What the heck
is that a picture of? Well, it's a bell buoy, in the Lynn Canal.
But more about that later.
When we awoke this morning, we were parked in Juneau, the capital of Alaska. Juneau is inaccessible by road. The only way in is by boat or plane.
We had breakfast in our room, then hustled ourselves out to the dock for yet another bus tour, this time to the Mendenhall Glacier. What is significant about this glacier is that you can drive up to it. It practically comes to you. But when all was said and done, after 11 days of rugged mountains, monstrous glaciers, vast forests, winding rivers, and endless continual gorgeous landscapes, it was just another glacier. Did I just say that?
We also visited the Alaska State Museum (nice), a garden of native flowers (also nice), and a salmon hatchery (educational). The hatchery releases 135 million hatchlings a year, so when it's time to spawn, they reurn to their birthplace, i.e. the hatchery. Only about 2% make it back, but that's over 2 million fish at your door, all wanting nursery facilities.
We got back to the ship at noon, just in time for the next tour, but no time for lunch. So we dashed back to the room, dumped our latest cache of souvenirs, grabbed the bowl of fruit from our room, and hustled back to the dock and yet another bus. This time we headed north, to Auke Bay, munching on our bowl of fruit for lunch. We boarded a catamaran for a venture out into the Lynn Canal. This was a wildlife tour, and we did spot eagles on shore. But our goal was whales. We had seen some very distant whales from the ship, but we wanted something up close and personal. To our surprise, we got it.
A small pod of killer whales appeared, with a young-un amongst them. They were close enough to get great pictures. After watching them for a while, a humpback whale appeared. There are two types of killer whales. This was the aggressive type. A small pod will attack a humpback whale, even though it's five times bigger. The killer whales were on one side of the boat, the humpback on the other. The killer whales poured on the speed toward the humpback. We thought we were about to see a battle for survival, when a second humpback appeared, and the killer whales backed off. Quite exciting.
That picture? If you look closely at the base of the buoy, you will see 5 or 6 sea lions sunning themselves. Two other sea lions tried to get on board, but they were pushed back. Very entertaining, but that was a perk. We came to see the whales.
Tomorrow is our last day in Alaska (though we still have a day at sea and two days in Vancouver), in Ketchikan. We have had beautiful weather for the past 11 days - sunshine and cool temperatures (okay, we had a brief blizzard near the Arctic Circle). Ketchikan is known for its 240 inches of annual rainfall. When it's not raining it's threatening to rain. But that's tomorrow - we shall see.