Dreams Come True: Juneau A Whale Of A Tale

Tuesday August 14th 2012

I will never catch up on the blog postings, we will have to stop travelling for a month or two.

Juneau is the Capital City of Alaska, and the one capital that is accessible only by air or water. Juneau averages 222 days a year of precipitation, 103 inches of snow annually.

We took the Fjord Express to Juneau from Skagway, we left the harbor at 8am headed to Haines first to pick up some passengers (Haines is 14 miles from Skagway by boat and 340 miles by road). The Fordland is a 65 foot fat-hulled catamaran, with 360 degree views.

The trip was a whale watching and other wildlife viewing, and we saw plenty of both, besides the trip to Juneau.

Mike was able to get a really nice picture of the whales tale, (click on the picture to enlarge it.) The middle pic has a whale spouting and the last one is a pic of 3 whales. It was a great day for whale watching we probably saw a total of 15 whales on this trip. It is very difficult to get a really good picture of on the come up so fast and go right back down. They just partially surface.

The eagles were in abundance today, Mike got the one on the cliff taking off and the last picture the eagle had just caught a salmon and was having a shore lunch.

This eagle is keeping an eye on her nest.

As the boat was passing a stream flowing into the ocean we got a glimpse of a bear feeding on Salmon. Really fun to watch them catch the fish. After the catch they go back in the bushes to eat the salmon.

We were able to see many different types of fishing boats, I wanted to hijack the one with all the king crabs in the cages. The last boat is gillnetting the fish, the captain and the boat said every fish he brings in is a $20 dollar bill.

I can’t remember the name of the lighthouse, but it sure was a pretty one, and the seals seemed to like to be near it.

We pulled up to a fishing boat and took on 2 passengers that was something to watch, pretty exciting, doesn’t take much to excite us. The first step is a dozy.