Nov. 8th, 2008 at 2:16 PM
Woke up today feeling quite icky. I recognized the symptoms of seasickness after taking a shower, and things went downhill pretty quickly. Add a monstrous caffeine headache and you've got a most unhappy Kate. I actually curled up in bed and slept until noon. Dragged my butt out of bed after that and got some lunch before going to the final naturalist talk. We stuck around and talked to Rob the Naturalist for a long time after his presentation. By the time we parted ways, we were entering College Fjord, so Justin and I ran back to the room to put on warm clothes suitable for the chilly glacier valley. As we were getting ready to head out to the deck, I remembered that we hadn't packed yet... oops! So after hastily packing up our "travel with me" and "meet me in Fairbanks" bags, we hurried up to 14 aft. Made it up there just as we were entering college Fjord.
Wow.
What a cool glacial system. Lot's of that famous "glacier breath" and crazy silty blue water. We saw a couple of calves off the Harvard Glacier, but nothing too dramatic - mostly just small cascades. The Harvard was insanely long and wide. I'll have to find out exact measurements. It's nuts how far you can see out there.
I really felt the Glacier Presence in College Fjord. It's hard to describe, but they're like ancient living creatures that have been there long before me and will still be there long after I die. They're so ridiculously huge, just unbelievably massive. Their size and age and slow, deliberate movement and breath makes being in their presence almost spiritual.
Spiritual or not, though, it got really freaking cold really freaking fast, so we went inside to the Skywalker Lounge. Managed to snag a seat next to the window with an aft glacier view. Nothing like warming up with a cup of hot chocolate and a view of such an awesome earth-altering force of nature.
We decided to eat dinner since it was our last night on the boat, and we went back to the Santa Fe restaurant. Justin got a chicken and mushroom puff pastry, Pepper Pot soup, caesar salad, medium rare prime rib and dark & white chocolate mousse dessert. I had a tres delicious seafood salad in an avocado, pureed asparagus & tapioca soup, herb crusted halibut and vanilla-honey icecream with crunchy almonds. After such a decadent feast and an exhausting week aboard the Sapphire Princess, we crashed.
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