One stop along the way to Glacier Bay (GB) was Swanson Harbor. A true harbor of refuge with two floating docks; no charge. This harbor is very popular with cruisers and locals from Juneau. It's a place to get away from the city life and the hustle and bustle of the cruise ships. We had no idea just how fortunate we were finding this place. We pulled in mid-afternoon to find two sail boats one on each float. Bill and Donna from sailboat #1 took our lines and we were set for the night, no power, no drinking water. As the afternoon wore on more and more boats joined the party. By sundown the place was full. When we got up the next morning, everyone had gone; do they know something we haven't figured out?

We had our sights set for Hoonah, a very small Tlingit village on the western shore of Icey Straights. Let me offer a brief history.

The Tlingit people have lived in the GB area for hundreds of years. Back in 1750 there was a mini-ice age that quite rapidly covered what is now GB. The Tlingit people had to escape the charging ice by heading south. Leaving their homelands to the ice was extremely difficult and challenging attempting to relocate somewhere. To their good fortune they came upon a well-protected bay with easy access to the Straits and sufficient flat land areas from their new home. The mini-ice age didn't last very long, and the glacier quickly began its retreat. Today Hoonah is the home of the largest Tlingit clan. 800 people call Hoonah their permanent home.

There are two Hoonahs, the village and the facilities at Icey Strait Point, new construction to provide moorage for the large cruise ships. Welcome Hoonah to the cruise ship onslaught. For entertainment, they created a separate collection of buildings surrounding the now defunct cannery. This area boasts of a zip line with the largest vertical drop anywhere in the US. Picture jumping off a zip line attached to the Empire State building and travelling 60-70 miles an hour to the bottom. Had it not been raining I would have given it a go, but the thought of being pelted by rain at 60 plus mph was sufficient for me to pass. Alice was interested at all. To reach the top of the zip line, they constructed a gondola, identical to those most of you are familiar riding while skiing. A seven-minute ride at times hundreds of feet in the air, almost a white-knuckle experience for me. We roamed around the top, watched anxious zip liners and rode the gondola back to the base.

Our GB visitation permit was from 7/8 to 7/10 and we were required to announce our entrance on the VHF radio and to make a stop at the ranger station in Bartlett Cove. Leaving the cove after checking in with the Park Service, we had to travel 65 miles to reach the top of the bay. For New World and crew that is a two-day trip with stops along the way to appreciate the splendor of the many glaciers. Not only glaciers on both sides, but five cruise ships from 100 to over 1,000 feet in length. Humpback whales surrounded us with their telltale exhale of water vapor.

Many glaciers here are tidal, rivers of ice slowly crawling their way to the waters edge. Others have long since retreated and are now land based but are just as awesome. Traveling slowly into St. John's Inlet to the see glacier is when we started confronting ice bergs. Small enough at first to easily find a path but not for long. About a mile from the glacier's face, we had to turn around. Once again pitting our fiberglass against the ice was not going to happen. The view was spectacular, and we felt fulfilled.

Now here we sit anchored in North Sandy Cove, just us a group of small porpoises, a Kingfisher who landed on our bow pulpit and the cutest Sea Otters floating near the boat. These little furring animals spend their entire lifetime from birth to death in the ocean's water. Their fir is the thickest of any animal and the literature says their inner layer of hairs is as dense as 1,000,000 hairs per square inch.

We leave GB National Park today and start the journey south, retracing some of our steps while finding new adventures along the way.