In Petersburg, Alaska, we hopped aboard the 13-passenger Point Retreat jet boat operated by a father-son team, Rob and Teagen Schwartz, who promised to get us closer to the LeConte Glacier than any of the other small boats in the town, which gets regular visits from small adventure ships but not the larger ocean liners.

On the way, they took us on a detour along the coast to see whales and bears – a route that also took us past Bootleg Creek, where Rob said his great-grandfather used to buy moonshine from a man who in 1929 was found “deader than a doornail, curled up with a bottle.”

Ultimately, they kept true to their word, navigating for nearly two hours through dense fields of breathtaking blue and white icebergs while regaling us with stories of life in the Last Frontier.