Day 3: I left off with our lunch, and then it was time to get off the ship in the capital of Alaska, Juneau.
As a kid, one of the ways we entertained ourselves on long car rides was by my brother Jesse quizzing us on random trivia from the almanac. No, I’m not making this up. This was before things like “screen time” and we took some LONG road trips, so he would quiz us on largest cities and state and world capitals, so rest assured I knew my state capitals very well, at least at the time. So I knew that Juneau was the capital of Alaska, but what the almanac didn’t tell us was that you couldn’t drive there! You could only get there by plane or by ship, isn’t that crazy?
Louie and I disembarked, which was a very smooth and easy process, and we got our first look at the Zaandam from the outside–we never got a look at it in Vancouver, so this was fun for me.
We had a very short amount of time to wander before we needed to meet our van for the whale watching tour–we had booked one with Ben and Roz and we were very excited. I had not seen whales before though Louie had.
We saw a few other ships docked, including a giant one from Royal Caribbean, the Quantum of the Seas, which held over 4000 passengers and made the Zaandam look tiny. And a couple that were even smaller than ours and I assume more luxurious. (“Far more luxurious”).
Then we met our van and drove about 20-30 minutes to the dock to get our boat for whale watching. We went with Jayleen’s Whale Watching to see whales. It was a bit of a splurge, but whale watching seemed fairly expensive to begin with so I thought a small boat seemed pretty cool and we would have a better chance of seeing whales that way, and we got more time in the water with a smaller boat. I also liked that it was a woman owned company, though our guide was a man…he had a woman boss 🙂
Louie had a long lens for wildlife photos and hasn’t shared any of them with for this blog post yet, but he got a bunch of bald eagle pictures. Juneau was littered with bald eagles, we saw dozens on our drive and there was one just hanging out on top of a post at the pier.
As you can see, the scenery was just awful.
But the weather wasn’t actually great, it was a bit rainy and foggy, which did plague us all week. We managed though. As they say in Norway, det finnes ikke dÃ¥rlig vær, bare dÃ¥rlig klær! (there’s never bad weather, only bad clothing). Anyway that picture is the Mendenhall Glacier from a distance.
The sea lions liked to hang out on the buoys, apparently.
We spend the afternoon watching whales and it was quite amazing. It was five of us on the boat with the guide/driver/captain (just one person).
Anyway, iphone pictures aren’t the best, but you get the idea. Whales!
On the drive back, we saw a bear on the side of the road and watched for a bit.
We could have spent a little more time in Juneau after the tour but we were all cold and wet and decided to go back to the ship and get warmed up instead, and met up for dinner afterwards.
This picture was from inside one of the ladies’ rooms right near the dining room to show the men how fancy it was. Nice views as well!
We didn’t take off until after dinner–we could have had dinner in Juneau, but we decided to save the money and eat on the ship which was perfectly fine. I know people said the crab in Juneau was really good though, but I think we felt a bit overwhelmed by the rain and the intense tourism right by the ship, haha. We probably should have gone further in, but nonetheless we loved our whale watching tour!
And we had a great night of desserts!
Day 4: Skagway
The next day was an early start for a full day in Skagway. Louie and I were signed up for a ship’s excursion. We started with room service breakfast to get an early start.
I wanted to take it privately but the company only offered it through the ship on Saturdays for some reason, so that’s what we did. The excursion was called Chilkoot Trail Hike and Float. We met them quite early in the morning, around 8:15 am, and we weren’t sure what sort of group to expect, but it ended up just being around 6 people plus the guide, named Kat, so that was great.
We started out driving a bit, away from the town and towards the old town of Dyea and the Chilkoot Trail, which used to be a very popular route to Canada (back in the gold rush days.) This is part of why I chose this excursion, I liked the historical aspect of it as well as the opportunity to hike as well as spend some time on a raft.
Similar to Vancouver, everything was very lush, but the mountains were much bigger! Though if the skies were clearer, the snow capped mountains would likely be more pronounced. Everywhere we looked the scenery was amazing though, and you should know that my pictures don’t do this justice by any means.
Kat was a great guide, and she taught us about various plants as we went as well as making sure we were all keeping up and helping us over various obstacles. She was well trained and energetic and loved the outdoors and Alaska.
The hike was a lot of fun, and then we got to board a raft and Kat guided us down the river.
We all had to put on tall rubber boots and lift vests. Kat told us if you got water over the top of your boots it was called a “bootie” and her colleagues teased her the first few days of river raft school when this would happen to her. She was very tough: she was short and petite, but took of all us down the river in a raft all by herself. She said the rafts can hold up to 10. The group was very nice and enjoyed listening and also just observing the surroundings.
Somebody was camping in a van down by the river.
The orange is where we hiked and then the blue is the river we floated back down to, basically. When we got back some of Kat’s colleagues were there to help haul the raft out and pull it up over a bank, and they were all equally strong women and I loved it, though I also felt like a weak and pathetic women in comparison. Oh well, I have my skills, plus I am like, totally older and am somewhat strong. Definitely argumentative. They work for a woman owned company as well. We were offered hot cocoa but just as soon as Louie and I made our cocoa we were hustled onto the van so we spent the first part of the bumpy ride trying not to spill hot cocoa all over ourselves, so we would recommend against the hot cocoa, or would have asked for like, three minutes to drink it. Our only complaint about what was otherwise an amazing excursion.
We made it back to Skagway around 12:30 and we were hungry, so we went to the Skagway Brewery Company for lunch. It was crowded and super expensive–over $20 for a fish sandwich! But we enjoyed our meal, and Louie had a spruce tip ale, which is a special kind of beer they make in Skagway from the spruce tips, which can fend off scurvy.
A house of negotiable affection: there were historically many of these in Alaska.
After lunch, we went on a short hike just out of town. Yakutania Point and Smugglers Cove, which was just about 1 to 1.5 miles in length.
I think we had some of the best scenery on this short hike. It kept going further but we really didn’t have time to explore, and didn’t really know where it went either. We headed back to the town after the hike and split a pretzel and Louie tried another spruce tip beer at the Klondike Brewing Company before we meandered back to the ship to get there in time for the all-aboard. Oh, and we had a wonderful time watching a bald eagle fly around for awhile too.
In addition to the National Historical Trail there is a National Historical Park in Skagway. The Visitor’s Center was closed but we saw some of the exhibits. They mostly seemed to be centered around the prostitution at the time. I’m not certain that shows the US in a good light, should I report it to someone at the state department, does anyone still work there?
By Day 4 you start to have a great affinity for your home, the Zaandam and work hard to get a great picture with it and the mountains in the background.
And then, Louie and got showered and hurried to watch the classical trio perform. By now we also wanted to chat with the cellist to say hello as I realized both of my sisters knew her, so we had a connection (seriously, the classical music world is SO SMALL.). Which made it even more fun to watch!
Skagway was our farthest point north on this trip and as such, it was still light as we sailed away, and late into the evening.
Tomorrow would be a big day: Glacier Bay National Park!