Alaskan Cruise Day 4 Part 1: Wild for Wildlife!

Sunday morning dawned bright and clear and we were back in the Inside Passage which meant less wavy water which meant relief from the sea sickness for everyone. There were so many people sea sick on Saturday that the ship ran out of certain sizes of dishes because of the amt of room service people were asking for. Those who usually washed the dishes had to help deliver room service as well which complicated the problem!

Carrie & I really enjoyed watching the scenery and wildlife.

The guys even joined us once in awhile.

Still following the Royal Caribbean ship.

1st whale sighting! Even zoomed in at 450 mm it still is just a sliver. This is why if you're going to see anything while cruising you have to basically stare at the scenery for hours unless your buddy next to you is going to do it for you.

Goodbye humpback!

Sea weed I think

Going to take a break from the wind

Wishing I had brought a hat to block the wind but a sweatshirt hood works.

Mountains on the left...

... and mountains on the right.

Our big wake. Usual cruising speed was around 20-21 knots/hr. Our diesel generators used 85 gallons/mile.

Coming into Juneau, the capitol of Alaska

The nice open bow of our ship was great for the scenery watching on our cruise.

The smart and sassy ravens wasted no time coming right into the lido deck to search for scraps of food.

Pistachio pudding!

MJ enjoys a veggie burger and fries before we disembark.

The Bear meets the Bear.

Waiting to go whale watching

Mary Jane found Orca Enterprises in a magazine for us. We are very grateful - we saw a tour that was booked through the cruise and their boat had 100+ people on it. Ours had only 15!

A van took us to Auke Bay to catch our ship. Here's a view of the local Wal-mart.

Gorgeous!

Walking down the dock to our boat. Auke in the Native language means "lake" so you have Auke Bay "lake bay" and Auke Lake "lake lake."

Captain Larry
We also had a naturalist onboard who told us about the animals but I neglected to take a picture of him. He spends his winters in Hawaii doing tours and marine research mostly with humpback whales.
We also had a famous musician on board, Jon "Bowzer" Bauman, who started his career with schooling from Julliard, is most known for his band Sha Na Na, and some people told us he wrote some of the score for Grease. He was in Juneau on the Royal Caribbean ship with a band. We had no idea who he was but other people seemed to know him.

Back on the open stern, ready to see some wildlife!

Mendenhall Glacier where the rest of our party was.

Our first good look at a bald eagle.

Me and my camera looking for a good picture.

Gulls nesting on the rocks.

This group of seals was pretty shy

A little close up with the cropped view. They are so cute!

This sea otter has been hanging out with the group of seals for weeks!

You can see the layer of silt on top of the water from the melting glaciers.

Steller sea lions - named for the naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller who first described them in 1741. There are several other animals named for him like Steller's Jay.

Apparently this big guy is the lookout. We saw a huge male in the water too.

Another glacier for which I can't remember the name...

There he blows! Whale spouts seemed hard to get because they were usually the first thing you saw to let you know where the whale was.

The whales would stay up for a few minutes blowing a few times then...

dive almost straight down. They stay down an average of 5-10 minutes and the naturalist says he can almost set his watch by the pattern each whale chooses. If you stay in an area for 20 minutes or so, you can see how often that particular whale stays down and know his pattern. He said these whales can stay down for as long as 45 minutes if they need to.

Sea lions were right there with the whales. The naturalist said most of these whales were males based on all of the scarring we saw on their bodies. The one female we saw that he knew by her whale tale fingerprint was too far away to get a good picture.

Here's 2 of the 3 males we saw feeding right together.

Good view of a whale's blow hole. This sea lion is getting out of the way too!

Some of my first pictures turned out blurry! :-( But this one turned out well even though a bit off center. I was trying to stay on line with the boat rocking under me. The water looks like a shower coming off of their fluke.

Going down for another meal.

Coming to investigate us.

These eagles were chasing each other all around. I wish I'd gotten some of their whirling up in the air in focus but alas they were moving too fast once they got up off the water.

Here's a sequence of pictures of two humpback whales diving down deep - click to play.

These gulls were trying to take this bald eagle's meal.

Cropped a bit farther

We met a neat lady on the bus ride back who was from England and is doing an A-Z tour of America. She was in J - for - Juneau. She is asking Americans for names of towns that begin with each letter and seeing which ones get the most votes. She said she wanted some smaller towns too. When she is done she has a book deal to write about her trip. The Red Cross is sponsoring part of her trip. I told her she should go see Summerville, SC. She said Savannah was her most popular S so far. She said she'd been hanging out with people in bars at night and they told her how depressing Alaska is in the winter. The guys told her people buy pictures with bright lights on them to put up in their windows so it will feel like day time.

Then it was time to leave the wildlife and head for some mountain high vistas with Ryan & Carrie.

Alaskan Cruise Day 4 Part 2: On top of Juneau

Once we were back from our wildlife tour we took a ride to the top of the mountain overlooking Juneau with Carrie and Ryan.

On the way up!
This is the view down the strait the cruise ship took to come in.

Looking down...

Now looking out toward Auke Bay and the Mendenhall Glacier. Our ship is at the bottom of the picture.

Lady Baltimore lives at the top. She was hit in the beak by a gunshot and lost her left eye.

Carrie's hand in a bear print. One swipe would change your life!

Ryan's wingspan measures about that of a red-tailed hawk.

There were beautiful views at the top on the hiking trails!
Ryan and Ryan wanted to keep hiking and keep hiking.

Who would have thought that two years later we'd all be on a cruise together? Having lots of friends along made cruising so much more fun!

"The HILLS ARE ALIVE... with the sound of MUSIC!" I thought about singing this but Carrie was close by and she would have put a stop to it...

The boys blazing a trail on without us.

And apparently this is what we missed at the top. Ryan was feeling the hills being alive too - I can tell. (By the way, that's a walking stick he's holding.)

While they were gone we took more pictures...

I didn't know this was a diagnosis - or that they would actually put it on a sign about how to react if you see a bear. I should have included the part that went something like this: "If you have stayed still and acted non-threatening and the bear continues to attack you after several minutes - you should assume this is a predatory attack and then fight back." I think I would have assumed that initially thank-you...

Some more flora

And finally a view of our stateroom. Carrie took the couch, Ryan H the bunk bed, and Ryan & I took the big bed. The room was actually quite spacious! We had a great time trying to figure out the light switches and trying to hit the correct ones in the pitch black. Our poor stateroom housekeeper kept trying to clean up our (ahem... men's) many pairs of shoes and random castoff clothing (from playing tennis for the guys and changing weather conditions for the ladies) throughout the day. Those guys are sneaky!