Alaskan Cruise Day 5

But first ... our local quilt store is having a paper-piecing BOM.  It's so easy for us, Thanks Country Keepsakes!!  We bought the book - Seascapes by Cheryl Peck. Then just show up at the appointed time!  She has reproduced the blocks that we will work on that day.  She even brought in tubs of "left-over fabric" from the store!!!  Oh, my!!!  There were some real goodies in there!!

Our first meeting/class was yesterday and we made the Sea Stars. This book is filled with treasures!  I hemmed and hawed for a few times before I bought it.  I knew I liked it, but would I really make something out of it??  This group is perfect for getting me to work on the blocks!

Now on with the "Cruise along"

We had a beautiful day to enjoy cruising Glacier Bay.   The crew was just as excited as we were!  They said it was the first nice day they've had in Glacier Bay all season!!  

The petite older female ranger said to us this am, "we had a controlled collision with you and I climbed up a rope ladder to get here!" They offered a thumb drive of Alaskan pictures and U and I shared the cost.  - I had glass reflection on most of my whale watching pictures - darn-it!

We walked back and forth on  the ship all day.   Going between the 10th deck Crow's Nest to hear rangers and sit inside and 4th deck bow being out in the beautiful weather and closer to the glaciers.

We woke to finding the deck doors were all open and it was cold onboard.  But the sun came out this afternoon and it was pleasant. 

The water was so still.  It really reminded me of Crater Lake.  The vegetation was stunted like at Crater Lake too.  But not because of the elevation, because it was relatively recent that it came out of the bay.  It was hard to believe we were still at sea level!

On deck in the morning - we were still wearing our sweatshirts!

We're at Marjorie Glacier.  One of the few glaciers that are still growing!  This is where we saw the calving and heard the white thunder.

Considering that we are 4 decks up - it's bigger than it seems!!

This picture was taken by Greg Streveler.  It was included in the Glacier Natl Park Thumbdrive.

Rivers of snow is what they call a glacier - they look like roadways curling down between the peaks and sometimes they look like ATVs have been driving on them.  That's because they can scrape the rocks along the sides and the debris looks like tire tracks!  We were assured, no, ATVs are not allowed to drive on the glaciers.

We sat quite a while at Marjorie and saw several small calvings - they looked more like little avalanches. But they were bigger than they seemed, we heard the white thunder as it tumbled into the bay. I was expecting more blue color in the ice, but there was too much sun, and it's hard to complain about that!  In Alaska or on the Oregon Coast!

We had breakfast and dinner in dining room.  We lunched up at Lido.

For breakfast I had the parfait (ok, but not enough granola) Ah, but dinner was wonderful: a gourmet greens salad and crab cakes both very good.  Then snickers cake which  was yummy but a little dry.  We ordered an extra dessert for the table and passed it - chocolate of course.  We had a good group.  T&J from Wyoming and S&J from Utah. 

T&J were wildlife enthusiasts and have Swarovski crystal 10/75 binoculars that cost $2000! But they used them all day in Glacier Bay and they saw a whole lot more than we did!!!  We didn't bring Binoculars, the tours both furnished them.  Next time I'll bring some.

 But T&J knew Brookings by our description.  (We're from a small town on the Oregon coast right by the California border.) They had actually been there!!!  They stayed at Driftwood RV and were there for a kite festival!!

S&J were readers and we discussed our favorite books, both new and as children!  Fun group. We convinced J to read Harry Potter and heard about the new addition to the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series.

U and I went to the Broadway Songs show tonight and met two sisters, I&P; we later played "group Majority" trivia game with them.  The correct answer was determined by the crowd.  And it was fun - maybe because we had a dirty minded crowd!?  Sample question:  Name another Holland America ship.  Two of the answers were "Titanic" and "Idon'tgiveadam"!! (Holland ship names always end in "dam"!

The 4 of us often came up with the right answer, but didn't always write it down!  Our Cruise Director was pretty funny! After one really raunchy majority answer he said he was never touching the handrails again during this cruise!!!

Quick early day tomorrow for Sitka.  We arrive at 7 and we leave for the Raptor Recovery Center at 7:20!!  We meet onboard so that should help.  Hope the weather holds.