Juneau or bust...with whales!

Haines, Alaska

Aboard the Fjordland

On Sunday Ken fixed us a huge breakfast before we hustled down to the Skagway dock to catch the Fjordland Express to Juneau, an all day boat/bus/walking tour. Within minutes we were underway to Haines, a 14 mile (and 15 minute or so) trip by water, but a 362 mile (and 7 hour or so) trip by road. We picked up a few more passengers in Haines and continued down the Lynn Canal (actually a huge inlet), the water smooth as glass.

Harbor seals

Sea Lions!

Just up ahead we saw some harbor seals playing in the water, and some bald eagles flying overhead and perching on pilings near the dock. A bit farther down the fjord (1500 feet deep) we caught sight of a group of sea lions hanging out on the steep rocks of the east bank. There were literally hundreds of them and as Capt. George turned off the engines, we could hear them all grunting and yelling at each other. They are an aggressive lot, with the males about twice as big as the females, and rather territorial over their harems. We learned they like this spot because the water is very deep just below them and so the eatin’s good. We watched three of the large male sea lions get into a fight with one scooting away, the winner holding his own, and the loser sliding all the way down into the water. Apparently they more closely resemble bears (especially in the face) than lions…and watching them today we could easily see that.

Heading to Juneau

We motored on down the fjord toward Juneau, about a 3 hour ride away. All along the glassy path we saw little waterfalls of melted glacier ice, towering mountains capped with snow and little islands dotted with tall evergreen trees.

Humpback whale tail

A couple of times we stopped because someone caught sight of a humpback whale blowing water out of his blowhole way off in the distance. As we neared one after the other, we watched them swimming around or slapping the water with their huge pectoral fins to disorient the little fishies. One humpback showed his tail as he dove down deep into the water. It was great!

We continued down the canal and as we neared the big city, we could see a bunch of fishing boats all out for the second ‘opening’ of the season, a three-day window during which fishermen have to cast their nets and catch their living. Only 6 to 8 of these openings occur each summer, so the competition for the best spots is keen.
 

Our boat pulled into a little harbor north of Juneau near a town called Auke Harbor. A bus met us at the dock to drive all 45 or so of us into Juneau, a little over an hour away. Britt, our jovial busdriver, dropped us off near the main cruise ship docks in downtown and set us loose to see the sights. Ken and I first headed to a quick sandwich lunch across the street from the largest cruise ship I’ve ever seen, the Celebrity Millenium. This behemoth blocked all views of the port and harbor and mountains and even most of the sky…wow. After lunch, we walked uptown through the throngs of tourists and past scores of little colorful shops offering all manner of trinkets, furs, Russian dolls and such.

Alaska State Capitol

Juneau, Alaska

We found the state capitol, a large squarish building completed in 1931 with Alaskan marble columns in front. Alaska became a state in 1959. It was sold to the US for $7.2M in 1867 after the Russians had relieved the lower Pacific coast of the territory of most of the sea otter pelts. Thinking the land offered no other value, they sold it to the US, a decision quickly derided in Congress as ‘Seward’s Folly’, named for the congressman most in favor of Alaska's purchase. Only 30 short years later, gold was discovered and then later yet, oil. Both are still active industries for the state. Good job, Mr. Seward.

The city of Juneau began as a tent camp for gold seekers in 1880 after the first gold strike in the territory and quickly became a small town. Two mines operated until 1917, one of them producing $66M in gold until a cave-in and flood closed it. Subsequently, in 1916, the Alaska-Juneau mine was built and became the largest hard rock gold mine in the world, producing over $80M in gold (more than $4B today). Before the mine closed in 1944, Juneau’s economy was supported by fishing, canneries, transportation services, a sawmill, and as a popular cruise ship port for tourists.

Mural of Tlingit culture in Juneau

At the Juneau dock

We walked back down to the docks to see the Taku Fishing Company’s salmon smoking process, but, alas, they were not smoking anything when we arrived. We tasted some yummy samples and looked around, then headed back toward the bus. We wandered around the little shops on the south end of town, watched a man with two very tame Alaskan mushing dogs entertaining the crowds, and took pictures of a sea plane that had just landed noisily on the water. On various building walls, we saw elaborate murals had been painted depicting aspects of Juneau’s history and culture.

Aboard the bus without air conditioning or breeze, we all sweltered in the record high temperatures. Juneau reached 76 degrees on one thermometer we saw, while Skagway was in its second straight day of record setting temps.

Mendenhall Glacier

We drove out to the Mendenhall Glacier, a rapidly retreating glacier some 12 miles long, fed by the Juneau Icefield (a 1500 square mile expanse of snow and ice), one of 38 glaciers here. The visitor center is about a mile from the glacier, but in the mid-1700s the ice extended another 2 ½ miles from its current location and covered a portion of what is now the city of Juneau. Even in the 1930s the huge lake in front of the glacier did not exist. We walked down to the waterline and I dipped my toes in the frigid water of the melting glacier. Yikes, that was cold. We hiked up to the visitor center and looked through a couple of telescopes at the glacier and saw some mountain goats way up the side of the mountain next to it. We watched a short, very interesting film on glaciology and the plants and animals of the glacial region. After taking entirely too many pictures, we headed back to the bus.

On the boat again, under dramatically different conditions than in the morning, the catamaran leapt and jolted through rough waters under increasing cloud cover. We steered around the long nets dragged by the fishing boats that were still out on the water. Several times water crashed over the bow and across the roof and down onto some of the folks standing on the aft deck. Once that was me, another couple of times Ken got wet.

Another humpback whale!

Mom and baby humpback whales!

With the choppy water, the whales were out in full force. We saw a whole bunch of them, many breaching (leaping up out of the water and falling back in spectacularly with a big splash). This happened at least 8 or 9 times with all of us crowding around to take pictures, most of us only getting the splash on film.

Eldred Rock Lighthouse near Haines, Alaska

At one point, we saw a pod of 4 or 5 humpback whales swimming together, a couple of them breaching now and then off in the distance. All the while, the sun was glinting off the water to the west and casting sunlight on the pretty snow-capped mountains all around us. Over a tasty dinner of salmon chowder served by Iris, the energetic and sweet deckhand, we chatted with a friendly family from Edmonton. We thoroughly enjoyed the trip. We walked back to the RV park with the wind swirling around us and thick clouds blotting out the pretty skies we’d seen for the last several days and settled in for happy hour.

What a phenomenal day!