We'd taken a lot of "land" September vacations before but September 2009 found us on a cruise to Alaska. It was our second time for doing that and we were hoping to have better luck with seeing the glaciers as well as see how they had changed in the 3 years since we'd last been there and hopefully seeing some wildlife.
Our first stop, Ketchikan, didn't disappoint. The weather was terrific and we actually saw a Bald Eagle. No picture though as it was just too fast. :) This time though our timing was perfect for watching the salmon trying to go up the "ladder" in town an boy could you ever smell it.
The 2 days though that we were really looking forward to were Juneau where we would see the Mendenhall Glacier and 3 days later the Hubbard Glacier. We arrived in Juneau the next morning in drizzle. Uh-oh! We kept our fingers crossed that it wouldn't be like that out at the glacier which was about a 30 minute bus ride from the dock. But it looked worse and worse the closer we got to it. Finally our guide/driver dropped us off at the Visitor's Centre. By this point it was really foggy looking but he told us it should lift shortly. We kept our fingers crossed and wound our way along the trails leading to the view of the glacier. I'll say this much - you could hear the waterfall beside it but we were socked in - no view of the glacier. We kept hoping as our time there was running out that the weather would lift before we had to leave. Finally though we just had to leave to catch the bus for the rest of our tour. Then all of a sudden someone said the fog was lifting. J quickly rushed back and managed to get a couple of pictures.
We weren't able to get a good enough look at it to compare to the pictures from 3 years earlier when it looked like this to see if it had shrunk any.
I guess our tour just went in the wrong order that day. We should have done the salmon hatchery first and then the glacier. Oh well at least we had seen it in 2006. :)
So far we were doing great on the wildlife and not great on the glaciers. The wildlife sightings improved even more 2 days later when we were anchored off of a Native settlement (Icy Strait Point) and managed to see this from our balcony.
He/she just wouldn't co-operate though in letting us get a better picture.
Finally the day came when we would sail into the bay where Hubbard Glacier is and this time even though it was chilly there was no fog. Three years earlier we had great views of it but no calving while we were there so this time we were keeping our fingers crossed that we'd see some actual calving. We got pretty close to it and heard a lot of creaking and groaning from it and the very odd little bits (little to us on the ship) falling off. We were there for quite awhile with nothing happening when the Captain announced that he'd do one more pivot to get the ship facing back out towards the ocean for our departure. As we slowly turned our eyes for some reason were focused on one point of the glacier and we had both the SLR and the video camera trained on it just in case. But then again we'd done the same thing in 2006.
All of a sudden we saw a "small" splash just off the side of the point of the glacier near us.
We'd been fooled before but as we held our breath a shout went up from the ship as we could see the top of that section gradually separating from the body of the glacier. Were we actually going to see a calving or was it everyone's imagination and there really wasn't a gap forming?
No - we were seeing a calving! Everyone on our side of the ship was going nuts at seeing it!
It was the last possible minute as we were already starting to head back out but we did get to see quite the calving.
I think that September vacation tops the one when we took the hot air balloon ride. But that's another story.
My little story was part of Sian's Story Telling Sunday. If you've enjoyed reading my story I hope you'll enjoy some other stories from those who participate in Sian's Storytelling Sunday the first Sunday of every month. You'll find this month's stories here.
