Day 6 Glacier Bay National Park

Glacier Bay was my favorite day. It was amazing, beautiful, indescribable. I could have stayed there forever. It was also the nicest day we had.

Here we are entering Glacier Bay (well, we actually entered early in the morning but this is my first time out).

Coming to the big glaciers. This is Margerie Glacier and is over a mile from end to end. It calved several times while we watched. Calving is when the glacier breaks and falls off into the water becoming an iceberg.


Looking from port side.

Majestic!

That is one large and long glacier ahead.

While the adults were taking pictures and enjoying the scenery, the kids were inside playing ping pong. They would run out the door if we told them to come look. Love the reflection on the window.

I never realized how rocky Alaska was until now.

Clay and Heather

Clay and Nana

Aaaah! What beauty.

More beauty.

Clay, Poppa, and Nana

This is John Hopkins Glacier.

Do you see the three light brown fuzz on the shore? Well, that is 3 grizzly bears. Too cool!

This is to the left of the bears. What a beautiful waterfall.

I'm pretty sure this is the Grand Pacific Glacier. I took this picture on the port side across toward starboard. Looks awesome.

Look at the X. See the 2 blobs just to the right? Those are harbor seals. We also saw humpback whales which I could never time my camera right to get a good picture. I was always too late or too early. We also saw eagles, puffins, and sea otters but they were just black dots in the water, so I did use any of those pictures.

This is one of the small boats from the National Park, here to see the glaciers.

Wow!

Gorgeous!

In the afternoon, the park rangers that were on the ship the whole time we were in the park, were picked up.

The boat came beside the ship. The rangers had to scale a rope ladder down onto their boat. And then head back to the home base.

Day 7 College Fjord

Day 6 was spent on the ship traveling to College Fjord. It was our last night to dress formal. Jeans and polos is as formal as we got! We went and watched a band play dixie tunes before dinner.

Then we were off the eat lobster! All you can eat AND it was YUMMY!

This was Clay's third plate of lobster and prawns.

Dominic (junior waiter) showed the kids several tricks. This one was a card trick. He also showed us how to balance intertwined forks on a toothpick which is balanced on another tooth... well, it is too hard to explain but it was way cool!

This our Head Waiter Rakesh and our Junior Waiter, Dominic.

They were lovely and very patient with the kids.

During dinner, we entered College Fjord. It was cold, rainy, and foggy and unbelievably beautiful. Above are two glaciers.

Another glacier.

A glacier with a waterfall below it. Just beautiful.

Pierce upstairs above the indoor pool.

Since Dominic showed us his card trick, everyone was teaching each other new card tricks. Pierce is amazing Gabe with his ability to know which card Gabe was thinking of.

Day 8 Anchorage, AK

We ended in Whittier, Alaska. We were put on a bus to head to Anchorage. It was about an hour and half to Anchorage on a beautiful ride.

We had to wait to go through a one-way tunnel to leave Whittier. While we waited, we were parked next to this waterfall and snow bridge.

It was a good 5 minutes in the tunnel. Here we are about to come out of the tunnel.

Pierce and Sarah fell asleep.

I thought Jack did too but he may have been faking!

We were dropped off in downtown Anchorage to spend the day. Here is a neat statue of two Alaskan animals, the bear and the raven.

This the visitor center. Beautiful flowers and love the grass roof.

This welcomes everyone as they enter or leave the airport.

This is from my window. We were at least 35,000 feet in the air and still gorgeous snow topped mountains. We had an excellent trip!

Fourth of July Pool Party

Happy Fourth of July!

The kids played sharks and minnows all afternoon.

Madison enjoyed hanging out.

If the guys weren't playing cribbage they were playing other games.

And we shot fireworks.

Kayaking the Hooch

We decided to try a new spot to kayak. We went up to White County and went down the Chattahoochee.

At first it was nice and calm water.

But it quickly turned into some fun rapids.


The boys did such a great job. These were the only rapid pictures I took cause we had tons of rapids the whole day.

There were some other calm spots that we stopped and played in the water.

We found a rope swing, so we had to stop.

Clay and Pierce

The last leg of the river was very calm. We were beginning to get tired when we finally got back to the outpost. What a great day on the river.

Kayaking with Phil

Phil called up Clay to go kayaking with some of his friends. It had rained a lot so the river was up. It made for awesome kayaking and fast moving water.

We started out on the Hudson River and ended on the Broad River.

Phil on the rapids.

We stopped at a deep spot and swam and some of us jumped (not me).

Ready to take the plunge.

Michael enjoyed the kayaking even in his jeans, tennis shoes, and western shirt.

Even I hit the rapids.

We had so much fun on the rapids, we decided to take the boys on Monday.