vacation Wednesday (Aug 17): Juneau

Today was an odd day, full of disappointments but still a good day in the end. We did not get to go into

Endicott arm for a few hours, and we were hoping to see whales and ice bergs there. I was especially

excited about the ice bergs, but it was too cloudy and the captain decided it wasn’t safe. So we went to

Juneau a bit early. There was a light rain most of the morning.

Due to all the rain there were a bunch of cool waterfalls.

Juneau:

Ben and I decided to have an early lunch. (We had woken up early because the time change is not

working well for us and because we were hoping to see stuff in Endicott arm.) Early lunch was 10:30, as most people were just finishing breakfast. Anyway, we went into town. Unbeknownst to me, Ben had

found a quilt store! So I got some Alaskan fabric and I’m pretty excited to use it. We then stopped by a

toy store and got a few things, including the tumbled rocks for Isaac that you see at all toy stores. Isaac

just really likes rocks. Oh, well, the day before we did the penny presser for Joshua. We also got a

magnetic puzzle that I think will be fun. We stopped by a t-shirt store and were very happy with the

selection so we got everyone something. As we were packing we realized Ben has a lack of long sleeved t-shirts so he was going to pick something out whether he wanted to or not. (He wanted to. I didn’t have to push very hard.)

At this point it was raining harder. We got ready for our helicopter ride hoping that it would still go, but

found out it was canceled from a random person on the boat. They were going to get a refund at the

desk, but the line was really long. We decided instead to go confirm it was canceled for ourselves.

Unsurprisingly, it was. However, we also found out that we will just be refunded for the trip and don’t

need to visit the desk. We quickly pivoted and decided to take one of the shore excursions from the

booths right outside the boat…the ones not affiliated with the cruise line. It worked out wonderfully.

We debated between still going to the glacier and going whale watching and decided on whale

watching. We had about an hour before we needed to start going to the bus, so we went back to our

room, soaked. Well, kind of soaked. We had tried to bring water-proof stuff. Our pants were good, and

my shoes were good. My coat was just starting to leak and Ben’s coat was completely wet. We changed

a few things, especially since we knew the rain was supposed to let up soon.

On the way to the bus Ben’s umbrella and water-proof pants were able to keep him dry. Phew. It took

a while, but we eventually made it to the boat. The ride was fun. We saw the top of an orca. (He’s a

lonely, male orca looking for a pod.) We saw some porpoises, which are rather rare. We saw some

stellar sea otters. And, of course, we saw some whales. We actually saw a bunch of whales. Two were

sleeping, and they look like logs. They blow out every few minutes, sink briefly, and then look like a log again until they repeat the cycle. (This also showed me that the whale I thought I saw earlier was

absolutely not a whale. The spout wasn’t big enough.) There were several whales getting breaths (a

spout and shallow dive). They do this several times and then make a big dive down to feed. The last

one is when you see the tale flip. We didn’t see any jumping whales, but the time went by quickly. Oh,

the weather was really nice for this! It wasn’t sunny, but the rain had stopped completely.

Sleeping whale:

Whale spout.  They were much larger than I was expecting.

Whale tail!  After about four to five spouts/shallow dives they do a big dive and that's when you see the tail.

Whale spout:

         

The glacier that we were supposed to visit, looking like a road.

The bus driver on the way home was 100% a retired Ms. Frizzle. She had drove a school bus, had

interesting and scientific facts to share, but had grey hair. She talked about the glaciers and how the

ground is springing up at about 3” per year after the glacier left.  We got back to the boat, changed into normal clothes, ate at the buffet, and came back to the room. I proceeded to fall asleep (at about 7:30). I had set my alarm to check for Northern Lights though, because there was a chance today. The alarm went off and Ben asked me what it was for. I confidently said, “to check for tigers!” I immediately heard my mistake and changed it to northern lights. It was cloudy, so I stumbled my way through getting ready for bed (it was significantly harder than normal) and fell back asleep almost right away. Ben said he checked one more time and even though it was clear in a few places, there were no lights to be seen.