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September 15, 2013 Sunday
Day 71
Spending the day on Prince William Sound, on a Glacier and Wildlife Cruise. It is sunny, oh happy day!
Our boat, Valdez Spirit was roomy and had the most comfortable seats, inside as well as on deck. Soon after we left the harbor, on our way to Columbia Glacier, we saw a black bear on the beach. Other wildlife sightings included numerous harbor seals, eagles, sea lions and sea otters. They served us lunch on the cruise which lasted 7 hours. We went about 100 miles round trip, up into Prince William Sound to Columbia Glacier. Columbia is the second largest tidewater glacier in Alaska, (Hubbard, in southeast Alaska is the largest). Columbia is 300 feet high and another 100 feet below the surface. Massive!
All along the way, our captain took his time, stopping for up-close views of wildlife, waterfalls, glaciers and other beautiful sights. He kept up a steady, interesting and informative narration about all the things we were witnessing. He also shared with us information about Prince William Sound, commercial fishing, oil shipping, early explorers and more.
Our captain skillfully navigated through hundreds of icebergs to get us close to Columbia Glacier. We stopped about one-half mile away, but it seemed much closer. I guess when things are so massive they seem closer than they actually are. The reason the boat won't go any closer is because when the glacier breaks off (calves) it can create a significant wave or even displace ice onto the boat. We listened to the sounds of the glacier creaking and we heard the gunshot / thunder sound as a part of it calved off and crashed into the water.
We stood on the bow of the boat, watching the glacier and silently listening. We were drifting around icebergs, and suddenly, right beside the boat a huge iceberg, just started breaking apart. It was so cool to see and hear. Those bergs are gigantic; their underwater portion is so much bigger than what we saw on the surface. What a fantastic tour, we enjoyed it so much and the weather couldn't have been nicer. Sunny and blue skies.
We got back from our cruise around 6:30, had a quick dinner at camp, then took a drive to see bears again. We saw several black bears, but not as many as last night. Still fun, though. One funny (kinda scary) thing that happened: We were standing on the bridge over Abercrombie Creek, (where last night we had seen all the brown bears), and there were two Asian guys who barely spoke English, watching there too. In fact, they had driven their small rental car right up on the bridge in the bike trail. Michael and I had a chuckle about that, and we didn't have the heart to tell them you're not supposed to do that. But anyway, while we were looking down at the river, all of a sudden those guys sort of squealed and laughed and pointed, so we looked where they were pointing and about 20 feet away to our left (on the bike trail that we were all on!) was a good sized black bear. Michael made a big noise and raised up his arms, the bear turned tail and ran back into the trees. We all laughed, those guys had such a thrill, but we were so glad they were there to warn us. We might have had to jump in their illegally parked car with them! That was a little too close. Bears are really quiet, we hadn't heard a thing.
Wildlife Sightings
Black Bear
Sea lions
Sea otters
Harbor seals
Ravens
Sea birds
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