Friday. June 1st
Up at 4:30am. Threw on some shoes, (no slippers) and walked around the ship checking out areas I hadn’t previously photographed. Went back to the room, showered and was out in time to see the docking in Juneau.
We got a beautiful morning. In fact, the first sunny day after 27 straight days of rain!
It was 6:30am. Our excursion departed at 8am. We didn’t get off the boat till 6:50am, and town is 1.5 miles from the port. I’m also “collecting” state capitols and I had to get Juneau. I didn’t think we had time, so I told Barbie to just take a picture of me in front of the town of Juneau, and that would have to be good enough.
I said that the Capitol Building was likely visible from the ship anyway.
But she decreed, like she had for the whole state collection issue, that I had to be in front of the Capitol building!
Walking was risky, time wise so the best solution was a cab!
He took us into town, waited while we got a few pics, and even took a couple of the two of us, and then drove us back. It wasn’t cheap, $15 with a $5 tip, but I got it done. I decided the “official picture” for this collection should be the one with the cab in it.
When we got back, I looked at the town, and, sure enough, the Capitol was indeed clearly visible!
Still, I don’t regret our little adventure into town.
We were back in plenty of time. We met with the gang at the Walt Disney Theater, where we were boarded a bit late, actually, so really, we could have walked to town!
Today’s excursion was the Mendenhall Glacier and Whale Quest. Our bus took us to Auke Bay, where we got on a catamaran to whale watch for 3 hours. The scenery alone would have been worth the trip.
Hoover Glacier.
We did see whales though. Fairly early on, we saw one bubble net feeding.
We saw a mother and calf.
And we saw a few tails.
Sea Lions.
Eagle.
Sea lions and an eagle.
What I didn’t get to see, and only a few of our boat load of 40 people did see, was a whale breach, meaning it flew completely out of the water, like “Free Willy”. It happened so unexpectedly, that no one even got a picture.
After that, our tour bus took us to the Mendehall Glacier. We only had about 45 minutes there, which wasn’t enough time to walk the path to the closest point to the glacier.
We were back at the boat about 1:45pm. We were hungry, so grabbed some pizza on deck 9, and a few Alaska Beers, brewed in Juneau. After eating, my wife napped, while I downloaded pictures and started writing this report.
Dinner was at Tritons’s, the theme “Taste of Alaska”. After dinner we got pics with Minnie, in her Pirate attire. It was Pirate night, and many guests were dressed to the nines. It was a lot of fun. Some really great and elaborate, (and racy!) costumes.
At dinner, we had all received bandana’s.
I thought it odd that tonight was “Taste of Alaska” night while the previous evening was “Island Night”. The whole pirate theme would have fit a lot more appropriately with Island Night. Oh, well! After dinner we got pics with Minnie, in her Pirate attire.
The Pirate party started at 10pm, so we decided to skip it as we had an early excursion in Ketchikan planned for the next day. We did go to see “Toy Story the Musical” at the Walt Disney Theater, which was a really great show.
Catch even more of the story next Wednesday!
Nick is co-writer of the Disney Musings Blog with his wife, Barbie.
