Slept okay last night; interestingly, my nose wasn’t very stuffy when I woke up in the middle of the night, although I did use the Visine and the bourbon. We got up early because we were going whale watching. We didn’t take the scooters. We took a bus to the wharf where the whale watching boat was docked. It was a forty- or forty-five-minute bus trip. We drove through downtown Juneau, the capital of Alaska. Like Sitka, Juneau can only be reached by sea or air.
It was windy, dry, and chilly, but not cold. The excursion boat had an enclosed lower deck and an upper deck, half-enclosed. On the upper deck, you could easily move outside the enclosed passenger area and get great pictures. There was plenty of rail space.
We were on the water for only about 15 minutes when we came upon a group of boats watching orcas (killer whales) swim in the area. We saw quite a few of those, including one up close. The whale-watching boats try to protect the wildlife by staying far away from them, so it’s unusual to get a close look, but if the whale swims up to the boat, sometimes you can get a close look.
We went further out where the pilot thought he saw some activity. Some adult and juvenile humpback whales were spouting and breaking the surface, although none of them breached. It was crowded on the boat, and it was hard to get a good picture because people would get in the way. I finally got a great picture of a whale breaking the surface and then plunging, leaving only its tail above water.
By that time, we had to head back to the wharf to get the bus back to the Norwegian Bliss. It was going to leave at 1:00 PM. We didn’t even get back on board until 1:00 PM. We went to lunch and then took a little bit of a nap. We were now eating at some of the free venues other than the buffet. The food in these restaurants was no better than the buffet, and frequently, not any warmer. But they were closer to our cabin by a football field and a half.
After the nap, we did a few things, but mostly not much. The ship was headed for the second stop of the day, which was near Dawes glacier*. When we got into the inlet where this glacier could be seen, we were in a narrow body of water in which there were countless small icebergs. Made me wonder if I shouldn’t be kind of nervous. The ship parked there for a little while and then got underway for the night. Returned to the cabin and watched a little television. Drank a bottle of wine that we had gotten earlier in the day at one of the restaurants. Jane’s mom, Emily, thinks that that’s what made her sick during the night. I enjoyed the wine and was asleep by eleven. Slept fairly well although I was up several times during the night. That’s all and it was a successful whale watching trip
*According to Microsoft Bing: Dawes Glacier is a tidewater glacier located in Endicott Arm fjord in Alaska. It is part of the larger Tracy Arm-Fjords Terror Wilderness. The glacier is 15 miles long and originates at the Alaska-Canada border, flowing northwest towards Endicott Arm. The glacier is over 600 feet tall and around one mile broad. Its icebergs provide breeding and whelping grounds for harbor seals.
Tidewater glaciers:
- Extend out and terminate into the sea.
- Are part of a group of glaciers known as calving glaciers.
- Main method of ice loss is through iceberg calving.
- Found in places like Glacier Bay, Kenai Fjords, Greenland, Antarctica, and Patagonia.
The whale boat people had a few amusing quips. They noted that we saw two kinds of whales today. The toothed whales or orcas and the baleen whales like the humpbacks we saw. They noted that the toothed whales or orcas often had to go to the orcadontist. Sometimes, you will see groups of killer whales playing musical instruments. These are members of an orcastra.
