July 9, 2014 - Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska

We stayed on the Diamond Princess to cruise through the Glacier Bay National Park. Starting from 6AM, the ship entered the National Park, several Park rangers boarded the Diamond Princess to provide narratives of the National Park and glaciers. The ship sailed all the way to the north end and stopped at Margerie Glacier for an hour to allow everyone to enjoy the magnificent view of the natural wonder.

Ice Calving is a major tourist attraction in the Glacier Bay National Park. It is breaking off of chunks of ice at the edge of a glacier. Calving of glaciers is often accompanied by a loud cracking or booming sound before blocks of ice break loose and crash into the water. The entry of the ice into the water causes large and often hazardous waves. Therefore some of the locations with large and often ice calving can prevent the boats approach too closer to the glacier. It is the case for Johns Hopkins Glacier which has a 3 kilometers distance limitation. We were lucky enough to see at least 5 different ice calving events at Margerie Glacier.

We sailed towards John Hopkins and Lamplugh glacier. Then we sailed back to drop of the rangers. They told us that we should be able to spot some whales when we sailed to south of the Glacier Bay. We did, however, they were too far away to be able to see clearly or to take a photo of them. While we were trying to spot the whale, we did more walking around the Deck 7.