Juneau, Alaska

Beautiful morning in Juneau. Our tour isn’t until 1:30 so we had breakfast and tried to get online to no avail. I’m really proud of Kyrie though. She hasn’t complained about being off line at all and basically told us it’s ridiculous to pay that much. Good girl.

Our tour was at 1:30, but I made us go out at 1 to be sure we were in the right place. The check in people said to wait at number 8, far from the initial sign in. We waited patiently in the spot they said to go. But when the bus came in it parked at 1. We ended up being the last ones to board. Grr.

Anyway we got to the launch area and boarded our catamaran ‘Pharos’ and off we went, first we headed to the small lighthouse on Sentinel Island. It was built after the ship Princess Sofaia wrecked on one of the many islands. All 363 passengers perished but there was one survivor…an Irish Setter dog swam to shore and got back to the town covered in oil.

We climbed the dock up to the lighthouse using the old cart tracks the keepers used to haul supplies. The original structure burned down and was rebuilt in Art Deco in the 1920. On the way we saw a small pair of black birds and our guide saw their chicks. The birds were black Oystercatchers. Very rare and very endangered. Back on the boat as we were driving away, we saw a sea otter and everyone freaked out. It was very funny.

Next we happened upon a huge group of Sea lions. But they don’t bark, they grumble and growl. Alaska Air is the only airline to have an emergency landing after it got hit with a fish.

Then we found WHALES! One surfaced very close to the ship. In all we saw over 5 Humpback Whales and managed to get a few good pictures. Then we hustled to the other side of channels. And we got to see ORCA!

In all it was an excellent outing. At the port I called Greg to check on Nancy, his mom who had recently fallen. I convinced him to go out to California. He’ll leave tomorrow. I really miss him…but this is what he needs to do.

In the evening we watched two different shows. One was a couple aerialist Duo Hearts. The other was a singer named Mat who did a variety of song styles. Carol and I think he played Elvis on one of the other NCL cruises. Czytaj więcej