Juneau: Alaska's Picturesque Capital

So, off we went. Here is a picture of our cruise ship. I'd guess it is bigger than all three of Columbus's ships put together, but HE didn't have to deal with the Northern Latitudes. So there. As you recall from my last post, we are the very bottom set of windows you can see on the boat, which was Deck 4.

Our first stop was Juneau. You can only get there by sea or air because of the Alaskan Mountain Range. They say it would be cheaper to move the capital to Anchorage than keep it in Juneau, but like THAT'S going to happen. It was a beautiful little city, though. Here's Spencer in front of a giant anchor (duh) and another view of the environs.



At every stop you can take "shore excursions." My goal was to see a bear eating spawning salmon. I did not. But we did see the Mendenhall Glacier, "The World's Only Drive Up Glacier." Of course, we didn't actually get on the glacier, but it was amazingly beautiful. See?

We also went whale-watching. We saw a whale who was surfacing, breathing, and diving. Very, very exciting. We watched her for about 15 minutes. We were holding our breath the whole time. Yes, Martha, THERE SHE IS AGAIN!!!! Finally, we left her behind. Not all was lost; we saw NINE whales, one of which decided to put on a show of leaping all the way out of the water repeatedly, and another which showed off her beautiful fluke. Since our camera died right when we saw Exciting Whale, here is the best I can do.

Sorry. Try googleing "whales jumping all the way out of the water" and you'll get a small sense of what we saw. Awesome!

Afterwards, it was back to the ship for a good (ha ha) night's sleep. Tomorrow: Skagway!