Alaska Cruise – Day 3 (Juneau)
The weather continues cool and foggy. Even rainy.
It's about 8:00 p.m. and I'm sitting in a deck chair listening to dozens of mad salmon doing bellyflops in the water around the ship. (I can't imagine why the harbor isn't wall-to-wall fishermen!) There are hundreds of the fool fish our there – you can see them schooling around in the water.
I also can't figure out why only 6 of the ship's 1,400+ passengers are interested enough to come out and see the sight? It's really rather amazing.
Today's excursion was the Mendenhall Glacier and Wildlife Quest. We started at about 12:30, headed via bus to our catamaran, then up through a place I've already forgotten the name of (Stephen's Crossing?) in search of…or in Quest for Wildlife.
What we found were humpback whales, singly and in pods. We were lucky enough to see that only-in-Alaska phenomenon, the bubblenet feeding.
This pod had 6-7 whales. All but one of them dives in a group to the bottom of the water, then they spout a circle (net) of bubbles, entrapping a school of herring and forcing them toward the surface. The remaining whale circles the column of bubbles and reinforces them as they rise. This, I believe, is also the 'lead singer' of the pod and the one who sings the instructions to the others.. As the herring reach the surface, the entire pod of whales lunges up after them and scoops up huge mouthfuls of food. We saw them do it several times and the goat guide assured us that only a few whales have the "lead singer" abilities to coordinate such a cooperative effort.
We saw a few sea lions but as they were curled up in a heap, sleeping on a buoy, they were insufficiently "wild" to generate much enthusiasm in my heart.
We also saw 8 or 10 bald eagles, mostly just hanging out in trees and waiting for something edible to appear. Looking, I might add, rather snooty.
Then, on to Mendenhall Glacier. This was one of the sights we were most looking forward to but, IMO, it palled in comparison to the whales.
Still. The glacier was surprisingly pretty, what with being blue, white, and turquoise and all. We didn't se any calving but t6here were a lot of recently calved chunks floating around in the bay.
The area was copiously supplied with signs discussing the glacier, the vegetation cycle that appears in deglaciated sites (this glacier has been "in retreat" since the 1700s), and the wildlife we might be lucky enough to see. We did see a beaver dam, but no actual wildlife materialized.
There was a truly breathtaking waterfall but we couldn't get close to it.
Back to Juneau where before we reboarded the ship, we decided to do a bit of souvenir shopping. Not so much for ourselves as for coworkers and our mother. We found gifts for Mom, the R.C. took care of some of her co-worker gifts, and I bought a gorgeous pair of ivory (one assumes, the non-protected kind) earrings for myself.
The R.C. was ready to go out again after we finished dinner (back on board) but my feet, after spending 2-1/2 hours standing on a steel deck, then an hour clambering paths across from the glacier, then another half-hour wandering around town, had had enough.