AK23 – Day 08 – Hubbard Glacier

Noon Report:

Location: 59° 31′ 54.0″ N, 140° 25′ 41.9″ W
Speed: 16 knots
Course: 269º
Weather: Low Clouds
Temperature: 12º C; 54º F
Wind: NE 10 knots; 11.5 mph
Sea: Choppy, 5′ swells

There was nothing this morning requiring our attendance but we were up at the usual time – Cheryl to the treadmill and me to the (Oh My Goodness, this is a BRISK wind) deck. But I was greeted with the following scene so it kind-of evened out.

I also picked up this really cool shot of coastal mountains.

by the time I had done my four miles we were creeping along at about 3 knots as we approached the glacier so I had time to take a shower before we headed up to breakfast. While we were there we had arrived at our closest point and the captain was spinning the ship so all sides got great glacier views. Meanwhile our Resident Naturalist provided commentary about the Hubbard, glaciers in general, birds, and mammals in the area.

Perhaps the best view of the glacier was from our veranda.

We hung around for about an hour, then slowly made our way back out thru Yakutat Bay and into the Gulf of Alaska on our way to Valdez.

The 11:30 lecture this morning was the 4th in a series by Frank Buzzard

This one was about the gas giant planets in the ‘outer solar system’ – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, & Neptune and their moons – with a nod to Pluto, the Ort cloud, comets, and other sundry objects.

Lunch today was a Soup fest. I had Salmon Chowder and Cheryl had a Goulash soup. Both were excellent.

After lunch we napped and read until 3:00 when we met our Resident Historian for a Bayeux Tapestry tour. He is new to Viking so had never done one and we agreed to be his test subjects (since we had been on one in December).

On a Viking ship the stairwells are decorated with blowups of sections of the tapestry. The selected sections encapsulate the story it tells.

4:30 was the Port talk for Valdez, tomorrow’s port. Nothing much interested us so we signed up for the ‘included excursion’ – in this case it’s a HO/HO tour of the town with stops at a couple of museums and a shopping district. Should be interesting.

The 6:30 lecture by our Resident Naturalist dealt with larger marine mammals.

After supper it was time for trivia, but sadly not time for us to display any measure of brilliance. Our score 4/15 was an all-time low. We must be out of practice (either that or we were greatly carried by the other four members of our World Cruise trivia team).

Back in the stateroom we debated about whether to trundle on down to the Theatre for this evening’s show or view it from the comfort of our stateroom. The stateroom won. The show is a comedy presentation by our Cruise Director. Based on his commentary thus far on the cruise it should be pretty good.

So that’s the day. Quite, restful, humbling and a bit informative.

Tomorrow is Valdez and we’re back on land.

Till then, Ta, R