This was the best day! Exhausting, but really wonderful. We went full out today but hit a wall about 9pm. After watching the Sapphire Princess sail away from the aft decks, we never made it further than our cabin just feet away.
Luckily, I’d been uploading pics to this post all day, so I have just the writing part left. But if this post seems heavy on pics and light on words…well, it WAS an incredibly scenic day. But I am also worn out tonight.
I was awakened about midnight last night, no doubt from a change in the sound of the ship’s engines as it prepared to dock in Whittier. It’s amazing how I don’t really notice the ship’s sounds until they change.
We started our day with breakfast in Sabatini’s, which was especially nice. We’ve been on other ships where breakfast was not available in Sabatini’s on turnaround day, so this was an unexpected surprise.
We returned to our cabin to find this letter about the pricing changes effective today on the Sapphire Princess. Simply put, we will be unaffected since our cruise officially started on July 26.
Just yesterday we booked the Philips 26 Glacier boat tour from a pier just next to where the Sapphire Princess was berthed in Whittier. G had encouraged me to book this before we left home, but I resisted, wanting to see what the weather was going to be before we committed over $400 for the two of us. When it became obvious that our weather in Whittier would be quite good, I checked into booking the trip online on the Philips website and also through Princess. Our 10% Elite discount on shore excursions saved us a little, so we went down to the Shorex Desk yesterday afternoon and made the purchase and got our tickets. We were to meet at the Phillips office on the pier right behind the Sapohire around 11:30am. Since we were already in the US, we had no in transit immigration requirements to complete. So easy!!
There were a few low clouds as we walked off the Sapphire but we were hopeful that they
would clear as the day went on (they did).
We were assigned a seat and table on our tour boat (but were free to move around anywhere on the boat and its outside decks). Once seated on board, a map of our route was on each table. We immediately noticed some differences from when we did this same tour in August 2012 (see blog for those pics). The boat no longer goes into Harriman Fjord but goes to Blackstone Bay instead. Since this was new territory for us, we were quite pleased.
Later in our tour, we asked the Park Service Ranger on board, Marty, about the change. Apparently a rock slide is threatening in Harriman Fjord and tour boats are no longer allowed in there. In order to stay true to their traditional name, Philips 26 Glacier Tour added the new territory. As it turned out, it was a lucky change..
Spotting the train arriving as we left on our tour.
The clouds around Whittier cleared pretty quickly…
… but hung around a little longer as we headed northeast into College Fjord.
Check out the waterfalls!
Lunch was served, a good thing for us cruise ship passengers conditioned to eat every 3 hours.
Looking into Harriman Fjord as we cruised past.
We passed several “rafts” of sea otters.
They keep the windows on their boats pretty clean! This pic was taken through the glass.
Harbor seals sunning themselves
Above and below: some of the women’s college-named glaciers on the west side of College Fjord.
At Harvard Glacier (which we had just seen last night but it looks very different from just above the water on a smaller boat), the captain circled the boat for quite awhile. The crew retrieved glacial ice for margaritas.
Harvard Glacier
Just as we left Harvard Glacier, a calving of ice almost as high as this wall occurred. The sound was massive. The ranger estimated it was 450 feet tall as the front face of the ice here is 500 feet high.
Egg Rocks sea lion rookery
En route to Blackstone Bay
Blackstone Bay was (we thought) even more picturesque than College Fjord.
Jet skis in Blackstone Bay. Yikes!
They pay $360pp for this trip.
No thanks. I prefer Bora Bora for jet skiing.
Blackstone Glacier (the waterfall was a beautiful feature)
Beloit Glacier
Kittiwake Rookery
As we docked again in Whittier.
Another great weather day.
The captain of our tour boat held us all back for several minutes after we docked. There was a black bear next to the boat (which was also right behind the Sapphire) and he waited until the bear was a safe distance away. While we were waiting to disembark, a bald eagle was fishing in the waters right next to our boat.
By the time we reboarded the Sapphire at 7pm, we had had a fun but long day. We went directly to the Pacific Moon dining room where we were seated in Chandra’s section (we had told them the night before that we wouldn’t be at “our” table at 5pm). As soon as we ordered our meal, G sherpa-ed our backpack and coats back to our cabin. We were running on empty, and though we wanted to get to several activities this evening, it was looking questionable that we would.
Asparagus risotto was amazing.
Bering seafood stew
We skipped dessert and instead went up to the Terrace Deck to watch as the Sapphire Princess sailed from Whittier about 9pm. Thankfully, we didn’t have far to go to get to our cabin where we fell into bed…after we moved all the embarkation day papers and letters and champagne and chocolate covered strawberries that had been delivered in our absence. Judging from our gifts, we must be most traveled guests again this cruise. Yay! More Snobatini’s breakfasts in our future!!
Sail away from Whittier
