Crusan with Susan

Sunday, August 26, 2007

8-26-07 Juneau

After 2 days at sea, we finally came to our first port---Juneau. It is the capital of Alaska and is only accessible by air or sea. The mountains around the town rise to about 4000 feet. It was a really neat city and is almost as large as Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

We did a ship sponsored photo excursion in Juneau. It was expensive (something like $175@), but was really great. We had a small group of about 10 people (a couple people didn't even have cameras which I found pretty amusing! The tour guide did give them a disposable camera to use,though, which I thought was nice of her). Our first stop on the excursion was to Auke Bay where we boarded a relatively small boat and went out in search of wildlife. I was thrilled that we encountered a couple large pods of Orcas. There must have been at least 60 killer whales in the bay.

I even inadvertantly caught one breaching off in the distance.

We were told some of the Orcas here are resident ones and others are transient ones.

I was amazed at how tall some of their dorsal fins are. We were told that the male Orcas can have dorsal fins as tall as 6'.

We even saw some resident seals hanging out here.

Coming back into the harbor gave us these puzzle perfect views.

The next part of our excursion took us to the popular Mendenhall Glacier.Our guide took us on a hike through the wooded area in the park, too. We had the opportunity to take pictures of lots of wild flora on our hike. This excursion was about 5 hours long and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Even saw evidence of beaver activity

and an occasional cascading waterfall.

Dad checking out a shuttle stop?

interesting form of lichen?

some of the many kinds of mushrooms we saw.

Loved all the wildflowers along the trail, too!

Eventually we got within view of Mendenhall glacier. I was surprised how blue the glacier really is! Apparently that from the ice being compacted so much that only the blue light rays are getting in.

more beaver activity

more wildflowers.

even saw a bunch of salmon.

When the excursion was over, we still had a couple hours before we had to be back on the ship, so we decided to go up Mount Robert's Tram.

The Mount Roberts Tramway is an aerial tramway located right across from the cruise ship docks. In operation since 1996, the tram makes a six-minute ascent of 3,819-foot Mount Roberts to a height of about 1,800 feet.

On top of the mountain we were able to wander a trail and see some amazing, expansive views.

looking down towards our cruise ship

I believe the cost was about $27@, but it was well worth it, too. At the top was even a little restaurant where we had a very good fish and chips lunch and then we hiked a bit on some of the paths up there. Even had wild flora up on the top of the mountain.