Alaska Adventure: Hubbard Glacier

My first installment of our Alaska Adventure!  Get ready to be bombarded with photos.

I don't have much to say about day 1.  We spent the day on a train, a plane, a bus, and finally, a boat.  This photo pretty much sums things up:

Outside the Anchorage airport, which looks like a Bass Pro Shop on the inside.  This is my 'I just spent 6 hours on a plane and now I have to spend 3 on a bus. Just get me to the dang boat' face.  Ed is so much better at traveling than I am. I didn't have a proper breakfast that morning (my own fault!), and my back was sore from all of the sitting.  Thank goodness for grandma.  She packed us a snack of crackers, Swiss cheese, and Trail bologna for the flight.  If it hadn't been for her, I would've keeled over.

Yay!  Finally on the ship!  That's Seward (where we departed from) in the background.  Funny story...the lady who checked Ed and I in for the cruise was from Put-in-Bay!  AND her stepson attended the College of Wooster!  Leave it to us to go to Alaska and find another Northern Ohioan.

After departure, a delicious dinner (we were all ravenous!), and a good night's sleep, we were on our way to Hubbard Glacier.

There it is, waaaay off in the distance.  There was quite a lot of ice floating around in front of it, and I didn't really think we'd get all that close.  I was wrong.

Here's a little of what we went through to get a good view of the glacier.  Keep in mind that this was taken from deck 12 of the ship, so those are some seriously large pieces of ice.  There was another cruise ship in the distance behind ours that tried to get through twice and gave up.  Captain Bill made it happen, though!

Some seagulls hanging out on the ice.  I didn't actually know they were seagulls at first, because they looked like tiny little dots from where we were standing.  Ed had to zoom all the way in for this photo.

My favorite piece of ice, right there in the middle.  Yes, I had a favorite piece of ice.  All of the layers made it look plaid!  There should be a line of textiles based on the patterns in glacial ice (are you listening, Amy Butler?).

 Getting closer!

Just posing by a glacier.  Whatevs. We'd been out for over an hour at this point, and my ears were ready to fall off.  Hence the hood.

A closer look at a small portion of the glacier.  It's difficult to convey how huge it really is.  Much taller than our ship, and incredibly wide.  Also, BLUE.

A video of grandma, Uncle Randy, and I taking in the glacier:

After we waved goodbye the the glacier one last time, it was on to Juneau!