More beautiful scenery this morning, but all I want to see is ICE! The plan is for us to enter the Fiord around noon and sail up until we reach the Tracy Arm glacier. Just after lunch we start to notice people taking their places up on the upper decks. We grab a spot on the upper deck and watch the show as we cruise up the narrow channel towards the glacier. The wind is cold, but we are rewarded with lots of Humpback whale spottings. After entering the fiord, the shore line on both sides of the ship gets very close. The ship snakes along and we have to look almost straight up to see the tops of the mountains that guide us along our route. Soon enough we start to spot ice floating in the water. First only a few small ones, but very quickly we start seeing many more. There is a naturalist that is giving us information on what we are looking at on the PA system and he is very good at story telling. We finally decide to duck back down to our room, but the show continues from there. If we did not already appreciate the veranda in our room, it more that paid for itself today. We relax in the deck chairs on our very own balcony and watch the world roll silently by. 
After a few hours in the channel, we finally arrive at Tracy Arm. Now due to the fact I have never heard of this glacier, I did not hold out much hope of being impressed. I was wrong! Wow! With crystal blue skies and sunny conditions, we sail within a quarter mile of this amazing glacier. There are seals everywhere relaxing on floating ice. My guess is there were well over a hundred, but it is probably closer to double that number. The glacier flows down from up the mountain somewhere beyond our view, but it cascades down like the worlds slowest waterfall until it breaks apart in deep blue shards. Even the naturalist was excited as he babbled on and on how it simply does not get any better than the conditions we were treated to today. And just to finish it off, the glacier decided to calf a large chuck of itself in front of us. We were in our room and I was taking a picture from our bed and out through the veranda when I hear a loud noise and see the glacier calving. I simply pointed my camera and took a couple very quick shots, but I did get a little piece of it splashing. It was huge and amazing!
Another excellent dinner finished off our day. We are getting very spoiled by our wait staff of Emily (from France) and Petra (from the Czech Republic) Petra is our waiter and Emily is her assistant and they are both great. Emily is young and chatters on in a heavy French accent while she teases and plays around with all of us. Petra keeps everything coming on schedule and makes sure we have what we need. They are both funny and are constantly fussing about making sure we don’t want for anything. Petra is also our crew insider and makes sure we know what is coming up or to make sure we know to order Micky Bars from room service (even though they are not on the menu).
Every night before we retire back to our room, the house keeping staff prepares our room for sleep. They lower Jacks and Mackenzie’s bunk beds and turn our bed down, leaving chocolates for all. But what we really look forward to is the animals and shape they create with the towels. Each night we come back to a different animal sitting on our bed waiting for us. We have had elephants, a squid and a couple of bears. It’s a nice way to end each day.
Tomorrow is Skagway!
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