Advertisement
Published: June 23rd 2008
Edit Blog Post
This morning we set the alarm to wake us up at the crazy time of 5:00am, I have really gotten used to sleeping in so you can imagine how hard it was, but as soon as we pulled back the curtains to see outside it was more than worth it. We first started to notice that the waves looked like they were hitting something off in the distance but we could quite make out what, it turned out to be small chunks of ice that hadn't turned that forsty blue/white colour yet. As we slowly cruised up through Tracy Arm those small chunks of ice slowly got bigger and whiter and bigger and whiter until everywhere you looked were little icebergs (it was the Titanic all over again). The only way I could describe it is by saying it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Everyone was out on the their balcony's looking out for wildlife, to ensure I didn't miss out I sent Owen down to the shop to buy us a pair of binoculars and of course while he was away we passed a mother seal with her cub sitting on the ice, when the boat
started to get a little bit close she slide back into the water and the little seal cub took a few seconds to follow her, it was very cute. We managed to see a few more seals through the morning but nothing close enough to get a good photo, but the binoculars came in very handy. It was incredibly cold but it was so hard to walk away because you didn't want to miss a thing, even the mountains were beautiful with their snowy caps and waterfalls cascading down into the ocean. We eventually reached the end of Tracy Arm with a really nice view of the Mendenhall Glacier, it is absolutely huge and makes you feel very small. It's hard to describe fully what we saw in words so hopefully you will get a sense of what it was like from the photos, but it will still never compare to being there.
We headed back out of Tracy Arm and made for Juneau. Once we arrived in Juneau we had to jump into the massive queue of people all trying to disembark and see the sights. We had a Whale and Wildlife watching trip arranged and due to
the queues we made it there just on time. It was so cold that I was wearing a pair of stockings, 3 pairs of socks, jeans a top with a jumper over that and then a big jacket over that again. Then of course i had my scarf and beanie and it was still freezing cold! Owen was pretty rugged up as well which was a laugh, he had his track pants on over the top of his jeans and had a few jumpers of and his beanie. For the first time ever I was not the only one who was cold.
We had a bus that took us down to the whalewatching boats and on the way and the bus driver told us stories about the town and the fishing and the bears. I was looking forward to getting out on the boat to see some of the local wildlife. We headed out through the Lynne Canal and it didn't take long for us to spot a Humpback Whale. We had a great captain on our boat, he had a lot of respect for the wildlife and did not like to crowd the whales with too many boats.
It's funny though because as soon as we stopped near a whale you could see another 2 boats would hurry over because if we stopped it must be for something good, so it was hard to stay anywhere for too long. We managed to spen quite a good amount of time with the Humpback Whales and even though they are generally solitary creatures we even managed to see a couple feeding in the same area.
The captain then took us to see some of the Bald Eagles that were nesting on Shelter Island, there were a lot in that area but we also managed to see quite a few of them across the course of the trip. We were fortunate enough to run into a few Dall's Porpoises on our way around which was very amusing, they are similar to Dolphins just a little smaller. They like to surf the wake of the boat so the captain just drives around in circles for a while so that they would follow and play along side the boat. After the Porpoises lost interest we headed over to the shore to see if we could spot any seals or sea lions, and
oh wait it's Owen
Looking very happy for that time of the morning. we definately did! On the rocky shore were roughly 150 Steller Sea Lions just relaxing making this awesome noise that could only be describe as barking, we were about 100m away and it was very loud. Once everyone had oppoutunity to take photo's the captain turned the boat around and started to head back on the way back we were lucky enough to see a glacier aswell as another Humpback Whale feeding. Once back in port we hopped back on the warm bus and once again had the driver sharing local stories with us, one in particular was very amusing, it involved a friend of his trapping a bear in his garage and the bear totally distroying it.
Having discovered the delights of the formal dining room the previous evening we decided to head back and prepare for an early dinner since we were both pretty tired. Apparently each evening has a different international theme, tonights was french, I had Escargot to start with and then as a main frog's legs, Owen had Lamb chops with a crumbed mustard coating have to say his was very nice.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.078s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0476s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Chantal
non-member comment
WOW.....
...that looks absolutely beautiful.... and very cold!!!!