Glacier Bay National Park

I start my pictures with the flight in to Juneau! My face was plastered to the window as we passed huge mountain ranges, fjords, and glaciers. I felt like I was on a sight seeing flight.

Here is a picture I took through a dirty bus window – the town of Gustavus! This was by far the smallest airport I had ever flown into so when we passed their downtown I had to snap a photo.

Here are a few pictures of the lodge. This is the main restaurant/visitor center area. This lodge was great, they provided transportation and help with all the local activities. They also have a big restaurant with a decent selection of food. Had to have some fresh Halibut on my first night in 🙂

Here is one picture of the mountains from the dock near the lodge. The weather was perfect while I was there. I couldn’t have asked for anything better – especially considering there was rain in the forecast right up until I got there!

Day 1 was the Glacier Bay cruise! Everything in this park was beautiful. If it was in the lower 48 I bet it would be more crowded than Zion or Great Smokey Mountains.

Our first wildlife sighting was a coastal brown bear on the beach! The captain and his crew have really great eyes – and some very powerful binoculars.

The next wildlife sighting was the mountain goats! These are even smaller even when I crop the photos down and zoom in.

And next we saw more brown bears! They were so small to the naked eye but luckily I have some zoom on my lens. They are huge in comparison to the things around them!

Once we got to the end of the bay we saw the Grand Pacific Glacier, the glacier that created this fjord. The ranger did a great job telling the story of the glacier. Unfortunately that glacier is still receding and once you got up to the base you could barely see it. You could see Margerie Glacier which was right next to it. We stayed here for a while to take it in.

Got to see some adorable harbor seals out sunning themselves on the floating ice field

We also went into John’s Hopkins inlet and saw John’s Hopkins glacier. The ranger mentioned this was her favorite view when we came around the corner and I can understand why! It was stunning!

Another picture where you can see the super blue water! Love it.

Day 2 was the whale watching tour! When I was coming down to the boat I saw this eagle and couldn’t resist running around until I found the perfect angle.

This whale watching tour was unbelievable! I am sure most of you who are reading this have already seen the video – and the image above! The whale breaching right next to our boat and soaking us was exciting BUT there was also some other really amazing stuff. I have below some of my favorite pictures of the whales bubble net feeding. I learned that this area of southeast Alaska was one of the first places it was observed! The whales swim in a circle making bubbles and trap the fish into a single area. One of the whales makes a distinctive call (we could hear it both in the microphone our captain had in the water and occasionally without it!) and the whales come to the surface and eat all the fish. Naturally the birds love it as well.

I took about 2000 pictures – so even with all these images I have still had to make some tough decisions! I got some really cool photos of the progressions when they would breath and dive. The pictures below are some of my favorite.

 

Now the moment everyone is waiting for, the whale breach! Everyone has asked me what it felt like to be right next to this. We had only been out for about 30 minutes, and we were following this pod of whales at a pretty safe distance (>100 yards). After they came up to feed, they started to head towards us but they were still pretty far off. I was taking a few pictures of them diving when out of nowhere this one flew up out of the water. I learned that I have zero reaction time. Everyone else sort of ran away a little in the video and I just stood there completely stunned. Took zero pictures, but luckily the guy behind me was taking video the whole time!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JatXkhG4L2B8c47BZUKZ0o67u6GC_tWz

I added a link here you can click to watch the video shot by Tristan on my google drive. You can also find it on Youtube, CCN, Fox, ABC and a couple other networks. It was crazy how quickly it went viral! Anyone I showed it to more than 2 days after it happened had already seen it on the news!

This park was so much fun. Whale watching, glacier bay tour, harbor seals, and of course almost getting squished by a humpback whale made this experience unforgettable.