Day 12: Juneau

Next Stop, Juneau, capital of Alaska.  The day started out wet and cold.  Some of us were happier than others as we lined up for our tour. 

 

But most of us perked up by the time we got to Tongass National Forest, the largest National Forest in the US at 17,000,000 acres. 

 

Fortunately they had ponchos for all of us, and even those who had raincoats took the extra layer of protection

 

Diane was our guide, and quite a character she was.  She was 59 years old but looked like 40.  She had been a park ranger years in the past and had lived in a sailboat for 4 Alaskan winters.  She spent the first 15 minutes of the trip going around the bus, repeating everyone’s names so she could remember them and by half way through the trip she’d forgotten every one.  Diane is also the one that gave Cathy her new nickname “fiddlesticks”, which is what she said whenever she came to Cathy and couldn’t remember her name.

 

 

Alaska has one of four temperate rain forests in the world, and the largest.  It runs all the way from Portland and the Pacific Northwest in the lower 48, up along the coast of Canada, Alaska, and ends at Kodiak Island. The only bigger rain forest is the tropical rain forest of the Amazon.  While none of us knew this before, we didn’t take much convincing that this was true with the amount of rain we experienced on this trip and the lush, dense vegetation we saw along the way

 

Diane explained the progression of reforestation and soil conditioning that takes place after a glacier retreats starting with the lichens, mosses, willow alder and birch, then finally the spruce and hemlock. 

 

The moss was soft and deep in this part of the rain forest, like walking on a mattress.

After about 30 minutes in the rain forest we came upon a clearing and a beach that overlooked Lake Mendenhall and on the far side, the Mendenhall Glacier.  The river and a waterfall carrying the glacier melt thundered in from the right.

 

 

Diane waded in and picked up a mini iceberg.  She explained that the ice was 200-400 years old and about the different ice crystals formed under the pressure of the glacier which causes the glacier ice to look blue.  The bluer the ice, the more recently it had calved off the glacier.

 

 

Then it was back on the bus and down to the harbor for the whale watching part of the trip.  On the boat on the way out the shoreline was filled with resting Bald Eagles.  This became a fairly common sight.

 

Diane telling us about the habits and life cycle of the Humpback Whale.

 

And it didn’t take us long to see some.  Thar she blows!  Sherry was our whale spotter, but Kevin observed that every time they spotted a whale, the pilot turned the boat to get closer and they couldn’t see it.

 

We took a break from viewing Humpbacks to chase down a pod of Orcas.  It looked to be a small pod of 3 or 4 whales including a baby.  Boats are not allowed too close to the whales, so it was hard to get a good shot.  I got about 200 photos of dorsal fins, but these two were the best.

 

 

Then back to spotting Humpbacks.  Humpbacks, all 40 tons of them, are so slow and graceful when the dive.  For me, this was the highlight of my trip.  If you look at these pictures in quick succession it’s almost like watching a movie.

 

Then back to Juneau.  Juneau is the capital of Alaska and used to be the second biggest city, after Fairbanks.  Juneau grew during the middle of the last century as commercial gold mining extracted tons of gold from the surrounding rivers and maintains.  As a matter of fact 75% of downtown Juneau is built on mine tailings.  Anchorage surpassed Juneau in size in the 1970s as the Alaskan oil fields were opened for exploration.

 

It’s really amazing to me to see this modern city back dropped by spectacular mountains and waterfalls that seemed to fall out of the clouds.

 

 

After a little shopping, 4 of us wandered into the Red Dog Saloon.  Touristy, yes.  Kitschy, yes.  But a whole lot of fun.  A guy was up on stage doing his vaudeville act of bad jokes, songs, and audience abuse.  We didn’t get his name but at one point he referred to himself as the Great Baldini, so that’s what we called him. 

He also told a story about how he used to work the cruise ships (where the average age of the passengers was “deceased”) but got fired when the passengers complained that he was always MIA because he was off in a corner sleeping.

 

We also learned a lot of alternate dirty wording and choruses for popular songs and way of welcoming new people into the saloon (when someone new would walk in, he would yell “look who’s here! And the whole audience would throw their hand up and yell “YAY!!!”).  Both of these would come in handy in the disco on the cruise ship, to our great pleasure and everyone else’s great annoyance.

 

 

The Great Baldini.  When we first sat down, we were sitting kind of behind him and we started answering the questions he threw at the audience, singing along with his songs and laughing at his corny jokes.  He turns around, points at Sherry and says "Oh, she's a feisty one!" and after that every wise crack or joke he turned around and looked at Sherry.

 

We had lots of stories to share over dinner that night.