Friday, May 26-- Juneau-- whale watching!!
Yay! Next highlight of the cruise--whales!! I love whales. I suppose from many trips to marine parks when I was younger, as well as having seen humpbacks in Hawaii, and orcas in the Pac NW. They are magnificent creatures.
We ate a good breakfast in Cabanas, since our whale watching tour was going to run from about 10 am to 2 pm (dock to dock). Quite a few months prior to the cruise, I had found our 'social media' group online and joined it. Via that page, a few people had set up smaller whale watching charters (not booked through
DCL), and we were able to join one. It saved us a little money (not a huge amount, since it was just the 2 of us), but the benefit of being on a boat with about 16 people instead of a larger more crowded boat was appealing to us.
We were to meet our group on the ship dock at 9:45-- but-- I hadn't actually met the lady who had organized it yet in person (missed her at our group meet on day one), so I made sure we exited the ship in plenty of time. I think we were off the ship by 9:15, and just wandered around and waited. Since the ship docked about a mile from town, a shuttle was provided for ship passengers going into Juneau to shop. The excursion groups were picked up right at the dock.
The weather was sunny and a little chilly, though it looked like it would warm up a bit as the day went on.
This is a cute little faux mine entrance at the dock-- nicely landscaped. I mostly just wandered around here (and found a geocache in the dock area) while we waited.
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We found a representative from Harv and Marv's Whale Watching while we were waiting, so we kept an eye out for the rest of the group to arrive.
Once we gathered, we got in a small shuttle bus to ride to Auke Bay, where the smaller boats are docked. On the way, we passed a field with DOZENS of bald eagles-- wow-- I had never seen so many together in my life! (Turns out, that field was near the landfill-- eagles are so cool, but they do have that scavenger tendency.)
We arrived at our destination, had time for a quick restroom break, and boarded our excursion boat. We saw some friends we had met on the ship, who had apparently been on the excursion prior to ours-- they loved it and had good words for the boat crew.
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That's our boat-- I think we had 16 people total-- about 6 kids, the rest adults. We rode inside the cabin heading out to the water, but could go on the front and aft decks to watch the whales and take photos.
It took almost no time at all to find our first whales!
We saw one or two humpbacks in the distance, but then a pod of orcas showed up, so we focused on them initially.
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They weren't too far from the boat. Photos mostly taken by my DH with his Canon. I don't think he had his largest lens on, though. It's a new camera to us, so we still have a lot to learn with it.
Here is a photo of the larger whale watching boats.
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We could also look back from the boat across Auke Bay and see the Mendenhall Glacier, which we were not visiting today. I had visited Mendenhall on a previous trip, and with an excursion right up the middle of the day, we really didn't have time to do justice to other excursions before or after.
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continued in next post with a few photos of the humpbacks.