Friday, July 1, 2016

Our Alaska Adventure

Day 3

The third day of our vacation was a sea day with no port of call. The highlight of the day was a sail by of the Hubbard Glacier. This was the only day of the whole trip that was not sunny and warm at least part of the day. The day was drizzly and cold. This was the view from our stateroom as we approached the glacier. The clouds hung low over the mountains and the water was littered with ice.


One of the reasons we chose Celebrity for our cruise was that it offers an educational component with a naturalist on board to provide information and answer questions. The evening before we visited Hubbard, we attended a one-hour presentation about glaciers by Celebrity's resident naturalist, Milos Radakovich. He also provided loud-speaker narration as we sailed into Disenchantment Bay past the Hubbard Glacier.

Hubbard is the largest tidewater glacier in North America. It flows 76 miles from its source in the Yukon into Disenchantment Bay and is 1,200 feet deep. We sailed quite close to the glacier and then the captain cut the engines to allow us to hear the glacier. I had no idea that a glacier makes noise, but it does. It creeks and crackles and groans as it moves and calves. The naturalist told us that it's not unusual for it to be rainy or drizzly in this locale because, in his words "the glacier makes its own weather."

Just a reminder that, at this point in our trip, our photography was limited to our cell phones and Kindle Fire cameras. Some of it is not too bad considering.


I was very surprised by the amount of color visible in the glacier. I had read some tips for photographing them and trying to capture the beautiful blue that is the dominant color, but it was more beautiful than I expected. We were lucky that it was an overcast day which made the blue easier to capture with a cell phone camera.

One of the most interesting things to me was the line in the water where the glacial melt meets with salt water. It's very delineated and interesting to see.


Here we are on our balcony sailing past the glacier and the icebergs.


 One of the concerns I had in booking our trip was that I wanted to be sure we got a cabin with a balcony where we could be sure we had a good view. It turned out not to matter at all. The passages that we sailed from Seward to Vancouver were narrow enough that there were beautiful views on both sides of the ship. And, at the glacier, the captain made a turn and sailed in both directions so it was visible from both sides of the ship.

The rest of the day was spent having fun on the ship. Every afternoon between 3 and 5 o'clock, if we were on the ship, they brought hors d'oeuvres to our cabin. It was always something very light and savory. We really enjoyed it. In the evenings we had dinner at 7 o'clock in Blu the ship's Aqua Class restaurant. The top picture is our stateroom on deck 7 of the Celebrity Millennium.


Both the food and the service were amazing. I could get used to this kind of life.











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