After our day of activities in Skagway we followed that up with a far more relaxing day aboard Koningsdam and some slow, gentle, scenic cruising along Glacier Bay. Sometimes a place has a misleading name but that certainly isn’t the case with Glacier Bay which hosts over a thousand glaciers in total. We wouldn’t see anywhere near that number from our balcony or the decks of the ship on this day but we would see a few and we’d also get to see some ice calving too.
Cruise ships typically take on park rangers to provide commentary and answer questions when they visit Glacier Bay, and Koningsdam was no exception, but we mostly kept to our balcony for the hours of cruising and admiring the landscape so missed out on most of that. A viewing deck at the fore of the ship was also opened up and we did head down there for a little while but it was very exposed, occasional drizzle would fall, and even if the speed of the ship was very low and the wind was not strong either, what wind there was carried with it the chilled temperature of all that ice in the area. At least on our balcony we could pop back into the room every so often to warm up.
By far the highlight of all the sights was getting to witness part of Margerie Glacier calving. Amidst near silence to suddenly hear what sounds like a gun shot echoing all around and to then see blue-white ice slide and crash into the flat, frigid water of the bay took our breaths away.
Anyway, you didn’t come here for the words, you came for the photographs of Glacier Bay, and without any more distraction, here they are.
Glacier Bay was stunningly beautiful.
In the next post in this Alaska cruise travelogues series we’ll reach the final port of call as we visit the city of Ketchikan.