Remember how our boat had issues in the glacier tour in Valdez? Well we all agreed we liked that boat better (smaller # of people, outside seating, etc), but we had an amazing day on the Phillips 26 glacier cruise out of Whittier.
Step 1: get to Whittier. To do this you have to drive through a one-way tunnel that leaves every half hour. (Great...we had to make sure to not only arrive early, but also hit the perfect tunnel time???? 🤦🤦🤦)
I'm the claustrophobic one in the family so it was super fun for everyone to make fun of me for the 5 minutes we drove through!
Fun Whittier fact: 85% of the town's population lives in this building. There is nothing there except for a few food places, a coffee place, fishing/boating charters, etc. The last tunnel opening is 11pm and it opens again every morning at 530am.
2nd fun Whittier fact: the town was built near World War II because it was surrounded on all sides by mountains and a channel access for boats. It was also extremely foggy/cloudy, which provided great coverage from planes discovering them.
Now for the fun: glaciers!!! I wouldn't say we saw exactly 26 but we floated by all 26 for sure! Our tour focused on the larger ones that of course everyone wants to see and get pics of.
Harvard Glacier. The glaciers in this field were named after the colleges the men on the first expedition attended
We also saw a lot of animals. No whales or dolphins, but that's okay.
Sea otters. A group of them is called a raft.
Stellar sea lions. I could watch these guys all day. They flob around. They "talk". They harass each other. Just so interesting!
Harbor seals. Many go near the glaciers to rest, have babies, etc because their primary predators, killer whales, won't go that close and it provides them a safe haven. (Click on the pic to open it up larger and you can see the brown specks better.)
Icebergs. There are 4 classes: brash (small chunks), growlers (up to 2 M), bergy bits (2M to about 5 M), and icebergs (larger than 5 M). Jeff and I were standing at the back of the boat when we passed a chunk of ice and boy were we shocked when we started going into this field of growlers and bergy bits!
Brash and growlers
Yes--they really are this blue!
This is my favorite because it truly looks like it was glowing from beneath.
The shapes and blue colors were stunning.
This iceberg is the largest that any of the crew had seen. They were as impressed as all the guests!
Same iceberg -different view.
The crew brought some glacial ice on board before we headed back. It was fun to touch it just to say I did! No pics of that.
This was an amazing day and we saw so many things we'd never gotten close to before! Bennett found spots on board he liked watching from and we'd see him every now and then. He was pretty impressed in his own 13 year old way! He's one to figure it all out on his own. Riley loved seeing everything right beside Mom and dad. He learned a lot about how different cultures interact with our culture on trips like these. He's the one who is interested in the people aspect!
No comments:
Post a Comment