Wednesday, September 13th - Glacier Bay, Alaska.

We awoke to a thick fog. Monika, Lois and I circled the Promenade Deck a few times after breakfast, waiting for the fog to lift. The fog didn't so much lift as suddenly end, when our ship reached the far side of the fogbank. After emerging from the fogbank, our ship glided into bright sunshine and a brilliant blue sky in Glacier Bay. The air was still and the calm water gave us some beautiful mirror image pictures of the mountains and ice fields of Glacier Bay National Park.

The Zuiderdam worked its way north and west into the bay past Russell Island on the starboard side. Northwest from Russell Island we could see the Grand Pacific Glacier that we had visited on a Princess cruise about 10 years ago, and that brought back fond memories. Instead of visiting that glacier, however, the Zuiderdam took the left hand branch and crept slowly into Johns Hopkins Inlet.

Johns Hopkins Inlet is really a small, narrow fjord with the Johns Hopkins Glacier closing off one end. It was a beautiful glacier with a central core of fresh, aqua-colored ice and wings of ice layered with embedded rocks and dark sediments that had been picked up on its slow crawl to the ocean. The guy next to me said that the patterns of the debris in the milky ice reminded him of raspberry swirl ice cream!

As we neared the glacier the surface of the sea became almost covered with small floes that had calved off from the glacier. It turns out that you can imagine what ice floes resemble in the same way that you can imagine what puffy cumulus clouds look like on a summer day back in Virginia. In fact, it's a bit easier to do with the ice floes, since they do not change as rapidly as clouds do. I saw floes that resembled a penguin, a big sea otter, and an Egyptian mummy. While engaged in this desultory activity, I noticed that the floes on our starboard (right) side looked like they had clumps of seaweed or something on them, and it wasn't until I trained the binoculars on them that I saw they were almost covered with harbor seals. The seals were basking in the sun and didn't seem disturbed by us at all, although the captain was also careful to keep our ship in the center or the channel.

We finally approached to about 1/2 mile of the face of Johns Hopkins glacier, close enough to clearly see the crevasses and to hear the glacier creaking and cracking as it slowly ground its way into the sea. Occasionally chunks of the glacier would crack off the face and fall into the sea with a resounding splash. I never seemed to have the camera ready to take a picture when that happened but thankfully Monika got a few nice pictures of the calving process. The Captain edged gradually the Zuiderdam around and we slowly eased our way back down the inlet.

Curiously, on our way out of Glacier Bay we ran into the same fog bank that we had encountered that morning. I was rather surprised by how clearly defined and localized the fogbank was. It was also remarkably cold as soon as we entered the foggy area, which I expect was caused by the body of colder water that was also causing the fog. Working our way back through the fogbank by about 3 p.m. we headed back out to sea for our evening cruise to Ketchikan, after our National Park Ranger was picked up by a boat. Lois, Monika, and I relaxed with crossword puzzles on our verandah while watching some of most beautiful scenery on earth slide by our balcony.

That evening was our second formal dress night, so I again donned my black suit with a white shirt, but I put on a different tie to vary the routine a bit. We had a very congenial dinner with Phyllis, Bill, and Lois, and we all agreed that that Glacier Bay was simply spectacular. Our dessert was baked Alaska (what else?) brought in by a procession of waiters in time to the Radetzky March by Johann Strauss. It was, by the way, delicious as were all the gourmet meals we enjoyed every evening on the Zuiderdam.

After dinner we paused at Phyllis and Bill's stateroom to look out over the ship's wake until it was time for the evening show, which featured a Canadian magician by the name of Cielen. He did a lot of scarf tricks as well as tricks using 4 trained doves, a toy poodle named "Coda", and various volunteers from the audience. The most spectacular tricks used an acrobat from the ship's song and dance troupe. For her entrance she slid down two curtains in what I would call a "Cirque de Soleil" style where she did acrobatic tricks along the way. He made her appear and disappear into a folding box and I was impressed. She was strong and well built, but clearly not a trained contortionist so the underlying trick must be very simple indeed. All in all it was quite entertaining and we headed off to bed in good spirits.