Juneau, Alaska – 11 Jun 2016

The third day of our cruise landed us in Juneau and a very rainy day. Regardless of the weather, we boarded a bus to Auka Bay where we took a whale watching boat ride and afterwards, we visited Mendenhall Glacier.

The tour guide grew up in Juneau and had several good stories about life in Juneau. His uncle once caught a 300 pound halibut which was too big to fit into the boat he was using. He had to very slowly tow the fish into the harbor. Several families lived off the meat of that one fish for an entire year. Our tour took us on a high speed catamaran out to the Inland Passage to look for whales.  We saw a pod of orcas and several humpback whales.  The weather wasn’t great for sightseeing, but we did see some glaciers.

The Mendenhall Glacier is within 15 minutes of downtown Juneau. It was very foggy, so our view of the glacier was somewhat limited. There was a good size iceberg in the moraine lake and an interesting visitor center. We were given an hour for the visit, which initially I thought was rather rushed.  However, after walking around in the cold rain for about 30 minutes, I decided it was just the right amount of time.

We had some time to walk around Juneau, so we passed up the 44 jewelry stores (really!) and wandered down the historic section.  We had lunch at the Red Dog Saloon which is a tourist trap known for the Wyatt Earp gun which was supposedly left behind by Wyatt on his way through town. The country western singer was quite good and the lunch was adequate, but it is definitely a tourist trap.  The downtown area is a big cruise ship tourist area with store after store of souvenirs made in China or Indonesia.  We quickly tired of it and returned to the ship.

The ship left Juneau and returned to the Inland Passage. We had some interesting commentary over the PA system as we passed by an old lighthouse and entered the Lynn Canal, the deepest fjord (over 2,000 feet) in Northern America.

Leaving Auka Bay, we saw lots of private boats - the residents of Juneau like their fishing.

Another high speed catamaran. This makes for a very smooth ride and lets us go further on our tours.

The clouds lowered later, but here we had a good view of the mountain range in British Columbia.



Point Retreat Lighthouse, located on Admiralty Island, is one of 10 lighthouses built on the Inside Passage.




The tour boat captain found a pod or family of orcas. We followed them for quite a while and were treated to a show.



Orcas aren't huge, but big enough, I'm thinking.  I would be pretty nervous if I encountered one while in a small boat.

A side benefit of the whale cruise was seeing more glaciers like this one.

Saw two or three different humpback whales. 

Eagles were everywhere.  This is a nesting pair, out getting food for their young ones.

The picture doesn't do justice to the blue of this iceberg in the moraine lake formed by Mendenhall Glacier.  The blue indicates that this ice is very old and has been super compressed.



Mendenhall Glacier has a very large waterfall, the water comes from under the glacier.



It was as cold and rainy as it looks. We managed pretty well, but I was glad to get back to the visitor center. There was a dramatic temperature drop from the visitor center out to this view point - a distance of about a third of a mile. The guide said that temps are always 15 degrees cooler at the glacier than in downtown which is 15 minutes away.



Some of Juneau's buildings retained their Victorian charm, but others were just concrete blocks. The state is in the midst of replacing their capitol building - for eight years in a row it was voted the ugliest capitol building in the U.S.




The Red Dog Saloon was full of touristy decorations - I thought this one was actually pretty funny.



Russ had walked quite a bit in Juneau so he was happy to rest a bit with his new buddy.

Ketchikan, Alaska – 10 Jun 2016

We had an easy time boarding the Island Princess in Vancouver and left the city in the late afternoon. We’ve been on this ship before, on a cruise through Panama Canal a few years ago, so we are pretty familiar with the amenities. It is a mid-size cruise ship, about 2,300 passengers and one of only two ships that Princess owns that are narrow enough to go through the Panama Canal.

The first full day on the cruise was a sea day. We relaxed on our balcony, though it was a bit chilly. The scenery was beautiful – lots of islands to examine with my new binoculars.

The second day was in Ketchikan. We took a full day tour of the Misty Fjords National Monument. In order to get there in a reasonable amount of time, we had to take a high powered catamaran. A regular powered boat would take 8 or so hours just to get out there, compared to the two hours we took. A naturalist was aboard to talk about what we were seeing and we also had a Native American speaker who shared about his people’s culture and their adaptation to the modern world.

John Muir compared the area with Yosemite because of the u-shaped glaciated valleys and, I have to say, the similarity was startling. In Misty Fjords, these valleys are filled with water and are called canals. The walls are just as dramatic as Yosemite Valley – vertical walls of bare granite, two to three thousand feet high. The canals are 1,000 feet deep. There are some glaciers on the higher mountains and you could see waterfalls everywhere.  Absolutely beautiful country!

We didn’t have time to explore Ketchikan but hope to when we return on the southbound part of the cruise. We did see the dock that a Celebrity ship obliterated a couple of weeks earlier. They are already at work repairing it, but we will probably have to use the tender boats on our return trip.



We boarded the ship in downtown Vancouver.



The cruise terminal looks like a cruise ship itself.  It is huge with lots of covered space for long term parking and easy on-off to the ship.



The ship passes under Lion's Gate Bridge on its way out to the Inside Passage.

The tour out to Misty Fjord passed through some narrow channels.

Vancouver camped on the beach of New Eddystone Rock, a 237 foot tall piece of basalt.  It is all that remains of a 5 million year old volcano. It sits smack in the middle of a canal.



The tourists are getting excited as we near the main valley.




Turning the corner, we can start to see the polished granite of the valley.




Starting to see areas that remind me of Yosemite Valley. Full of tall waterfalls and steep cliffs.




We arrived at low tide. You can see how the trees live along a very straight line. The tricolor area consists of algae, mussels and white granite which is what most of the mountains are made of. Just below the water level is a highly nutritious lime green algae.



As the valley continues, we got views of tall mountains in the distance. And more glaciated valleys.



Waterfalls were everywhere.

Flightseeing planes were coming and going.



We saw a few creatures - harbor seals in this case.




Boy, I sure was glad to have a naturalist aboard to explain that this red circle was a pictograph left by the Tlingit natives as a boundary indicator. I would never have noticed it.



As we returned to Ketchikan, Russ caught a picture of the wake left behind by the water-powered jets.

 



Ketchikan is perched on the steep mountain sides.



It is a cruise ship traffic jam!



A bald eagle is sitting on the buoy waiting for its dinner to swim by.




The sunset is getting later and later. As we left Ketchikan, it was about 9 pm.