Alaska Cruise Day 5

Here they are. What you've all been waiting for: the glaciers. Make sure you click on them to see the full detail. So after Skagway we did not dock anywhere until Whittier on the way home. We cruised through Glacier Bay on Day 5. This is where we could see those most dramatic glaciers that have calved so much they are like tall walls of ice. The main one we saw in Glacier Bay is Marjorie Glacier. We felt like we were really close to the glacier on the ship but actually we were miles from it. It's an optical illusion that we were so close. Just like when it looks blue, that's just the way the light reflects in the ice. When the sunlight tries to go through the solid glacier ice crystals the sun gets broken up into lots of colors. Red and yellow have very little energy and the thick ice soaks up the red light more than it soaks up the blue light. The blue light has enough extra energy to get away from the solid ice crystals without getting absorbed or soaked up. This is why the only color people see is the blue color that escaped. The blue light has enough energy to escape the ice so that you can see it. That is why glacial ice is often a deep blue color. The black part is silt and dirt. We did get to see some calving but only small pieces fell from the very bottom so it wasn't too dramatic. Here is a YouTube video of Marjorie calving really dramatically.
We also saw humpback whales in Glacier Bay. Just their tail fins though. Well, everyone but Drew saw them. He managed to miss all the whales.