While in Haines, we took a tour boat to Juneau and back. This one-day trip featured whales and other sea life, a stop in Juneau, and a visit to the Mendenhall Glacier. As with most of my wildlife shots, the quality is not the greatest, but I have fun getting them. I don't have the patience or equipment to take really good wildlife pictures. There are a few scenery pictures in here too.
The Fjordland
A fjord is a long, narrow deep inlet of the sea, typically glaciated, and between steep slopes. I guess there were no Scandinaians around when this one was named, because it is simply called Chilkoot Inlet. Our tour boat, on the other hand, was called the Fjordland.Somehow, I managed to forget to get a picture of the boat. The closest I can come is a couple of shots taken off the back deck. As you can see, it was a beautiful day, and for the most part we had calm seas and smooth sailing.
Humpback Whales
These are the same Humpback Whales that you see in Hawaii in the spring. They come back to Alaska for the summer. I'm happy to report that this time I actually caught a few. Apparently the newer cameras are a little faster than the one we used in Hawaii.
I also caught some of the water spouts you see when they breathe. There are actually two in the second picture, that showed about the same time.
There were a lot of eagles around where we saw the whales. They were apparently attracted by the same thing - a good-sized run of halibut.
There are also orcas and beluga whales around here, but we didn't see any of these.
Sea Lions
Not far from where we spotted the first whale, we sailed by this rookery of sea lions basking in the sun. Be happy you are looking at this in pictures - it was pretty stinky around there.
Juneau
This terrain map shows the huge Juneau Icefield, which itself spawns several active glaciers. It's pretty easy to see why there are no roads to Juneau. There's no place to put one. When you are in Juneau, you are basically in one of three locations - the valley, which is where most of the people live, downtown, which is well, downtown, or "out the road", which is away from town on the one road that goes outside of town about 30 miles.View Larger Map
The state capitol building is one of the few in the country without a dome. This rather unassuming brick building has a facade of white Indiana limestone. Hoosiers are quite proud of their Indiana limestone, and of course their capitol is made from it, but one wonders why Alaskans would ship it in from so far away? Surely they could have found a suitable local granite or something.
This picture shows three of the four cruise ships that were in town the day we were here. Other than being the state capital, Juneau is pretty much a cruise ship town. Stop downtown for some shopping or whatever, then take a bus to the Mendenhall Glacier, and then back to the boat. Which is pretty much what we did also. Except our boat did not dock downtown. We docked at Yankee Cove, which is "out the road".
Mendenhall Glacier
This area handles an astounding number of tourists every day. At any given time there are half a dozen or more tour buses shuffling through the drop-off/pickup area. As soon as the bus is emptied, the driver moves off to a bus lot to wait for the appointed time to pick up again. But in spite of the crowds, it was a worthwhile stop.
The most amazing thing I learned about glaciers is that they are a beautiful sky blue, at least on the recently broken surfaces. When the glaciers are formed, the massive amount of snow is compressed and takes on a particular crystalline structure that appears blue.
This glacier has retreated quite a bit since the park was first opened for visitors. You can look at some of the places where it once was, and see the marks it left behind. These grooves were cut by rocks that were pushed along as glacier once moved forward.
Eldred Rock, seals
On the way back, we sailed by the Eldred Rock lighthouse. The light is still in use, but has been automated, so no one lives in the house any more.
You can't see it very well in the picture, but there were rails running from the building to the edge of the water. No, they didn't run a train out to the lighthouse, but apparently the rails were pretty handy for getting supplies up the hill from the boat.
If you look in the foreground of the lighthouse picture, you can see some lumps that look a lot like rocks. These are harbor seals. Here are a couple shots that show them a little better.
More Scenery
Last but not least, here are a few more shots of the beautiful scenery in the fjord.
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