MORNING breaks in the silence of Alaska’s glorious Glacier Bay, briefly painting the icy water gold before the clouds wrap the surrounding mountains in their misty embrace.

I’ve been sorting through some old photos to organise them properly and came across these, which were taken from the prow of cruise ship Star Princess back in September 2017.

Read more: Glacier cruising in wild and wonderful Alaska’s icy waters

I was on a land and sea holiday, staying in forest lodges, white water rafting, quad bike trekking and visiting Denali National Park before embarking for a cruise down to Vancouver.

Read more: If you meet a moose, vamoose – Denali National Park

We’d visited remote places like Talkeetna, which seemed like stepping back in time, and where we spent time chatting with the locals, listening to Led Zeppelin on cassette in a brewery.

Read more: When you’re rafting in Alaska and hear a banjo...

And we’d ridden the remarkable railway, built at terrible human cost, to take prospectors up into the wilds during the Gold Rush. It was a memorable trip to one of my favourite places in the world.

Read more: Riding the White Pass gold rush train up into the Yukon

I was dismayed, by the way, to learn of Donald Trump’s plan to scrap the name Denali, chosen for the mighty mountain by the indigenous people, and restore it to misnamed Mount McKinley.