It was chilly this morning (lots of fleece jackets and rain jackets) and very cloudy (we couldn't see the mountains), but dry. (Last night I thought it was really chilly, but there were little kids out playing in sleeveless tops, eating popsicles.) On our city tour of Juneau this morning we learned that the average temperature for the year is 40 degrees, that they get 44 sunny days/year and that the government building (government is the main business in town followed by tourism and the fishing industry) put in new windows that were tinted! We saw more bald eagles on our drive out to the Mendenhall Glacier. We had lots of time to enjoy the views, to walk where the glacier had been in the 1950s (it moves forward but is melting faster than it builds up so it actually is receding) and to enjoy the beautiful visitor center. From there we drove out to meet the Fjordland, a small sightseeing boat that took us to Skagway. It was not a boring ride! The weather improved enough so that we saw some blue sky and even sunshine. The water was calm (the deckhand said that the past several days they had had 3-4 foot seas but today it "had laid down"). We left at 11:20 and within about 20 minutes on a little side trip we had seen lots of sea lions jockeying for position on a colorful buoy, the first lighthouse lit in Alaska and a humpback whale. It was a good start! The scenery of the Lynn Canal on the Inside Passage is so captivating that one of the guys ate his lunch standing out on the back deck because there was too much to see. Mountains, the Tongass National Forest, waterfalls and glaciers.
At 12:00 noon sharp, 40 minutes into the cruise, a 48-hour chum salmon season opened. There had been many, many commercial fishing boats in position, waiting. Just after noon, we watched the drift nets being set (imagine a long volleyball net with white corks all along the top, eventually extending in a line out from the boat). After a couple of hours, the net would be hauled up and the salmon taken into the boat. Night and day for 48 hours, there would be fishing, and we got to see the start. It was exciting. Even more exciting was spotting another humpback whale. The captain stopped the boat. Then someone saw another spout. And another. There were whales behind us, in front of us, to the right and to the left, all at the same time. It was as if we were sitting right on top of their dinner table with six-seven whales feeding. At the same time there were bald eagles flying around us. We kept turning our heads, trying to aim cameras and catch fins or tails or feeding whales. It was hard work!
Our early afternoon arrival in Skagway is giving us time for the National Park Visitor Center with excellent displays on the gold rush era. There are cruise ships at the dock so shops are open in this town of 600 year-round residents. The boardwalks on Main Street are quaint, the Red Onion Saloon is just one of the sights to see and there are T-shirts and souvenirs to be bought. So ends our 2nd day in Alaska. - Laurel Johnson, Tour Director
At 12:00 noon sharp, 40 minutes into the cruise, a 48-hour chum salmon season opened. There had been many, many commercial fishing boats in position, waiting. Just after noon, we watched the drift nets being set (imagine a long volleyball net with white corks all along the top, eventually extending in a line out from the boat). After a couple of hours, the net would be hauled up and the salmon taken into the boat. Night and day for 48 hours, there would be fishing, and we got to see the start. It was exciting. Even more exciting was spotting another humpback whale. The captain stopped the boat. Then someone saw another spout. And another. There were whales behind us, in front of us, to the right and to the left, all at the same time. It was as if we were sitting right on top of their dinner table with six-seven whales feeding. At the same time there were bald eagles flying around us. We kept turning our heads, trying to aim cameras and catch fins or tails or feeding whales. It was hard work!
Our early afternoon arrival in Skagway is giving us time for the National Park Visitor Center with excellent displays on the gold rush era. There are cruise ships at the dock so shops are open in this town of 600 year-round residents. The boardwalks on Main Street are quaint, the Red Onion Saloon is just one of the sights to see and there are T-shirts and souvenirs to be bought. So ends our 2nd day in Alaska. - Laurel Johnson, Tour Director
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