two bear sightings, but we didn’t see either one. Oh well. I bet we’ll see the next one.