SE Alaska Part 3: Glacier Bay National Park
Tuesday morning we were flying to Gustavus on Alaska Seaplanes to see Glacier Bay National Park. The only issue with that plan was the weather. Our flight was scheduled for 6am, however, the clouds were pretty low and visibility was non-existent, so our flight was canceled. We were able to rebook for the 9am flight. With our fingers and toes crossed, we walked over to Donna’s for breakfast. Miraculously the weather cleared just enough and our 9am flight did go.
We arrived at Glacier Bay Lodge, checked into our room, and then we explored around. There’s a very cool whale skeleton near the lodge.
There were a couple hiking trails, and we selected the Bartlett River Trail.
Along the way, we saw some really fascinating and unusual (for me anyway) mushrooms. And then for the last mile or so, the rain finally caught up with us and we were pretty soaked by the time we got back to our room.
But it cleared up nicely in the evening before the sunset and there were reports of multiple porcupine sightings around the lodge, although I didn’t see any.
The next morning, the fog was back and our 8 hour boat tour left at 8am. This was the last week the boat tours were operating for the season, and we were fortunate to have a small group on the boat for the day.
The fog lifted relatively quickly and revealed the most glorious day of our entire trip, with blue sky and all.
Not too far out we entered “whale waters” and cruised past some humpback whales. Our first “stop” was at a couple small islands with multitudes of sea birds and sea lions.
At another point, we dropped off some kayakers and saw a grizzly bear very far in the distance on the shoreline. Our ranger/guide for the day said she saw a wolf, but I can’t confirm or deny that. On a tall rocky outcropping that we cruised slowly past, I saw a couple dirty white specks far in the distance that were mountain goats.
And then it was glacier time, our destination for the day was John Hopkins Glacier and we saw a few others on the way. We spent about 30 minutes in Johns Hopkins Inlet so that we had plenty of time to look at the glacier and also eat lunch. There was not a lot of calving activity on that day, but the view was lovely.
Only two cruise ships are allowed to enter Glacier Bay each day and at the end of the day we caught up to one of them, which was quite a view of the massive ship.
Upon returning to the lodge, we hopped on a bus to the airport and then took the Alaska Air flight back to Juneau for the night.
We finished up the day at Valley Restaurant with some halibut fish and chips.
