Day 122 – July 10 (Alaska Day 31) – Columbia Glacier

The rain continued all night and this morning.  We are going on a 12:00 glacier cruise and the fog is really thick here.

We boarded the Valdez Spirit at 11:30 and settled in for our 6-½ hour cruise to see some wildlife and the Columbia Glacier.

Luckily we were seated inside the cabin because the rain seemed to pick up but the fog was not as thick out on the water. 

We passed waterfalls; saw a couple of eagles in trees and then a humpback whale made an appearance.  The captain let the boat float in the area for a few minutes and the whale came back up for some photos.

The waves were pretty bad at that point so we moved on and left the whale to it’s feeding.

We started seeing ice in the water as we got close to the glacier, and then we came upon some sea otters.  They were just swimming on their backs and enjoying the good life.

Some of the ice from the glacier was so blue and others were dark to almost black. 

The boat moved through the ice floats until we were about a half of a mile from the front of the glacier – which he said was about 400 feet tall and a mile wide.

When ice breaks off the glacier it is called calving and we got to see a large chunk fall into the water.  What an awesome sight!

On the way back we looked for puffins, but didn’t see any.  We did see Stellar Sea Lions on a buoy and a couple more in the water.

The weather was miserable but the day was once more a wow day.