ALASKA AND GLACIER BAY

Sad to leave Yakutat Bay and the St Elias mountain range behind but Glacier Bay lay ahead.

Lovely scenery as always as we approached early morning with a big highlight being a small pod of Orca playing around our bow wave. They were very quickly left behind as the ship powered on but so thrilled to see them.They were a much hoped for sighting in terms of wildlife.We have them at home too but they are always a stunning sight.

I can claim being the first to spot them and word soon went round but they were gone very quickly.There was an announcement made on the bridge but it came too late.Only in the last day or so of the cruise did we realise that there was a Naturalist on board! Never saw him at all or heard any announcements from him.Bit disappointing though I think general entertainment on board is the thing on this type of cruise.

Two Rangers from the National Park also boarded our ship via a small boat; interesting to see them get on! I don’t know whether this was a requirement given we were in an NP but I don’t recall them making any announcements.They were available however to talk to while we were in Glacier Bay.

It took most of the day to sail into Glacier Bay which is made up of many inlets with, of course, glaciers tumbling down into the sea.It was impressive but the flat light meant the scenery didn’t quite hit the spot for me compared to what we’d seen yesterday.Still gorgeous and stunning – we were getting spoiled!

And then, we turned into the John Hopkins inlet and the views went off the charts again!

Wow – it seemed , now, that EVERYONE was up on deck as they realised we’d really hit somewhere ultra special.

The ship stayed at the edge of the bay, possibly due to water depth, I’m not sure and we stared at the enormous mountains all around trying to clear in the lowish, lingering cloud.It was majestic and I don’t think I’ve captured that very well in the photos.The scale, as ever, is hard to get across.

Spent about an hour just slowly meandering at the entrance to the inlet admiring the gigantic Fairweather mountain range with the highest peaks over 15,000 feet and trying to clear.Definitely up there with Yakutat Bay and the coastal mountains for memorable views.Making sure a cruise goes into this inlet would be the thing, IMO.Fabulous and we were lucky again with it clearing and good light.