Glacier Bay

If the rainforest near Ketchikan was an education in the many shades of green, Glacier Bay was almost equally full of blues. This was the coldest day of the trip, especially since a brisk breeze was blowing off the ice and the ship generated an additional wind while it was moving. The waiters served pea soup and hot drinks on deck around 11:00.

What I saw that you will not see:

• The Marjorie Glacier calving. All the chunks it dropped were small, and by the time I saw them falling it was too late to capture anything but little splashes in the water.   Someone told me the way to catch them was to listen to the glacier groaning and figure out from that where the next split will be, but the sounds echoed around the cove too much for me to tell.
• Puffins. Too small and too far away to show up on film. 
• Whales. I figured you didn't need to see any more anonymous black fins. 

 Unfortunately, photos just can't show you how big everything actually is.  The glaciers are such immense walls of ice that it's hard to believe they are receding as quickly as they really are.

For scale, see large ship in right foreground

 

The brown dots on the rocks are sea lions

" One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers' plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul." ~ John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir