Glacier Bay....

We are sitting in the beautiful, modern Juneau public library, looking out over Juneau Harbor through massive windows. I know the building is on a solid foundation, but I'm sure the whole town is swaying and rolling.  I suppose this is what is called 'sea legs'....

We pulled into town this morning after the most perfect week in SE AK !  Ten days on the lovely Catalyst, and the weather couldn't have been more perfect.  Enough cloudy days to be cool at the glaciers, and then the sun came out and burned off all the mist hanging low in the ice blue mountain peaks, and we had brilliant sea and sky.  Our final anchorage in a tidy, quiet cove even had one of the guests diving off the boat for an afternoon swim!

It would truly be impossible to describe all the magnificent and breath-taking sights.  It was non-stop, the glory of this wilderness.  We have seen the majesty of the glaciers, calving into the sea. We have seen black bear close enough to scratch behind their ears as they scraped barnacles off the boulders on the beach and licked them up with their huge pink tongues.  We have see 1000 lb.grizzly bears, tearing into a dead whale carcass on the beach.  Some even saw a rare glacier bear (a blueish-gray morph of a black bear) but I missed that one.  I was taking a nap.  We have seen sea otters, a paddle length away,  mother giving her baby a bath; curious harbor seals that come very close to the kayaks; huge sea lions groaning and rolling on the rocks and cavorting in the surf; seven humpback whales indulging in lunge feeding frenzy, showing off their baleen and volkswagon-sized tongues, complete with the range and variety of sounds that I never knew whales could make; and two putting on a delightful show of exuberant breaching (leaping out of the water with their whole body, and then falling back sideways).  We saw sea birds and shorebirds beyond number, including the grand bald eagles. Glacier Bay is without doubt one of God's glorious cathedrals.

[A week later, and we're adding SOME photos...]

At Glacier Bay Headquarters

At Johns Hopkins Glacier

Walking at Reid Glacier

One of hundreds of oyster catchers on the beach

A brown grizzly bear gorging on a dead whale at low tide.

Randy at his post, setting the anchor.

You can view a beautiful album at the Catalyst's facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/PacificCatalyst

  Or you can find the rest of our photos (sorry, very unedited!) on our photobucket album:   http://s739.photobucket.com/albums/xx31/lubberlines/Glacier%20Bay/