After the sun basking in the previous episode, we sailed through the islands into Prince William Sound, picked up a pilot, then cruised into College Fjord, Alaska for more glacier spotting.
College Fjord has a large collection of tidewater glaciers, meaning that they reach all the way to the ocean. There was also a large collection of hanging glaciers, meaning that they reside in steep valleys and terminate on the steep mountainsides.
As you can tell, we arrived just before sunset (and dinner time), so we didn’t stay on deck as long as Hubbard Glacier.
Besides, once you’ve seen one…
After sunset, we sailed southwest, arriving at Whittier, Alaska right around midnight.
That also happed to be the one and only time the whole cruise that the captain’s announcement was piped straight into our room. Waking us up out of a dead sleep. He announced that the anticipated aurora borealis were visible. Goddess and I looked at each other and promptly went back to sleep.
Because, once you’ve seen one…
The next morning, we disembarked into Whittier, a small isolated town of about 800. They are there year round, and the vast majority live in one apartment building. The school is connected by an underground tunnel, so despite the average 25’ of snowfall each year, they don’t get any snow days.
Why Whittier? Although isolated, it’s less than 90 minutes drive time to Anchorage. That is, once you can leave Whittier. It’s connected to Anchorage via a single tunnel, with one-way auto traffic alternating every 30 minutes or so. The wrench in the schedule is a train traversing the tunnel. Once that was clear, the bus straddled the tracks and drove the 2.5 mile long tunnel, popping out into the completely different scenery and weather.
The drive along Turnagain Arm was as beautiful as I remembered from visits 30 years ago, but this was the first time without everything buried in snow.
As we got closer to Anchorage, I pointed out approximately where I always spied Beluga Whales. Almost as if on schedule, a pod swam by, giving Goddess her first time seeing them in the wild.
Anchorage looked about the same as it dis those decades ago, pretty much like any other mid-sized city. At least until you got a view or the horizon.
Denali was visible, even though it’s 100+ miles away. Low clouds obscured the lower half, but the peak was clear. Those low clouds obscured how absolutely massive that mountain is, even at that distance. But standing on the shoreline, you still have to look up to the summit, even at that distance. It’s indescribably massive, even though it would barely show on any photo here.
Because of the one-way runnel schedule, our bus and one other were 15 minutes late for the “all aboard.” There were a lot of panicked people on our bus, but because we booked through the cruise service, the ship was waiting, poised to be underway moments later.
Overnight we left Prince William Sound and into the open Gulf of Alaska. Overnight, pouches of barf bags were hung at the staircases. They were soon emptied, then refilled. That cycle continued until we were able to duck north to the shelter of Kodiak Island as we headed westward.
For the geeks out there, we were headed into a large Aleutian Low, not too strong, but blowing a Strong Breeze according to the Beaufort Scale as we observed, blowing 30+ mph and kicking up a swell of 12-15’. The shelter of Kodiak Island smoothed that out.
Once clear of Kodiak Island, we headed west, cutting through the Aleutian Islands just west of Unimak Island, where we followed a Great Circle route for several days, a smooth day followed by a rough day, followed by a smooth day, rinse, repeat, changing our clocks back an hour every night, even completely skipping a day.
While reading up on the International Date Line, I had always understood it to be a straight line alone 180 degrees, more or less, once it was south of the Aleutians. Ha! Not even close. I couldn’t believe that I didn’t know that there’s a two hour window every day where three different dates are observed. Nuts!
Two more storms, one off Kamchatka that saw the swells covering the windows of the Plaza Deck some 30’ above the waterline. One particularly solid coverup had Goddess declare “I didn’t know that the water was that color (dark blue)!” That continued during our window-side table during dinner, which kept her grinning.
The last was the remains of previously Category 4 Typhoon Surigae, the 26th tropical system of the Western Pacific this year. The storm was already extratropical and raced across to our south and east on its way into the North Pacific. We copped the rolling swells almost head-on, which made for another day of window coverups. Some tolerated it better than others.
To cap it all off, just as we passed offshore with Fukushima in sight, there was an emergency onboard that required a Japanese Coast Guard helicopter medical evacuation. Honestly, the tight turns and maneuvering of the ship got to us more than the storms, although it wasn’t bad.
Fourteen days and some 4,100 nautical miles later, we achieved our first goal.
BTW, the title is a line from a pirate shanty called The Maid of Amsterdam.
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