Day 19: Glacier Bay National Park

0600 am wakeup, 0700am on board the boat, and off we go to explore the biggest US national park. Eight hours water trip soaked in crazy great-looking views and diverse wildlife sighting opportunities. Starting on the water – spotting endless sea otters, over to an island loaded with seals and sea lions, waterbirds- like amazing puffins, 2 Orca whales, almost a dozen Humpbacks (including one royal jump and splash), three mountain goats, three Brown bears (Grizzly kind that leaves on the beach) were an excellent harvest for the sea safari. The sheer size of the wilderness is immense, relaxing, and inspiring. At the end side of the bay, we started to see the glaciers gliding from almost every valley. We spent 30 minutes next to the beautiful Margerie Glacier, seeing it collapsing into the ocean, and hovered very close to Hubbard Glacier before heading back to the lodge. Twenty minutes later, we were expected to be on the shuttle back to the airport… only that we were so inspired by our phones that we did not notice any announcements and were left behind. The very emberaced lodge staff offered us a private ride on the 10miles ride to the airport. The airport revealed the real secret Gustavus – This is one of the main areas for Halibut and Salmon fishing worldwide. The fishermen’s in front of us had harvested 300 pounds of Halibut and Salmon for each delegation member. They had so much fish to ship home- so the Alsaka airline requested high overweight fees from the team. We offered to buy some fish from them- and got two amazingly looking Salmon filets for free. I can’t wait to eat and taste it.
Back in Juneau – we landed and went to see the lovely Whale Project and Overstreet park- where there is a 6 tons statue of a whale situated just above the beautiful bay.