On our first morning dolphins had been jumping the waves beneath our cabin - but dolphins are now old hat. What I'd really come for was the whales and the bears, and at our first port of call we signed up for a bear hunt. A 10 mile drive in a rickety Alaskan school bus took us to a wildlife lookout where we were told by our bear guide that four grizzlies had just been spotted in the distance. Good job we'd brought binoculars because sure enough, there were the bears meandering through a field a mile or so away.
After the bears we headed back to the ship and set off through some rather rocky seas towards the Hubbard Glacier. The Hubbard is the largest coastal glacier in North America and at the point where it reaches the sea, 76 miles from its source, it’s an amazing six miles wide. "It's great that you're here on a grey wet day", the on-board naturalist informed us over the loudspeaker, "it's only on days like this you can appreciate all the magnificent colours in the ice". Well it does take a lot to impress me but yes, despite the pouring rain, I was enthralled, especially as great big chunks of blue ice crashed into the sea before our very eyes.
Our next stop was Juneau - Alaska's capital city and my idea of hell on earth. It’s totally unreachable from anywhere else in the world by road and is only accessible by air or sea. There was a distinct aura of gloom in Juneau. We were on the second to last cruise of the season – in two week’s time half the shops would close and the townsfolk would batten down the hatches for the winter. Swathed in low grey cloud, the prominence of the soup kitchen and welfare centre in the main high street spoke volumes.
After Juneau we were in luck and the sun came out as we headed for our next port of call - Ketchikan. This is a town that normally gets 13" of rain in September - by the 9th of the month they'd already had 12. Feeling pretty privileged to have seen the place in the dry we headed off on a speed boat excursion to try and spot some more of those bears, and we were in luck again. After an hour or so hugging the coast we spotted a black bear fishing in a salmon stream, on the way we’d passed several seals, and on the way back a whale the size of a bus performed one of those impressive tail swishing things just yards from our tiny boat.
We’d had a good day. Not only had we seen Ketchikan in the sun, we’d spotted all the wildlife we had hoped for, including an abundance of bald eagles which had actually impressed me the most. These birds were absolutely amazing with their graceful seven foot wingspans and humongous claws. I couldn’t resist capturing one to bring home. Having been warned by seasoned cruisers to avoid the multitude of jewelry shops that littered every port we’d so far steered clear of any gift shopping at all, but I finally succumbed to the $5 cuddly soft toy eagle in a dockside warehouse specializing in Alaskan tat. A lasting momento of fantastic trip.
Our final day at sea and the sun shone again. We cruised back towards Vancouver and decided to take a turn in the jacuzzi, where to my husband’s delight he discovered our young female fellow hot tubber was a Canadian oil refinery processing engineer. They happily exchanged pipeline small talk for an hour or so amongst the bubbles whilst I was just relieved we'd met her on the last day of our cruise and not the first.
This was really interesting post, Rosie. I could not have imagined there can be a state capital in the US without a road access, but there you go. The two pictures are beautiful and I greatly enjoyed the descriptions of the nature and wildlife. Thank you.
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