Glacier Bay National Park

The Coral Princess entered Glacier Bay National Park at 7:30 AM Alaska time.  Plenty of fog shrouded the mountains.

This humpback whale didn’t seem to mind the 49 degree temperature.  

The fog slowly lifted as the morning developed and it got warmer.  The sun broke through.  That set the stage for some actual panoramas.  Not the kind your mobile phone makes.  Actual, real-life, 3D panoramas.  

When you are taking pictures sometimes you run across a marsh, pull your mobile phone out of your pocket and snap a picture of some cubs and a momma bear spending some quality time in the water. Other times you are shooting a majestic landscape when a gull decides to photo bomb your work, but it actually adds to the landscape.  

This stellar seal can’t get high enough out of the water to end up placed with the mountains.  Still, it was very cooperative.

The star of Glacier Bay National Park is Margerie Glacier.  1 mile across and 250 feet high above the water line.  A sky with some clouds in it brings out the blue in the glacial ice.

Salt water eats at the ice river and massive chunks drop into the water.  Typically the chunks are about the size of a house.  Periodically they are the size of a commercial building.

The sound of the ice wall separating from the rest of the glacier arrives about the time the chunks start touching the water.  It sounds a bit like lightning.  There is a distinctive crackling noise that reverberates through the canyons.

250 years ago the water we traveled on to get to Margerie was ice.  The entire canyon or fjord was a massive glacier.  Over time salt water and a warming environment started to disassemble that shocking site witnessed by John Muir.  What remains is no less impressive, but if you want to see them act soon.