Departing Whittier

Our cruise left from Whittier.  At 9:00 AM we grabbed a hotel shuttle to the train station.  The ride is very short from the Comfort Inn, which is pracitically across the street from the station.  Inside a very helpful porter told us that the train company takes care of getting all the luggage to the ship.  All we needed to do was to put the Princess luggage tags on the bags.  They were waiting in our room when we boarded.  

The train ride from Anchorage to Whittier winds around various canyons, fjords and glaciers.  Once again, it is breath taking scenery.  The train pulled in at a few minutes after noon, on time, and the four of us promptly boarded a scenic glacier tour.  

One of the more interesting geologic processes of Tidewater Glaciers is calving.  Since they are rivers of moving ice periodically huge chunks of it collapse and fall into the water.  The pictures are from a distance because the wave is fairly large and so is the ice.  It looks about the size of a car and it’s really the size of a 5 story building.

Here are a couple of sequences that show the process:

The floating ice chunks are a handy place for this trio of stellar seals.  They like keeping close to the glaciers because the Orcas do not like the noise of the ice plowing into the water.  

The “killer whales” hangout nearby waiting for one of them to stray.  Incidentally, the name killer whales is really sinister.  They are actually members of the dolphin family.  Maybe dolphins don’t like the rep from family members who hunt for food (which dolphins do as well).  

Lots of otters in the water. When they congregate in large groups it is called a raft.

I don't know if the otters and the orcas signed some sort of peace agreement, but they don't seem to be interested in each other.