Alaska; first stop Juneau - Stories from the cruise

When you look at a map of Alaska, you see an enormous land mass top center that accounts for most of the 586,412 square miles in the state. There's a long line of some 300 islands, the Aleutians, that extend 1,200 miles to the west, and a narrow band of coastline and coastal islands that descend southeastward, interposed between the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean and the northern edge of British Columbia, Canada. This last area is known as the Inner Passage, and that's the Alaska we visited, as have many thousands of others.

Alaska was surprisingly warm for early June; here's the temperature from the daily shipboard update. Pretty humid, too.

In fact, the weather was wonderful for the most part. We did need jackets from time-to-time, especially when we were on the exposed areas of the deck in the wind, but often, we enjoyed shirt-sleeve temperatures and low humidity.

Our first port of call was Juneau, the state capital, and the only U.S. capital city with no automotive access.

 Every brick, every automobile, every tour bus, every manufactured item, every drop of gasoline comes to Juneau by way of airplane or boat (surprisingly, gasoline was only $4.15 a gallon). By area, it is the 2nd largest city in the US, almost as large as Rhode Island and Delaware combined, but with a population of fewer than 33,000 citizens. The eastern city limit is the Canadian border!

Our excursion from the cruise ship in Juneau was a combined visit to the Mendenhall Glacier and later whale watching. The glacier is a scant 12 miles from downtown, and certain versions of the tour allow you to set foot on the glacier. Our tour was limited to a view from the visitor center, and the exhibits of the center itself.

Unfortunately, our first excursion was almost our last. The ship was two hours late docking in Juneau, due to rough seas (I mentioned that in an earlier post), and the excursion schedules were a mess. Word from the bridge was that we would be informed about the new schedule, but after docking, no word came. We finally set out to find out for ourselves and learned that we should go ashore and find our tour. Let's just say that this was not Princess Cruise Lines finest moment (the revised schedules were waiting for us when we returned). We did finally find our tour and set off by bus to the glacier.

By this time, it was raining steadily, one of only two occasions the entire trip. Our bus driver dropped us off at the visitor center and told us she would pick us up at that same spot in an hour. This was significantly shorter than the time set out in the tour description, but when we realized that about 10 times the number of people you could comfortably fit in the visitor's center were in fact, already in the center, time became unimportant.

So, in the rain, after viewing the glacier, and a brief visit to the center, we trudged back to our drop-off point to re-board the bus, only to run afoul of bureaucracy at its best. A park ranger vehemently denied us access to the pick-up point, pointing instead at the front of the queue of 20 or so tour buses, insisting - nay, demanding - that we should not pass. From our distant viewpoint, we could not see our bus number, but time was passing. Finally, our driver came and found us and we boarded the bus in shame, as the other 48 passengers had had obviously been un-cowed by the park ranger traffic-Nazi, and had been waiting patiently for us.

On to whale watching. The company that fulfills the whale-watching excursion prominently touts that they will hand you $100 cash when you disembark if no whales are seen during the 3-hour trip. They have never paid off. During the summers, thousands of Humpbacks and Orcas return to the waters of Alaska to feed and fatten up for their long migration to warmer climates like Hawaii.and Mexico for breeding. Biologists count a consistent population of about 65 whales in Auke Bay, where we were.

We encountered our first Humpback within minutes, and saw probably half-a-dozen during the cruise. They were "lunge feeding." leaping partially out of the water to scoop up the krill and sea-life that they feed on. Unfortunately, seeing and photographing are two different things. The rain had stopped by this time and we were back in shirtsleeves, checking out Humpbacks, Steller Sea Lions, and an extended observation of a pair of bald eagles feeding. And we had no problems with the bus ride back to the ship.

Next port: Skagway.