May 30

A Cessna 208 (Alaska Seaplanes) flew me from Juneau to the very small village of Gustavus for a short bus ride to Glacier Bay National Park. Check-in at Juneau was 4:30 AM. There was already plenty of light in the sky. Dale greeted me at the three-room terminal building. He is one of the bus drivers this summer for the Glacier Bay Lodge. After a 9.3-mile drive we landed at the lodge. A short walk to the dock and I was on the lodge’s catamaran. Being only the second day this season for the famous “Day Trip”, only 25 people had booked passage. A guess is that in mid-summer, the boat is full, probably upwards of 200 people. Ranger Jen introduced herself; she would be the NPS guide for the day. Turns out today is her birthday, so 25 hardy souls sang her a song. Yes, you know which one.

If there is one comment from Ranger Jen I will never forget, it is that up to 300 years ago, the entire Glacier Bay was one big glacier. There was no water, no inlets, no shoreline, no fish… just ice. We did stop at the base of two glaciers during the trip. I wonder how much longer they can hold out due to all that is happening with climate change. Ranger Jen said there are over 1,000 glaciers in the 3.3 million acres of land in the park.

The crew asked for everyone to point at wildlife. A couple of humpback whales were first up. Then three grizzly bears, followed by two mountain goats, and then more whales. Oh, I forgot. South Marble Island is a bachelor pad for hundreds of Stellar sea lions. A number of bird species, including bald eagles and tufted puffins, kept the mammals company. On our way up Glacier Bay, we were a number of miles behind a large cruise ship. And we could see one in the distance behind us. This park is a prime “stop” for Alaskan cruise ships.

The one ship had reached Margerie Glacier before us. About six of us played the “wave at the other boat” game. It took about a minute for the people on the cruise ship to figure out what we were doing and to wave back.

At this glacier a group of men were having their photo taken with the glacier in the background. Then then asked for about four women to join them. Then for Ranger Jen to jump into the shoot. I asked if they were a group, and one replied they were all summer workers in the park. One of the men had a Purdue Boilermaker hat. I told him I have lived in West Lafayette for a few years, in the Harrison High School District. Turns out Mr. Douglas Buck had attended Harrison, graduating in 1981. Well, that would have been my class (I moved out of West Lafayette at the end of 9th grade). Douglas had gone to East Tipp Junior High, while I went to Klondike Junior High. I remember playing East Tipp in basketball, football, and track-field. Along with Battleground Junior High, those are the three schools which fed into Harrison. How small of a world can this place be at times?

The humpbacks come north this time of year to feast on the bounty of the Alaskan coast, after having slim pickings around Mexico.

As we had headed up the bay, a number of small waterspouts were seen far away on port side. Ranger Jen said they were Orcas. I could only see the spouts. But on the way back, ten killer whales swam beside and around our boat. A group of three appeared to be a mother and two kids. And a couple were much larger than the others, so they were probably alpha males. We parted ways just after South Marble Island. I wonder if that was because the Orcas had dinner on their minds.

Dina was the wonderful driver who took five us from the lodge back to the airport at the end of the boat trip. She pointed out the bus was moving at a crawl at one point because the car ahead of us was extremely slow. The vehicle had Hawaii license plates…. maybe they were lost.

Oh, the flight back was on a Pilatus PC-12, made in Switzerland. Just cannot drop a B-747 onto these small runways.