Alaska: College Fjord: July 2017

Hello readers! I hope that your week has gone well so far and that you enjoyed my first Foodie Friday post last week. Now we are headed back north to Alaska and the glaciers of College Fjord.

Day 2: No contact with the outside world. Brooke is getting restless with no music streaming capabilities.

Because Alaska is so far north it stays light pretty much all the time. Farther north the sun never sets during the summer. For us it just got kinda dark at a late hour. The image below is one of the few “sunsets” that I saw. I took the picture at 1:30 in the morning after we had left Glacier Bay. 

College Fjord got its name because the men who discovered it named many of the glacier after colleges. Some of the largest glacier in the fjord being the Harvard Glacier and the Yale Glacier, both of which are tidewater glaciers. Glaciers are consider to be tide water glaciers when they flow all the way down to the ocean. College Fjord also has a large number of hanging glaciers. These are glaciers that do not touch the valley or in this case the water of the fjord. If you are curious, yes, I still love the word fjord. 

My mom and Drew purchased WiFi and somehow Brooke got them to give her the login and she and mom decide to Facebook Live as the ship does its 360 rotation in the fjord. We didn’t take quite as many family pictures that day but the view was still incredible, we were just pictured out. Because in addition to the pictures we took on our own Baba had us take a ton of professional pictures on the boat because she had purchased a photo package. These actually turned out really fun.

As we are enjoying the beauty of College Fjord. I remember that there is still beer in the growler. So Drew and I finish off the last couple of glasses and we enjoy the majesty of the glaciers and the cool Alaska air. We saw a fairly large number of seals in the fjord. Most of which were resting on great chunks of ice that had calved from the glaciers. Seals are not small animals and when three or four are resting comfortably on a piece you realize how large the floating pieces are and by contrast how large the glaciers themselves are.   

I did not take part in many of the programs or shows on the boat. They have just never really interested me. That being said, I did attend two presentations by wildlife photographer Nick Jans. The first one was about the black wolf of Juneau, Romeo. The second talk was stories of his adventures as a wildlife photographer. Stories from getting charged by a polar bear to how many calories you need to eat to survive in negative 60 degree weather. He even signed my copy of his book A Wolf Called Romeo. It was an interesting experience to listen to and meet someone who loved all of Alaska from the land to the wildlife that lived on it.

Late that evening after having left the fjord and moving towards Whittier, I was sitting outside before turning in for the night when I see a spout of water from the blowhole of a single whale. One giant creature of the ocean that is dwarfed by the waters it swims in. 

I hope that you have enjoyed the cruise and the beauty of the glaciers. Next post will be a Weekend Wandering. As always if you have questions please feel free to comment.

**Pictures by Laci McGee