Glacier Bay National Park Blog
Glacier Bay National Park is a bucket list item that I would think otherwise unattainable without cruising. We are so excited for today, and we are really hoping our balcony room comes in handy. We got up around 6am, but lazed around a little bit too long in our room. The National Park Ranger welcome was held at 7am in the Spinnaker Lounge, and we just made it on time to get one of the last few seats. They had a small breakfast bar set up with coffee and pastries which was good because we overlooked breakfast. The rangers had gotten on our ship a little after 6, taking a small boat over to us from Gustavus. After the introductions I ran back to the room to get our National Parks passport book- the rangers set up a stamp station for Glacier Bay. The rangers had a table with books, stickers, patches and other National Park memorabilia. By the time the meet up ended we were already cruising through Glacier Bay.
The wind was pretty strong on the upper decks, making it quite difficult to stay outside for long periods of time. Most people crowded the doors and took turns running out and taking photos. We did a few laps around the deck before heading for the breakfast buffet. We stuck out the wind and ate outside at the Great Outdoors cafe..that was a cold one. We passed the first glacier while we were outside. Heading down to the jogging track, we were hopeful the wind wouldn’t be as bad. This is when the first grizzly bear sighting happened, and we had to run to the other side of the ship.
We retired to our room for a while to make use of our balcony and take some time lapse videos. I brought a packable hiking blanket and it was unbelievably worth it. At 1pm the rangers held an informational session on the history of Glacier Bay. It was nice to hear the background of the National Park and the people that inhabited the area. On our way to watch the rangers depart the ship we saw some otters playing in the ship’s wake. I thought I was recording it on the GoPro only to realize I made my first photography mistake of the trip, the SD card was missing. Ben got a good video of them on his phone though. We watched the rangers disembark from the jogging track, they had to hop from the deck 3 door to their boat.
Because we had spent most of our day freezing we made the move for the hot tubs. Before we headed up I overheard our neighbors on their balcony say “we missed the glaciers??”. Apparently they stayed inside the inner part of the ship all day and missed the entirety of Glacier Bay National Park. Dinner tonight at the Seven Seas consisted of stuffed mushroom caps, ranchero beef mini tostadas, sweet yellow corn and chili bisque, breaded flounder fillet and braised short ribs. For dessert we got Black Forest chocolate cake and fig and apple crumble with vanilla ice cream. It’s a good thing we do so many laps around the ship and only take the stairs. Our evening activities consisted of Rummy in the Spinnaker Lounge and uploading photos to the harddrive. Tonight we found out that the Sports Bar is included in your dining plan. We picked up Ruebens to have for lunch tomorrow while we are in port. We will definitely start going there more than dinner at the main dining rooms.