Hubbard Glacier

Sunday, May 22, 2016 

Light streamed into our room shortly after 4:00 this morning despite the heavy curtains because they are a couple of inches from the glass and simply can’t stop all of it.  But we were able to get a bit more sleep after initially awaking to the light.  Presently the sun is setting around 11:00 pm and rising around 4:00 am.  Another month and it won’t set at all at least in the northern areas of Alaska.

We attended a church service in the Princess Theater led by the deputy cruise director, John, who is from the Caribbean.  His strong Christian faith showed through as he led us in hymn singing, prayer, scripture reading and sermon.  What a wonderful way to start our first day!!!!!l

Our first sea day was a bit frustrating as so much was packed into the day in the way of offerings.  But we did get to watch a bit of the fruit and vegetable carving that ended up with “statues” of birds on flowers and branches, attend part of a digital photo class, enjoy a naturalist lecture on the his view of Alaska, and join into the first practice session of the Princess Pop Choir.  Donna, Irma, and John also joined us in that activity.  We’ll perform the last day of the ship singing songs like New York, Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You, and Here Comes the Son. 

We did decide to try lunch in the dining room just for a different experience but decided we didn’t need to do that again.  We really prefer the self- pace ability to eat what we want when we want in the buffet for both breakfast and lunch.

 A good part of our afternoon was spent enjoying the travel down the Gulf to Yakutat Bay and then into Enchantment Bay

so as to see the face of Hubbard Glacier

which is about 5 miles in length with a face of over 400 feet above the water and easily that much below the water. 

The water was littered with floating ice that has broken off the advancing glacier but we did not see any marine animals.

   The naturalist indicated that the large amount of dirt mixed into the ice makes the water murky such that most of the wildlife does not like to be real close since they can’t see when under water.

Some of the float ice was very blue

and fairly large while other pieces were dirty and much smaller.  We noticed that the base of the glacier actually has a rainbow of sorts at its base. While I took a close up picture of it, it did not reflect the beautiful colors we could see through our binoculars.

This was our first formal night so we broke out our “glad rags” and enjoyed dinner in our formal stuff,

celebrated John and Irma's 50th anniversary,

walked by the atrium where the officers of the ship were being introduced

before doing the champagne fountain

, and continued on to the Princess theater for the production show called Dance.   We’ve seen it before but really enjoy the wide variety of dancing from rock and roll era

to Irish dance,

Spanish bolero

to Siamese dance like we saw in the King and I.

Then it was off to our room and a good night’s sleep