Our next port is Juneau – capital city of Alaska. DidJUknow (so clever!) that there is no way to drive into the city of Juneau? I did not! Unless you fly direct or have your own boat, the only way to the city is on the ferry and depending on what city is your starting point it can be about a 4.5 hour ride. The surrounding mountain terrain and Juneau icefields are so formidable that a highway is out of the question. Personally I thought it rather odd for the location of a state capital. Come to find out – many Alaskans feel the same way – they figure it should be Anchorage or Fairbanks.
We arrived at the dock about 10:00 and were off on our Whale Quest about 10:30. Our bus driver/guide today was a very happy 22-year-old named Kaelob (that’s Caleb and I’m not really sure I remembered his spelling!). Along the way he pointed out some bald eagles, offered general information about Juneau and tried a few jokes – he was adorable. At Allen Marina, we joined at least one other busload and boarded the three decker craft. Captain Sweeney seemed pretty confident we would see whales today and Lia, in particular, was very excited. Kyson, the onboard naturalist gave us all kinds of information as we left the harbor. Our humpbacks migrate from Hawaii to Alaska. They breed in Hawaii, they eat in Alaska so their main focus right now is finding massive quantities of krill, herring etc. and consuming upwards of 1,000,000 calories a day. Something I never thought of was how important water is to the nutrition of humpback whales – they cannot filter sufficient quantities of salt water without damaging their kidneys so they rely on the water in the fish they eat (which are upwards of 90% water) to hydrate. Funny to think creatures that live in the water need to “drink” water.
Captain Sweeney told us about Admiralty Island as we passed it. It is the home of between 1,500 to 1,800 brown bears – more than the entire lower 48 combined and represents about 2.5 bears per square mile of island. So if you feel the need to see a brown bear – you know where you should go. We were also treated to the buoy-loving Steller Sea Lions. These sea lions are the world’s largest with an adult male growing to as much as 2,500 pounds. It seems sea lions have to spend a certain amount of time out of the water every day and gathering on a buoy is a favorite hangout.
It was a beautiful day and things were progressing rapidly. We started to see spouts and then some rounded humps and then diving whale flukes! The captain kept us in the area for quite a while so that both port side and starboard side had the chance to see everything. It was quite the show!!
BUT, we weren’t done yet!! We finally had to leave what we believe were 5 humpbacks and move on only to be amazed by some more spouts and this time, there were fins sticking up from the sea!!! ORCAS!! – Lia was almost crying!! We had been told repeatedly that the chances of seeing orcas was probably no more than 10% and yet, a pod of three, including a baby, were right in front of us!
It was pretty exciting and we later found a woman who was filming when the baby orca breached! As we made our way back to the marina, we were all very happy with our whale watching adventure. But our day wasn’t over. The second half of our excursion took us to Mendenhall Glacier. Our new bus driver/guide was Esteban from Arizona and he took over with a plethora of information about the salmon and it’s importance to the area, pointed out bald eagles again, and provided instruction about the Glacier site and the options we would have once we arrived. We chose to walk to Nugget Falls – fed from the Mendenhall. It was a 2 mile round trip walk but well worth it. They are quite beautiful. (We’re just a little spoiled however, with Niagara being our neighbor!). When Esteban picked us back up to return to the Westerdam, we all agreed the day could not have gone any better.
We weren’t due back onboard until 8:30 so we decided to grab dinner in town. The recommended restaurant was The Hangar and after securing an outside table directly above two square docks, we found out very quickly where the restaurant got its name as we watched three seaplanes land and come in to dock right in front of us! That’s not the kind of entertainment you can get just anywhere! The food was really good too! As we made our way back to the Westerdam, we were pretty spent and knowing the wakeup time for tomorrow was 6:00 a.m, we agreed we’d be retiring pretty soon.
There was one more thing to enjoy, however. The Magician Mentalist Christopher Carter put on a show that was pretty astounding! He certainly made you think he was reading minds. The kinds of things he “guessed” about people in the audience were incredibly specific and random. It was well worth the 45 minutes he was on stage. We all just kept saying – “How did he do that?”
Everyone retired for the night with many smiles and great memories!! Tomorrow – Skagway!!
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