Hubbard Glacier & Glacier Bay

It was nice to wake up when we wanted for two days.  Without the anxiety of knowing that we had to be somewhere at a certain time.  On the first full day on the ship we sailed toward Hubbard Glacier.  We slept in and awoke when breakfast was delivered to our room.  (We placed the order the night before.)  It was very cold on this morning.

After breakfast we headed up to the Lotus (indoor) Pool.  There was a Ceramics@Sea enrichment class.  We were able to pick an item to paint- they would fire it Thursday night for pick-up on Friday afternoon.  We enjoyed ourselves for a few hours while the ship made it's way to Hubbard.  We were a little disappointed that it was not offered again until the day we were in Juneau (while we were on our excursion.)  So our pieces were fired unfinished and 1/2 painted.

 

When Ceramics @Sea time was up we headed down to the Bayou Cafe for the traditional Pub Lunch.  Neither of us ordered Fish & Chips (I don't eat fish) and hubby didn't feel like it that day.  We both enjoyed the Curry Chicken.  Very good actually!  Here is the menu:

Next we sailed up to Hubbard Glacier.  Kath Slamp- our Naturalist narrated via the open deck speakers and a channel on the stateroom TV.  I cranked our TV volume all the way up and kept our slider open to we could hear the commentary.  Below are a series of pictures as we approach.  The nearest the captain could get was 5 miles due to the ice flow.

That night we had dinner at Sabatini Specialty restaurant.  It was a 23 course Italian meal.  Okay, maybe not 23 courses, but it was long and a lot of delicious food.  

We went to bed stuffed that night!

We slept in again the following morning and took a walk around deck.  Today's itinerary included sailing through Glacier Bay National Park.  Only two cruise ships a day are allowed to enter the park and Princess has one of the contracts.  As we were sailing in we saw a dolphin swimming toward the ship and then it turned and followed behind us.  I couldn't capture it on my camera because he was just too quick.

Because most of the day was cruising through the park we chose to have lunch on our balcony.  We ordered chili and Moroccan Pot Pie of some sort.  The Moroccan food was good, chili not so much.

At About 1pm Alaska time we pulled up next to Margerie Glacier.  from the ship we seemed to be about 50 yards away- but in actuality we were still a mile and a half!

Directly next to Margerie Glacier is the Grand Pacific Glacier.  Very large.  The U.S./ Canada Line sits right on the edge of the glacier.  I kept looking around for it and could not find it.  I snapped a few shots of the surrounding area and we went on our way to Johns Hopkins Inlet to see more glaciers!  When we arrived home I looked up information on the Grand Pacific... well- I HAD taken a picture of it-

At first I thought- this is just a bunch of dirt!  But then, after reading up on it, I realized that the Grand Pacific has ground up so much mountain that it looks like dirt- but in fact it's a glacier!!

We sailed by a few more glaciers and picturesque mountains on our way back to the ranger station.