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Alaska, Glacier Bay National Park, glaciers, Holland America, Johns Hopkins Inlet, Marjorie Glacier, Tarr Inlet, Zaandam

Day 5 & 6: At Sea on The Zaandam & Cruising Glacier Bay

September 15, 2015

We are at sea for the next two days, so for day one, I decide to acquaint myself with the cruise ship. As an avid adventurer, most of my past travels have taken me to off-the-beaten-path kind of places where there are mountains to climb, hidden beaches to discover and historical ruins to explore. In the past, I’ve associated cruises with feelings of restlessness and claustrophobia, and despite hearing a number of good things about them, it’s taken me 34 years to find myself on one. However, when the Travelzoo deal for this Alaskan Land & Sea Package was delivered to my inbox back in February, I knew the deal was too good to pass up and it would be an ideal way to take in a lot of this vast state.

Deck 3 on The Zaandam.

We board the Zandaam after our Kenai Fjords Tour and attend the mandatory ‘muster drill,’ where we locate our life boat and answer role call. We then head to dinner in the Lodi, a buffet style restaurant on the 8th floor.

The Rotterdam Dining Room.

After breakfast this morning, I decide to walk the entire ship, starting on deck 3, of which the outside circumference is a walking track. Deck 4 is home to The Rotterdam, a fine-dining restaurant. On deck 5 is Explorations Café, the library, a casino, wine bar, and duty free shops. Up on Deck 8 is the spa, fitness center, pool, hot tub and a bar and cafe. While finding the Crows Nest (another bar on deck 9), and the outside viewing area, the rain sets in and stays with us for the rest of the afternoon. I realize there is plenty to take in on a cruise ship, but after three action packed days, I opt for chilling out. With no wifi connection while at sea, it’s amazing what I find time to do – I pick up my book I’ve been trying to finish for a couple of months, edit some photographs from the first part of the trip and write post cards home.

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Day 6 is also spent at sea, but today’s cruising is much more scenic than yesterday’s. At breakfast, we watch Glacier Bay Park Rangers approach in a small boat and board the Zaandam by ladder. At 10:30,they give a short presentation on Glacier Bay, mainly focusing on the wildlife in the area. They also give us an overview of what we will potentially see during our day.

Glacier Bay covers over 3 million acres and we will spend scarcely a day exploring here. About 80% of visitors to this National Park arrive by cruise ship. Others travel in by sea plane or smaller boats to kayak and explore. I feel like this is the epitome of ‘untouched land.’

Tarr Inlet, Glacier Bay.

The day is overcast, but I don’t feel so bad when I find out that in a month, this area might experience a total of four sunny days. We’re still afforded awesome views of Reid Glacier, Marjorie Glacier, and Tarr Inlet. Here, we stay idle for about 45 minutes, and we can hear the thunderous claps of glaciers calving around us. However, with limited visibility, we can’t actually see the movement today. We spot the occasional sea otter, and later in the day we approach Johns Hopkins Inlet.

Johns Hopkins Inlet.

I’m feeling a little frigid from short stints of standing outside on deck to photograph glaciers, so I head inside to the library and take a seat in front of floor to ceiling windows and watch as we pass one glacier after the next. I learn there are around 600 named glaciers in Alaska, but there are thousands of others that are unnamed. We seem to continually pass more impressive glaciers and it’s no good trying to sit still. I end up back outside with the camera, trying to capture just how majestic this area is. I am back and forth from either side of the ship to the library for the rest of the daylight hours.

We head for dinner at the Rotterdam and dine on seared tuna carpaccio and rock fish. We sit with a couple from New York City, Maude and Carl. Carl is a professional photographer who has just returned from photographing bears in Kodiak. The other couple are Crystal and her husband. I sit next to Crystal and find out she has walked portions of the Camino, and returns each year for a couple weeks at a time to work as a hospitelaro, or volunteer. We share Camino stories and make plans for the day in Haines, hoping for better weather on land tomorrow.

Aialik Glacier, Alaska, Anchorage, bald eagle, glacial calving, Holland America, humpback whales, Kenai Fjords National Park, Kenai Fjords Tours, orcas, puffins, Seward, Seward Highway, steller sea lions, US National Parks, Zaandam

Day 4: Anchorage –> Seward: Touring Kenai Fjords National Park

September 13, 2015

Scenes from the drive along Seward Highway.

We’re picked up early from the Anchorage Westmark to transfer to Seward. We don’t need to be on the boat until 8pm so with the extra time in Seward, we’ve booked an excursion with Kenai Fjords Tours. The tour is sold as a glacial tour, but they’ve raised my hopes with talk of whale sightings too.

Seward Highway Rest Area Views.

It’s a brisk 34 degrees at 7:30, but the forecast is promising sunshine for most of the day and highs in the mid-50s. With coffee in hand, we leave Anchorage by way of Seward Highway. Our driver, Carl, explains that the 125-mile journey that covers Seward Highway is considered one of the prettiest drives in the US. It’s actually only second to the East Coast’s Blue Ridge Parkway.

Soon we’re traveling south, parallel to Turnagain Arm, named for the number of times the initial pioneers who discovered this area had to turn around (or that was one of Carl’s many jokes?) Carl tells us to keep an eye out for Beluga whales, and I immediately make a bee-line for a seat on the right side of the bus to be next to the water. The sun is slow to rise and a low hanging cloud sits just above the lake surface, hiding our view of the glacier in the distance. The water is as still as a pond, and I want to stop the bus, jump off and spend the morning in a kayak, watching this environment wake up.

I’m asking myself how this is the second prettiest North American drive, Shouldn’t it be the first? I’ve never been so awed by mother nature in so many ways. I keep uttering the word, “Stunning!” And in my head I’m thinking, “This is the place I will come back to.” As we round a bend with mountains on our left, Turnagain is now behind us and we enter Dead Forest, a place where now, only a few trees exist. After the 9.2 earthquake in 1964, a tsunami destroyed the land, causing it to take on the consistency of a milkshake. Buildings and homes collapsed and now, only a few trees stand.

Dead Forest.

We pass through the Chulgach Forest with places you stretch to call a town, like Portage and Moose Pass, where fishing lodges, rental cabins, and RV lots dot the road. Luckily our driver needs a restroom break, so he pulls over and gives us a 10 minute photo opp near a valley- I’m thankful to get a still shot.

A sea otter having lunch in Seward Harbor.

Not too much longer and we can see Seward harbor, the sailboats, fishing vessels, catamarans and the Zandaam cruise ship, which we will be boarding later. We step off the bus and onto a boat where we will spend the next five hours exploring the Kenai Fjords National Preserve. From the boat, a sea otter is floating on its back, gnawing on the remains of a fish carcass.

We head out to sea with Captain Tim and his crew. To the left are the Kenai Mountains, the tops dotted with glaciers that slope down the sides. We cruise for about 20 minutes and turn a corner to see a long glacier sitting off to the right. Immediately, the temperature drops after being exposed to the glacial wind. Off in the distance, Alaskans are playing on jet skis and kayaks. Even a few surfers are out, milking the last of the mild temperatures before winter.

Kenai Fjords glaciers.

Kenai Fjords glaciers.

A Bald Eagle watches as our boat cruises by.

A Steller Sea Lion about to go for a swim.

Captain Tim points out a black bear on the beach, but as soon as we’ve seen it, he hightails it to the forest behind the beach. Off to our right are Tufted Puffins amongst a flock of seagulls. We cruise further, keeping our eyes peeled for whales tails, as we make our way to the glaciers.

At our next turn, we’re afforded views of steller sea lions, perched high above the sea water on craggy rocks, bathing themselves in the sun. Directly across from the sea lions, a bald eagle sits, almost as if watching the world go by.

The fluke of a Pacific Humpback.

We are approaching the first tidewater glacier of the tour, Holgate, when Captain Tim catches sight of a whale in a cove nearby. We trail this whale for a while, watching the flume as she comes up to breathe a couple of times. She shows her tail a few times, and we head on to the next glacier.

We pull up quite close to the the Aialik glacier, and Captain Tim explains that this is one of the largest tidewater glaciers, measuring one mile wide. He continues on about how changes in the oxygen levels affect the color of the glacier – the more compacted the snow is, the bluer the glacier is, due to changes in the oxygen molecules. As Tim talks, we begin to hear sounds resembling claps of thunder, as the glacier begins to calve, or break away. At times, we catch splashes as chunks of the glacier fall into the water. Tim wants to stay put as he has a hunch we are going to catch some good glacial calving, and moments later, he is proved right, as we watch for more than a minute as massive chunks of the glacier calve and crash into the water, causing waves to ripple towards our boat. We leave before the waters get rough, in awe of what we’ve just witnessed.

We follow a couple more humpbacks, but they’re elusive and we only catch a glimpse of a tail here or there in the distance. Tim has other things he wants to show us, so we’re not overly persistent in our pursuit. We begin our journey back to the inlet where the sea lions were resting earlier in the afternoon, and Tim comes on the loudspeaker again to let us know that it’s our lucky day because up ahead are a couple of pods of Orcas cruising through the inlet. Up ahead, I catch a glimpse of two to three Orca fins, and then off to the right are about three different pods, each made up of about three whales. They are just cruising by with no interest in us or what we’re doing there. It is beautiful to watch these animals in their own environment, and I manage to count 13 fins cruising away from us into the inlet.

A Pacific Humpback splashes on its side.

The trip has been epic, and Tim says it’s time to head back so that those of us who need to make trains and boats can do so, but even with limited time, we make two additional stops on the way back- one to catch the sea lions that are still lounging high on the same rocky outcrop, and two, to follow one last humpback that playfully waves at us and splashes on its side, showing its white pectoral fin.

The crew hands out freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and we make our way back to the harbor. I’m in awe of all we have seen on this ‘glacier tour,’ where we were expecting glaciers and hoping for a whale sighting. We’ve been afforded with so much more.

Captain Tim docks the boat back in Seward Harbor and stands above deck to bid us farewell as we disembark the Coastal Explorer. A few hundred meters up ahead, Holland America’s cruise ship, the Zaandam, sits docked, dwarfing the surrounding boats.

Boarding the Zaandam in Seward.

As we make our way to the cruise ship shuttle, a fisherman with a long, scraggly beard bikes by us. Over his shoulder is his fishing gear, and hanging from his bike handlebars is a freshly caught salmon. I think to myself, this must be the Alaskan equivalent of ‘picking up dinner.’

I could easily spend a few more days in Seward, exploring the surrounding villages and soaking in mother natures beautiful vistas, but we’ve concluded the land portion of our ten day Land & Sea Tour, and it’s time to board the Zaandam and cruise South.