The Currys: Alaska Railroad and Glacier Cruise

On Wednesday Michael and Megan were so gracious to keep Hannah for the day while Chris and I took the Alaska Railroad down to Whittier for an afternoon cruise around Blackstone Bay. On the cruise we were able to see 7 glacier and stop at two of them and watch for calving which is were pieces of the glacier fall into the water.

We were in car A which was a double-decker with food below and tables up top. We shared a table with a nice couple from Nashville, Liz and Homer, I didn't get a picture of them because I thought it might be weird. Looking around the train we were by far the youngest passengers which was kind of funny, yet not atypical for me.

The rest of the cars of the Chugach Explorer.

On the way to Whittier they slowed down the train so everyone could see these Dall sheep up on the cliff. If you look closely at the middle of the picture you will see a couple of white specks, the sheep. I tried zooming in but I just got a fuzzy picture.

We passed many rivers and streams and happened upon a fisherman proudly showing off his catch to the passengers on our train.

A glacier we passed on the train. The day was a rainy one so it is a little hazy, but I liked the evergreens in the foreground and the mountains and glacier in the background.

Here is the ship we cruised on. No, not the Carnival ship, but the small ship in front of it, the Emerald Sea. It was funny I took a picture of our ship, but then when I looked at the picture all I could see was the Carnival ship.

So, I used the zoom and got this picture. Isn't she a beauty?! Really it was a nice ship for a day cruise. We had a table to sit at in a heated cabin and they had an all-you-can eat buffet of salmon and prime rib. The ship had a deck on top that you could stand on and take pictures from. It was nice.

As we sailed along we passed this sea otter floating on its back eating something.

There were many waterfalls, I thought this one in particular was very pretty.

At this point it had started raining again, but here is a picture of a glacier.

Here we are at the Blackstone Glacier that was named after a mail carrier from way back when that died in this bay when he was caught up in a blizzard.

Watching for ice to fall into the bay. Occasionally you would hear some cracking but nothing falling and then a little bit later you would see a bit fall of, pretty neat.

Piece of glacier floating. The Forest Ranger on board told us what size was an iceberg and what other size pieces were called, but I can't remember. I do remember that he said that you see only 10-15% of the ice above the water and the rest is below, so this was probably actually a really really big piece.

They pulled up a piece out of the water for us to look at. Here is Chris standing next to it. He took a picture of me with it, but I made a silly face about it being cold and therefore no one else will see that picture. My blog, my rules! :)

A whole bunch of floating ice chunks!

We passed what they called a bird rookery of Kittiwakes (small sea gull like birds). They had their nest built to the side of the mountain and there were thousands of them.