An Awesome Sight to See

Day 5, Monday, May 18th Glacier Bay welcomed us with wide open blue skies and jade green sea. Probably the most amazing thing about our trip as a whole was the weather. As mentioned earlier, we only had rain for about 1/2 an hour in Juneau and it was clear sailing from there. Please understand, this area of the world is considered to be a rain forest ~ not tropical ~ but a rainforest none-the-less. Ketchican (stay tuned for that exciting pit stop) receives 12 ft...FEET....not inches of rain a year. We were told over and over again that the weather during our cruise was a truly rare experience.

These glaciers "flow". They build from 21 miles back up in the mountains, at 15,000 ft, and move forward approximately 8 ft each day. They are literally ice rivers. They are truly blue in color. That comes from the compression of the ice, they are so dense all light is blocked, allowing our eyes only to see the blue color as on a prism.

The black is dirt that the ice has collected as it scraped down the granite mountainsides. Being a National Park, we were joined by National Park Service Rangers who were our "guides" through the bay. We visited three glaciers and their presentation was done shipwide over the loud speakers. You could tell they are all quite knowledgeable and took pride in sharing "our" park with us.

The chunks of ice, of course were from the calving of the glacier. That is when, as the glacier makes it way down to the sea, it breaks off and the ice floats out to sea. We saw eagles flying overhead and resting on the ice. There were sea lions. As a matter of fact, access to thethe John Hopkins Glacier was restricted as the sea lions, who had given birth earlier in the year were raising their new young to return to the sea in a few months.

We started out in our winter gear, but by mid morning, we were down to our shirt sleeves. Once the ship slowed down, there was no wind. The sun was warm and lounging in the deck chairs was a wonderful way to relax.

It is in places like this that one can truly recognize God's majesty in His creation. All the talk about the "vastness" of Alaska is true. It seems as if the wilderness goes on forever.