Juneau

Alaska 2016/Day 8: June 26, 2016 (Juneau)

We pulled into Juneau early in the morning, followed by the SilverSeas Shadow. Our docking berth was right by Tracy's Crab Shack. In fact, as we passed by we could see someone standing outside holding up King Crab legs! Following our WJ breakfast we got off the ship and met our driver who took us over to the dock to board our Harv and Marv charter. As we were a group of eleven we had enough folks to qualify for our own boardt Captain Gabe and spotter Jackie helped us aboard The Alaskan and away we went.

Gathering for the H&M shuttle. As promised, the H&M greeter was easy to spot in her orange jacket. From left to right: E, S, W, A (back of head), H&M greeter, J, unknown (background), M, H.

The day was pretty nice out - there was some overcast but things weren't too grey. An early stop allowed us to view a large number of harbor seals, but the whales remained elusive for the first hour or so. The radio chatter between boats indicated that everyone was still searching.

A fishing boat heading out. Given that this was a Sunday I think this may have been an excursion boat.

A mess 'o harbor seals relaxing on the rocks.

Finally, sightings were made and most of the second hour was filled with lots of whales. None of them were jumping as we had seen during the Kenai trip, and there were no orcas, but we saw our fill of humpbacks.

A pair of humpbacks moving along majestically.

A humpback showing its tail as it takes a sounding (i.e. dives deeper).

The highlight came just as Gabe was suggesting we move on from the place we'd hung out for about 20 minutes. Within seconds of him saying that a pod of four whales appeared about 50' away from our tail, heading directly for us! They passed alongside us and we got some great photos!

Four humpbacks pass about 30' off our starboard side.

A seal. There were lots of seal sightings in the same areas we saw the whales. We found that we could typically predict where the whales would show up by looking for seals.

We were supposed to also go to Mendenhall Glacier post-trip, but something got messed up. I actually found that one of the Kaylas from H&M had left me a voicemail earlier in the morning apologizing that the transport for Mendenhall had fallen through and that they'd refund the $7 per person we'd paid for that part of the activity. Jackie wasn't sure what the story was but thought that it was because H&M was handing us off to another company for the Mendenhall visit, and the other company had probably flaked. The H&M shuttle stopped at a bridge to let us take photos of Mendenhall off in the distance, but we never made it to the visitor center.

Missing Mendenhall wasn't the end of the world. We asked H&M to drop us off in at the downtown stop rather than back at the dock and went to lunch at Hangar On The Wharf. After a stop to look (but not buy) some Ulu knives we made our way over to the Mt. Roberts tramway and saw the film, looked through the museum/nature center, and then took the nature trail. While on the nature trail I managed to grab a couple of more geocaches. M,N&H skipped lunch and instead found the trailhead for the 2.5 mile hike up to the top of the mountain. We met up with them in the restaurant/bar, where they were working to build up a bill for $10+ for each - by doing that, they got a free ride down the tram. (We had paid $33 each for our tickets.) After getting back to the base of the mountain we stopped to get some ice cream before reboarding the ship about 5:45P.

Heading up the Mt. Roberts tram.

A view of Radiance (on the left) and the Silver Shadow, from the top of Mt. Roberts.

Having boarded after our MDR dinner time we called up room service and had them send over a number of cheese plates so we could invite everyone over to our staterooms for wine and cheese. Following that we all went down to WJ around 8:30P for a late dinner. This was the first time we had eaten dinner at WJ. It was very quiet - almost empty, in fact. I'm not sure if that's normal for the time of night we were there, or is something unique to Alaska. I had thought I'd read that WJ put out white tablecloths for dinner, but that wasn't the case for us. I know that there are legions of folks who never enter the MDR and eat all meals at WJ. We won't be joining that group. WJ is OK, in moderation.