7/9/11
Bartlett Cove, Glacier Bay, AK
Miles Travelled: 47.5
Whew! That was a long day. Last night as we were looking over our schedule before we get to Sitka, we realized that we had been planning on the wrong date for Mom and Ralph’s arrival in Sitka. We had in mind that they would be arriving on the 17th, when actually it’s the 15th! I’m glad we figured it out when we could still do something about it. Because of that we decided to make it a long day today and get to Bartlett Cove, near the entrance of the park and where park headquarters are. The thinking was that if we got to Bartlett Cove, we could have a chance to do the forest walk I wanted to do, do a load of diapers (to avoid hand washing), and take the shuttle into the town of Gustavus for groceries. It would also allow us to be closer to the entrance of the park so we could make miles for our trip to Sitka. Additionally, there is a tidal narrows at the entrance to the park and the tides are such that If we had anchored ‘up bay’ we would have been facing a strong current against us until the afternoon, if we had tried to go to Bartlett Cove in the morning hours. We are in a good position to make it to Sitka on time with reasonable mileage days and some wiggle room for weather, whew!
On our trip south we motored close to Reid glacier, boy am I glad I didn’t row over there last night…it was a long way from where we were anchored! The weather was good for our travels, and best of all, we saw the mama Grizzly and her three cubs on Gloomy Knob! It was so cool to see them! They were far enough away that I had no hope of catching them with my point and shoot camera, but I will remember seeing them!
Once we got close to Bartlett Cove we saw many humpback whales and even an Orca. The southern portion of the park is designated whale waters and there are restrictions on how close you can go to shore and how fast you can go, and we understand why. There were so many whales this afternoon!
At one point “sailboat BOB” hailed us on the radio and asked if we liked salmon. We replied with a resounding yes! He caught a couple of pinks that they weren’t going to be able to eat, so we buzzed over with his dinghy and dropped off two beautiful bright pink salmon. Tor filleted them right away and we got the fillets on ice. We are grateful for the fish, since we haven’t even had time to put out a crab trap given our full schedule with the boys.
We arrived in Bartlett Cove and fueled up, then we anchored near Taranga. Gerd and Linda stopped by on their dinghy on their way back to Taranga and we were able to persuade them to join us for dinner (curried chick peas, rice and broccoli slaw). We really enjoyed having the time to chat with them more and the timing just worked out perfectly. We were also able to convince them to take some salmon, since that is a lot of fish for the 4 of us! They are leaving the park tomorrow and we will stick around and do chores. I’m going to row the dinghy in tonight and do some laundry and hopefully some blog posting.
Reid Glacier
Weighing anchor in front of Reid Glacier
Odin and Papa
Lars and Papa
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