After boarding the Emerald Sea, we were only out of port for a short while before we digging into a delicious lunch of salmon, pilaf, bread and more than I could eat. What a great way to start a trip!  

 

We then idled in very close to Hidden Falls for lots for picture taking.  Spectacular waterfall and I couldn’t believe how close we were. It was here, thanks to our National Park Ranger, that we saw the first of many eagles high in the trees on the cliffs.

We next cruised a fairly wide portion of the sound enroute to Blackstone Bay. Flat, calm, and no hint of seasickness was very nice. As he had all during the trip, our National Park Ranger did a great job of narrating the wildlife and describing how Prince William Sound was formed.

Blackstone Bay was where we were headed but Blackstone and Beloit Glaciers were what we wanted to see. No more than five minutes had gone by of approaching these 1700 foot giants, than a piece of ice larger than a bus crashed down into the iceberg strewn waters of the bay.  All in all, during the hour or so we lingered just off the glaciers, we counted eight large chunks calving off the glaciers and so many small pieces that I stopped counting. The captain, crew, and Park Ranger all said this was a day to remember. I couldn’t agree more – amazing!

I can’t speak for my brother but I thought the trip back to Whittier would be pretty anticlimactic until just a short way from port; we stopped alongside one of the biggest Kittiwake rookeries in all of Prince William Sound. Except for a certain Alfred Hitchcock movie, I’ve never seen so many birds in one place all jostling for very limited real estate. Really neat.

I’m not sure when our next visitors will be up from the lower 48 but I am sure to keep a Prince William Sound cruise in my “entertain the visitors” bag of tricks.

Keven. H