From Glacier Bay to College Fjordwas a long sail. During the day we did our walking, and then we rose to the fourteenth deck to the golf course. We had played it a few times, giggling more than golfing. For this our farewell game, the wind was pushing its way around the ships superstructure, which usually gave some shelter for ones putting. Today, if the ball was hit just right (wrong), the wind rolled it along so fast that it could run uphill into the next green. All this made us giggle even more. One round was enough today!
This morning we had been invited for a tour of the bridge. Earlier in the week, a couple we had dinner with mentioned that theyd had such a tour. Theyd asked at the Pursers office how a visit could be arranged and had been told they must write a letter to the captain. Ruth did so the next day, mentioning her Guard status, if that would make any difference. It was very nice to get an invitation in return. We were amused to see that four of our were the other two couples from dinner the earlier evening. We
were shown around by one of the very junior officers, and then the captain came over to greet us. I think, in part, he wanted to chivvy us along and off his bridge, as they were preparing to embark a pilot.
We enjoyed the ships naturalists narration this day much more than the one the Park Ranger had given the previous day in Glacier Bay. He had done his spiel so many times it could have been a recording. The naturalist had many more interesting anecdotes.
Our preoccupation while gliding up to the glaciers was to spot wildlife – in particular, sea otters . Finally, late in the afternoon, a rash of black spots appeared in the water on the side where we were. These were sea otters seen from the seventh storey of our ship. Binoculars were a must (and we did have ours), but even then the little noses and feet (they float belly up) were too distant for details. For a moment, I did see a slash of brown on a bergy bit (chunk of ice), and as it twisted in a dive, I knew I had seen an otter. The seals were much more cooperative,
College Fjord was much narrower than Glacier Bay, and glaciers were not so receded. Many of them seemed to be rivers of ice tumbling down to the water. Each of them was named after an Ivy League College, hence the Fjords name. If memory serves, the most prestigious college names were bestowed on the largest glaciers. Thus, the grand finale was at Harvard Glacier , a monstrously wide lake of ice at the end of the Fjord.
As with the others, Harvard Glacier was even larger than it seemed to the untrained eye. The naturalist who gave explained and pointed out the moraines that bracket the white ice. They are formed when dirt and rock overlay the ice to a degree that allows to take root. Without knowledge, we would think it was the shore of the glacier, instead of being part of the whole.
One sight had eluded our cruise – the calving of a glacier (a slab of ice breaks off the face). Even though it was approaching six oclock, our captain wanted us to see this phenomenon. Instead of once spinning the
ship very slowly around, to give a good view to all, he performed this maneuver three times. Ruth was cold by the third turn, so she went in to dress for dinner. I stuck it out with cameras at the ready. Suddenly, I yelped, Oh!, and the woman next to me pointed. It happened so fast (quite a small slab), that only in retrospect did my mind put together the image of the slab and its splash.
