Bill Onboard

The weather almost anywhere should be cooler than Miami in August:-)

It’s been pretty great on our trip, usually in the 60’s and low 70’s. Some cool breezes though. Rain can happen any time so bring that rainproof jacket and/or folding umbrella. They say Ketchikan is one of the rainiest towns in the world. The heat you heard about up in Anchorage didn’t increase temps as much in the Panhandle area of our cruise. Even a jacket wasn’t always needed and was too much at times, but we usually carried one with us anyway. We had a hat, gloves and good jacket and a light jacket Onboard with us if needed -and if you fly inland a ways on an excursion you probably will.

As a side note: Bears are really common all over, so if you plan on hiking much on your own, gauge your comfort level with those critters. 

We booked the excursion early, my hunch is that Allen Marine made changes afterwards. Initial description was a boat for 20 passengers, we were on a boat with 150 people with room for many more. . 

I did fill out the card, but it was given to us just before we reboarded the Eclipse, so little time (and little room) to describe problems. So I suppose that was another problem:-)

The marine biologist’s “presentation” must be known to Allen Marine because it’s patently obvious, so they just didn’t care enough to hire someone willing to prepare.  If she had just read excerpts from a Wikipedia page it would have been okay... or even a handout of interesting facts and insights would have been better and less annoying. 

Just did this same tour off the Celebrity Eclipse two days ago, we’re now just leaving Ketchikan.

Fires were not an issue. 

Ice was not an issue.

We had a nearly two hour view of the Hubbard as our boat navigated through the Growlers and Bergy Bits, seeing calving several times. Nice day, good view, fairly lucky. Our ship (Eclipse) was about a mile away, our smaller vessel was (guessing) a quarter mile, or perhaps a third of a mile away.

Also nice to be near water level to better appreciate the immensity of the Glacier. 

I would guess your cancellation has nothing to do with conditions.

Note: when we reserved our excursion it was presented as a 3.5 hour adventure. Not so. We had less then 2 hours and we were back at the boat.

The “Naturualist” was a young “graduate” who knew nothing about the Glacier or Alaskan wildlife - she seemed nice but that’s it. She was nice. You will not learn anything new and some of her basic information was inexcusably wrong (eg height of the Glacier, depth below water, etc). 

Other shortcomings on the trip too.

We did not completely regret going, but felt we overpayed for what was delivered ($250) relative to what was promised. Even the hot chocolate was hard to come by:-/  

We learned from others on the boat that booked later, that they had paid $150! Asked for and received half our money back. All said though, it is definitely a better view of the Glacier. 

Great photos and the video of calving is spectacular.

I hope not too far off topic... 

Any thoughts/opinions RE binoculars? Best mag overall for off tripod viewing? Is 10x really ok or is image stabilization more practical at that power. I’d like to go with decent quality glass at 10x50 (or so), but could use some advice. Is stabilization worth the extra money (and weight)? A monocular might be easier to carry, but would the viewing experience be diminished relative to binocs? I’m just doing casual/amateur Glacier and wildlife viewing, but would like whatever optics I buy and bring to be worthwhile and add to the experience.

Some posters here seem generally pretty knowledgeable so I thought worth asking. 

We’ve also booked this mystery excursion through Celebrity Eclipse for July 10th. Probably the longest thread ever about a tour no one has ever been on:-) 1st one with a report and picture wins!