The expanse of glaciers glistened crystalline white as our small twin-engine float plane banked to give us a better look. We were on a side trip out of Juneau, Alaska, the first port for the Amsterdam, our Holland American Line cruise ship out of Seattle.
Beneath us, glaciers crept inexorably toward the sea. Some were flat sheets, others chunky with gravel-like surfaces, and a few were flat with the appearance of sandpaper. On all of these, pools of blue ice ? formed from tremendous compression forces ? gave us a new appreciation for azure, turquoise and other subtle shades of blue.
This was just one of the many joys of our seven-day cruise to our 49th state that included side trips to enjoy calving glaciers, misty fjords, native arts and totems, arctic wildlife, migrating and feeding whales, visits to canneries and views of foraging brown bears, and soaring, salmon-clutching eagles.
Such adventures are side trips from any of the Alaska-bound cruise ships that weave through the inward passage to hit variously Juneau, Glacier Bay, Sitka, Ketchikan, and Victoria, B.C., in Canada.
The Amsterdam cruise itself was a delightful midsummer adventure with all the amenities and delicious food expected of cruise lines. We also experienced spring-like temperatures, with varied the side trips making the vacation complete. Cruise ships travel at night, mooring in port during daytime for excursions that should be arranged before leaving port but sometimes can be adjusted at sea.
We did that with one trip, a last-minute switch (with full credit) to an alternative boat trip through misty fjords, where we spotted steroid-size starfish in the shallows next to the rock-strewn shoreline. We also spotted bears along the shore and bald eagles resting on dead limbs after stooping on salmon that run the bays and rivers during annual spawning runs.
Some stops are not to ports, such as our time in Glacier Bay for an up close-and-personal ship?s view of small icebergs calving from glaciers, along with a surrounding curtain of vertical mist from whales exhaling and refilling their lungs as they dove on rich fields of krill.
It was a great experience ? one that we wouldn?t mind repeating.
