July 22- Glacier Bay Adventure - Day 4 - Glacier Bay Glacier Viewing

I am awaken by the barn swallows outside my window this morning. I check for moose out my window as my room faces the meadow. No moose. :(

We have an early start this morning leaving the Inn at 6:20. We head into Glacier Bay park for the docks and our boat. It leaves at 7:30am -- very calm seas this morning.

It's a cloudy morning and off we go heading out of Bartlett Cove.

Several sea otters on the water.

We head out past Strawberry Island in the direction of South Marble Island and a sea lion pull-out and bird rookery.

We see a few humpback whales in the distance.

We arrive at South Marble island and see many sea lions laying on the rocks. 

There a few in the water - some playing. You can sure smell them!

Lots of birds flying and in the water: Cormorants, Glaucaus (Grey) Guls, Pigeon Guiilimots, Kittiwakes, Common Murres and the prized Tufted Puffins!

There's a flock of puffins on the rocks and two of them seem to be either greeting or fighting each other. Pretty interesting to watch.

There still may be at least one sea lion pup out there - or he's a very small sea lion.

We pick up some sea kayakers from an island and then continue.

Next we head toward Gloomy Knob (this is where mountain goat are common). On arrival, there is a single mountain goat 

And a Bald Eagle. 

We watch the one goat for a bit and head on looking for more. And we find another.

And leaving we find a third goat!!!

Gloomy Knob has a cool rock pattern.

We spot 1 Tufted Puffin and 2 Horned Puffins in the water -- the rangers were quite excited by the Horned Puffins, I guess they are pretty rare to see here.

Now it glacier time, I see Reid Glacier as we pass by.

We are heading almost to the Canadian border up the Tarr Inlet to see the Margerie Glacier. We pass a few more glaciers.

Afterwards we spot a single Brown Bear walking along the beach! Our 1st bear!! Boy did he have big white claws! He was on a mission - paid absolutely no attention to us. He walked quite a ways down the beach before heading into the woods.

A little further, we spot another Brown Bear walking the edge of the water. This guy is quite aware of us but keeps walking the beach and digging in the rocks. 

Eventually, he spooks and run up the beach a bit and then continues moving along. But he ends up running off.

When we arrive there's a cruise ship parked in front - kinda breaks the spirit of the glacier. But the ship does add perspective on how large the glacier is!

There are a few icebergs floating around - one was a make-shift island for gulls.

We slowly approach heading around the ship from the far side getting a good view. The glacier calves - ice crashing into the water.

There's an ice cave in the glacier. I can see blue horizontal lines.

We spend about 30 minutes in front, listening to cracks in the ice and seeing 2 additional calves. Nothing big a fabulous but a calving no less. But the sun and a little blue sky happened which made things quite beautiful!

Oh, there a harbor seal swimming to the glaciers far right - I notice it pretty early but it takes most a long time to find it.

As we pull away, I can see the upper part of the glacier.

Time to turn around, once we were away from the glacier, it went back to clouds.

We stop at Lamplugh Glacier -- this one has already receded from the water. Most people were in line for food at this point so only a few went on deck for a look. This one was much bluer than the other.

We pass by Reid Glacier again.

The rest of the way, more birds and otters. 

And the cherry on a perfect day, an orca. I come in from on deck -- looking for otters -- and I see the captain looking ahead with his binoculars. Then I see this tall black dorsel fin come out of the water, grab my coat and head back on top. The captain then announced the orca to the boat.

I just see the one orca but people behind me say there are a few more in the distance. The one orca is actually 2 Orca - a mom and her calf!!! They came up together once!! Pretty cool!

Perfect cruise!!!

We get back to shore and listen to a Ranger talk about Snow a 44 year old humpback that was hit by a cruise ship in 2001. She washed up on shore and the National Park decided to reconstruct her bones. The local community (including students) helped in this process. This year the exhibit opened and we are one of the first to see it. Pretty neat to see the complete skeleton of a humpback whale!

We also see some Tlinglet trail markers.

Then we took at walk on the Forest Trail outside the Glacier Bay Lodge. Very mossy and green!

After the hike, we listened to a Park Ranger talk about glacier isostatic rebound - when the glacier retreats, the land starts to rise. In fact, the place where we were standing was a sea level back in 1966 and we are a good 3-4 ft above the shoreline.

While we were waiting for our ride back to the lodge, a blue heron flies in and lands in the tree above us. There are a total of 3 herons up there!

 Perfect day!!