Day 6: Haines, Alaska

Today was our first day in the port of Haines. I opted for the Glacier Point Wilderness Safari excursion, amazing! The weather was 53 degrees and rainy. First, we (those of us participating on this excursion) boarded a boat and headed out to Glacier Point. Our guide was, Jen from Austin and she was very knowledgeable! On our way out we saw Humpback and Orca whales along with playful Steller sea lions. Then we transferred to a supped-up all terrain bus and made our way through the vegetation to our canoes. Here we changed our shoes for rain boots, and donned full rain gear. Did I mention it was COLD! From here we hiked a short ways to the river (glacially fed) and split into 5 canoes of 10 people each. Our canoe brought up the rear of the expedition. Megan was our guide for this portion of the trip. For a short while we had to paddle and then the river became deep enough (up to 100 feet deep) for Megan to switch to our motor. As we neared Davidson Glacier it got even colder, windier, and rainier, but getting that close to the glacier was unbelievable. We made our way around to the lagoons where the weather was better and were able to see the different stages of vegetation as the glacier recedes as well as a different angle of the glacier. We were also privileged to see one of the guides nearly get taken out by a mama bird because he didn’t see the newly hatched chicks and he took his canoe in to close to the nest. During this time we heard a massive calving. We maneuvered the canoe to see if we could see the newly changed glacier. We could barely see and Megan decided to take our canoe back around to the face of the glacier to see if we could see it better. What a change, a MASSIVE chunk had calved into the river and due to the shallow area and the size of the ice it drastically altered to flow of the river. It was very cool to see such drastic change. We headed back to wrap up the tour. I thoroughly enjoyed this excursion! Everyone should get a chance to get up close and personal with a glacier! This evening I stuck to my evening ritual of dinner (this time at an even better table), Ocean Bar, and the Crow’s Nest. Due to my early start tomorrow, I decided to get to bed by midnight.

Unfortunately everything from today is on my camcorder and at this time I'm still unable to extract anything from it. I'll post once I'm able to.