Friday, July 11, 2008

Glaciers Galore

Our last day in Alaska was, by far, the only nice sunny day we saw over the entire week. Even more fortunate, we had a super fun outing planned for the day, a trip to Whittier and a day cruise through the Prince William Sound aboard a huge catamaran for the 26 Glacier Cruise. Even the drive to Whittier was fun. B and I were able to drive alone and really enjoy the scenery and peace, as well as our thoughts (which you know, are all baby thoughts these days). To get to Whittier you have to drive through a 2 mile train tunnel and it runs on a pretty regular, but limited, schedule. We made it there in time to explore the extremely small town of Whittier. I think I heard that there are something like 80 full time residents there. And if you would like to buy ice cream, this is the place, with opportunities galore.

The water in the Prince William Sound is protected, thus resulting in extremely calm water that is just smooth as glass and oh-so-pretty to look at. Plus, it lends itself to great pictures!

In this next picture it's a little hard to see, but that is a bald eagle perched upon that little iceberg floating around.
Some of the glaciers had more ice floating around them than others. Near this one there were just tons and tons of otters floating around, many with little babies on their tummies. I think the otters really enjoyed sunning themselves on this day.


This is one of the larger glaciers we saw, from a distance. When you get close to a glacier you can hear the noise that they make.
Calving is when a hunk of ice falls off a glacier and splashes into the water. It doesn't just happen all the time, and it certainly isn't predictable. Therefore, a trip to Alaska just can't be complete without being able to see it happen. And see it we did! You can see the water spray in this next picture of where the ice landed. I just wasn't quick enough with a camera to capture it falling. Oh well, I still managed to get some good pictures.

Our glacier cruise ended just in time for us to catch the 6PM tunnel out of town for the scenic drive back to Anchorage. Once we got back I showered, we packed up, then said our good-byes to B's family. We had a quick dinner, dropped off our rental car, and made it to the airport gate with 2 hours to spare. And about 12 hours later we made it home with lots of fun memories of our trip.




5 comments:

  1. What stunning pics! Looks beautiful! The picture with the still water was especially amazing to me - I don't think I've ever seen water so still. I'm glad you had such a lovely trip. :)

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  2. Anonymous7:14 AM

    I'm glad that you got to do some fun things before you left to come home. In a way it was like a honeymoon before the baby. The pictures are beautiful.

    Laurie

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  3. beautiful pictures! I agree with Laurie--it sounds like this was your baby-moon!

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  4. wow, Breathtakingly beautiful.

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  5. The pics are absolutely breathtaking!

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