Advertisement
Published: April 26th 2008
Edit Blog Post
The sun over the channel
Isn't Alaska beautiful?? (pics by Victoria Phillips) It has now been sunny and beautiful in Juneau, Alaska for 7 days. Yes, you heard me right...7 days!! I'm not sure I've even seen Juneau this beautiful (and warm already -- it was 55 degrees outside) for so many straight days in the spring for the past three years that I have been here. With the warm weather and the sun, the inhabitants of Juneau have officially come out of hiding, are frequently visiting every possible beach or lookout spot towards the end of the road, and just enjoying the beautiful orb that has graced us with its presence (and right before the crazy camera-obsessed tourists come!!). It's interesting to note too that the sun came at just the right time when the power control towers got knocked out by an avalanche (yes, you heard that right...we had a foot of snow dumped on us 9 days ago before the sun came). Luckily, we still have electricity because the entire city is wired to run on diesel generators. Unfortunately, these are VERY expensive causing everyone's power bills to skyrocket to 5 times more than normal. All of the buildings at campus, the stores, little gas stations, and even the campus
parking lot lights have been used as sparingly as possible as the entire city tries to reduce the electricity costs. But even though the indoors of Juneau have suddenly darkened, the outside has brightened beyond belief.
Last weekend, a friend of mine and I went fishing one afternoon and as we sat along the rocks (catching nothing of course because that seems to be our luck lately), we listened to the deep grunting and heavy breathing of sea lions that echoes through the water as they hover in the subtidal. It's kind of eerie to hear them when they don't even have to break the surface to make their presence known. And just when we thought the day couldn't be any nicer, a large humpback whale greeted us and even stuck around, swimming up and down the channel for at least 45 minutes. It was when we were getting ready to leave though (after climbing back up the steep hill to the car) that we witnessed something amazing. The whale resurfaced only instead of moving around he was closer to shore and started kind of rolling, turning up the water, and trying to slap the water with his tail.
Thinking their was something wrong with him, we started to get a little worried until we caught movement to the right of us and we suddenly knew what had caused his erratic behavior...ORCAS! There was a mother with her calf and one other one that broke the surface. We watched as their speedy, black dorsal fins chopped through the water as they made their way south. They stayed clear of the humpback and headed off in a different direction. Our long, blue friend finally did resurface and was quiet as ever as he casually made his way back up the channel, shooting out air and taking deep inhalations before descending down below the surface once more.
Even though it has been "Stress Week" here at UAS and finals are next week, I can't get over the amazing feeling of happiness that the sun brings. It will probably go away soon, but it has been amazing seeing clear blue skies pierced by snow-capped mountains and the numerous eagles near campus that keep soaring overhead as they enjoy the warmth of the sun on their large feathers. I'm also going to miss crawling into my bed every night and not seeing
those stars shining in the sky. Ah, the sun will be back again though and I'll probably be out on those rocks at low tide, staring at the water, just waiting for my next whale or sea-lion (or eagle) encounter...Or if I'm lucky, I'll be below the surface in my SCUBA gear, watching my bubbles ascend to the surface, and looking up at the bright world above...
* During our fishing trip last weekend, I forgot my camera (I know...I'm an idiot) so Vicki took a bunch of pics and some videos with her new camera that she nicely gave me permission to share with all of you. Check out the videos of the whales (and my voice, the munchkin one saying "omg, it's an orca!" etc...) on youtube at:
AND
AND my video (w/out sound) of the following day at our fishing spot:
*
Advertisement
Tot: 0.064s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 7; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0391s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb