Sitka and The Hubbard Glacier Cruise

Next we arrived in Sitka. It was the home to one of our favorite adventures (and we had many amazing side trips). We suited up in full 'astronaut' suits... complete with windstopper hoods! and we boarded a six person raft. Each person then straddled a horse type apparatus and held on for dear life as we sped, at high speeds, over the open ocean seeing whales, sea otters, ocean caves, islands with deer and bear. Did I mention we went really fast? It was awesome!!!

Here we are suiting up! We had no idea what this was all about and when we saw the suits we got a little nervous!!

Here we are with the hoods up... after we started we adjusted them so you could only see our eyes!

Mary got a little friendly with the sitka bear!

That night we had a lot of fun with all of Mary's fellow Circle of Excellence people... we danced and sang the night away despite the crews continuous warnings that we should go to bed because the next morning was the cruise at Hubbard Glacier bright and early (6:30am). We blew them off and figured we would be fine! Ha... well... we were VERY glad we drug ourselves out of bed on 3-4 hours of sleep to see this...!!

It was incredible and, again, (like most things in Alaska) pictures don't do it justice.

The crew said it was a very active day on the glacier... we got to see it calve a few times. Most visits they don't get to see it do it all. It was thunderously loud and magnificent. The water was gray from all the glacier silt. I just can't put into words how intense this massive structure is.

We ordered breakfast to our room so we could enjoy coffee and hot chocolate on the balcony and just watch this amazing thing!!!

What a great way to wrap up our Alaskan Adventure. We had such a great time in this amazing state and as is always the case... it was good to go and good to get back!