It has been a while since I blogged, so hopefully I won’t forget too much that has happened. I do have Old Timer’s you know.
Juneau was, in my eyes anyway, not as quaint and lovely as Ketchikan - a bit more upmarket. As it is the capital of Alaska, I guess that is why. Helen, Don and I did a Mendenhall Glacier and Whale Watching tour together. Once again, the weather blessed us. The boat ride for the whale watching portion was great. I know we had just come off a ship, but there is something very different and enjoyable about being in a smaller boat on the water. We did get to see whales, but only the spout, middle of their back and their tail flukes as they disappeared to the bottom. Some of the others were lucky enough to see whales bubble netting, which is when a pod goes to the bottom and blows bubbles. As the bubbles rise, they trap herring (or other small fish I guess) that rise to the top with the bubbles and then the whales have dinner. I did not get any photos of the portions of the whales that we did see because I was just enjoying watching them. Although not seeing any breaching of bubble netting, I was happy with what I had seen as I had not seen whales in the wild before. We also saw some sea-lions basking in the sun on a boo-ee (or buoy to us Aussies). There really are sea-lions on the buoy, I promise.
The glacier was lovely. You can usually get quite close to it and the waterfall near it, but the track was closed because of the rain the previous night. Still, we got reasonably close. We also took a short walk to a stream to watch salmon swimming upstream. I must be really easy to amuse, because I could watch the salmon all day. Watching them struggle against just a current makes it even more miraculous that any of them reach their spawning grounds against current, waterfalls and over rocks.
Once again, we all met up for a few drinks and then dinner. Another marvellous Norwegian Sun Alaskan day.