DAY 6: Port Houghton
We broke our streak and skipped the morning stretch. We were too worn out to get out of bed any earlier than necessary. We did make it downstairs in time for breakfast, though. The featured dish was a French toast with a bananas Foster topping.
For our morning excursion, we chose the skiff tour. It was a little drizzly and chilly as we zipped around a salt chuck (an area where the sea flows into a lake or river). We saw bald eagles flying around this area plus some eaglets and seals. Some seals seemed to be following our boat, popping their heads up curiously close as if to check us out.
It was sandwiches for lunch. The featured sandwich was a muffuletta on homemade focaccia bread served with tomato basil soup. To the delight of my daughter, dessert was a brownie topped with Ferrero Roche (one of her favorite chocolates) ice cream.
For our afternoon excursion, we took a skiff to shore and then embarked on a meadow walk. We spent some time trekking through the tall grasses in the meadow, seeing and hearing bald eagles, even finding their feathers on shore. (Did you know it’s against the law to keep a bald eagle feather? If you discover one, leave it where you found it.) We also saw sea lions playing in the water and possibly spying on us. July was a perfect time to walk in a meadow in Alaska. Many wildflowers were still in bloom and when we looked up, we also could see snow-capped mountains. The setting was gorgeous. We would have liked to linger longer, but our ride arrived to whisk us back to the SS Legacy.
A bruschetta appetizer was served for happy hour. Each night, the bartender concocted a special beverage. On our day at Margerie Glacier, she prepared mulled cider to warm us up. But on this night, the special cocktail was made with licorice liqueur and egg white. The starring attraction at dinner was Moroccan-spiced rockfish. It was flaky and full of flavor.
At dinner, we were notified that our following day’s adventure consisted of getting up close to another glacier. And we were informed that just before lunch we’d have the option of participating in the polar plunge – jumping off the end of the ship into the glacier waters below. That gave us something to talk about at the dinner table. Who would be willing to take the plunge?
The presentation after dinner was about sled dogs. One of our guides spends her winters raising and training sled dogs. Her enthusiastic presentation was full of pictures of cute puppies (she got a lot of “oohs and aahs” with those photos), and she told us about the interesting history of the sport. You could tell that she loved working with sled dogs despite her living conditions. She spends her Alaska winters in a one-room cabin with a three-walled outhouse and no electricity with a bunch of dogs. Now that’s a dog lover!
