Next stop: Juneau
Population: approx 30,000
Temperate Rainforest
In this port we went whale watching. We were fortunate enough to see a pod of about 12 or 13 humpback whales bubble-net feeding. This behavior has only been observed in humpback whales in a few places in the world, and south-east Alaska is one of those places. It was amazing. The whales go down and blow bubbles in a circle, which traps the krill and other little critters they eat, and then, all at once, they come up with their huge mouths open and come out of the water to about their eyeballs. You could see their baleen and their stretchy under-throat things full of water. And one whale even breeched (jumped all the way out of the water). It was one of the most exhilarating things I've ever seen.
On the bus ride to our whale-watching boat we passed Mendenhall glacier. I wish we'd had a bit more time in Juneau so we could have taken a tour up closer to the glacier.
After whale watching we had a little more time to walk around the tourist trap shops in Juneau. It's a neat city and we met up with a neighbor and friend of ours. Just before we got back on the boat we had a huge Alaskan King Crab leg at a little crab shack. Mmmm-mmmm-mmmm. Divine. Then back to the ship and on to the third and final stop.
4 comments:
Your pics are fabulous. And I wasn't too horribly jealous until I got to the part about the whales.
Looks like you and your fam had a fabulous time. You all deserved it in... spite of my jealousy.
Sooo fun and ditto on the fab photos. . . especially the one of you and Guy in brown. Handsome couple. Glad you got away from it all for a while. Isn't that just the best!
Neat story about the bubbles and feeding. LOVE all your trip pictures :o)
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