We docked in Juneau about 2pm on Wednesday. The girls (plus Thomas and Toby) went whale watching while the guys went salmon fishing. Let's start with the girls.
We were picked up by a super nice Christian man named Jake to drive to the dock. He told us some historical things about Juneau on the way. More on Jake later. We boarded a boat with a husband and wife captain/assistant team who had recently sold all their personal belongings and moved to Juneau from Hawaii.
We sat on the inside as we headed out to see the whales. The wife had models of humpback whales to show the kids and tell us what we would be seeing.
Toby was ready! Never mind the fact that he insisted on looking backwards through the binoculars.
These whales are generally solitary animals and we saw several surfacing by themselves.
But we were SO very blessed to be able to see what the whales do in a group when they are feeding. I will try to explain this as best I can. When these whales feed they do something called bubble netting. They swim around in circles and let out bubbles. The bubbles confuse the fish into thinking that they are trapped and can't escape. As the whales do this, the fish slowly rise toward the surface of the water. See all the birds in the picture? They give the clue as to what is about to happen. We watched the birds fly around in circles and then all together they dive at the water. They do that just when the fish reach the surface. Seconds later the whales come out of the water with their mouths open and eat the fish! It was amazing!! We got to see this 4 or 5 times! Our guides could not believe it and said that we had the best experience we could possibly have on our tour. They guessed there were 12 whales in the feeding group.
We always oohed and ahhed when we got to see the tails.
It was fun to also see these cute sea lions taking a rest.
Okay - back to Jake. When he picked us up to take us back to the ship he told us he had a surprise for Thomas. He knew that all the other guys got to go fishing and he wanted T to have the same experience. He was the youngest of three boys and had a soft spot for the little guy! While we were on the whale watching boat, he had gone home and picked up his fishing gear. He also went to scout out a place to take us. We could not believe how nice and thoughtful he was! He took us to a place where literally hundreds of salmon were swimming and jumping out of the water. He set T up and helped him fish.
T hooked about 5 but they fell off the line just as they got to the shore each time. It was still a great experience and we were so blessed by having met Jake.
Now to the guys. They had a great driver too who took them to some sights along the way. Here is Lane at the Mendenhall Glacier.
The guys were on two different boats and the pictures from one boat are mostly on Luke's camera. I know that I saw at least one from that boat among these 1,700 pictures, but I can't find it. I have scrolled through them more times than I want to remember and it has simply disappeared. Maybe someone from that boat can post. The boat with the Reynolds, Smiths, and Mark caught 16 salmon and I think the other boat got 6 or 8.
The night before we were talking to the head waiter about how we would miss dinner because we would be out fishing/whale watching. He told us that we could bring the fish back onboard and the chef would cook it for us the next night. We were so excited to do this! It was truly a highlight of the trip to eat the fish that the guys caught. As you can see they grilled some and breaded/ baked some. We ate three big platters like this one. It was so yummy!!
We did not get good pictures, but we saw many bald eagles in Juneau.
In the next post we head to Canada!
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