caught this on camera is purely an accident, I assure you... Still, I am so glad that I got a few photos of the hundreds of whales we saw, as it was an important and glorious part of our trip and experience, it's just that even though I do love photography, I am a true amateur! We saw three kinds of whales on our trip, Orca, Humpback, and a lot of Minke, which were nearly impossible to capture for me with the camera, because mostly all you see is the dorsal fin, like of like a dolphin...Juneau IMO had the least amount of "history" to see, and since we stayed near the wharf area... Well, we weren't terribly impressed with the commercial sites... but we did have fun as we viewed the houses, stores and shops... all built to withstand winter winds and weather... What we saw the most of was lots of other tourists...
Day 7 (Cruise day 4) Glacier Bay on the other hand was beyond glorious. To me it is one of those places in this world that simply must be "experienced". I was mildly surprised, (but pleasantly assured) that there was little talk by the Park Rangers about Global Warming, since that could have taken up so much of the discourse we were given. The main focus as they took us through the glaciers and gave us interesting information... was on how much we are learning about the earth and it's ability to regenerate life after the ice recedes... they
described how that actually happens from studying Glacier Bay. It is true that the Glaciers have receded tremendously in recent years (the last 200)... But there is also greater understanding that Glaciers are how much of what we now call homelands in California and the Northwest were formed...The Native Tribes have followed the Glaciers for thousands of years, and they tell ancient legends that led to the discovery of places that receded and then were covered in ICE, then receded again... There is in many parts of this group of Scientists the feeling that not all is as Doom and Gloom as they thought just 20 years ago... and the park is simply oh so nice as a place to soak up some of God's natural beauties.
Day 8 (Cruise Day 5) Sitka, AKA Little Russia... What a charming place. One of the first things you see are beautifully built houses and a nice little lighthouse on
small pieces of the rocky heavily treed coast. We had to be tendered to the dock... meaning they had to set anchor in the deeper waters and use the ship's life rafts to take us over to and back from the small dock.We went to an incredible Museum all about the Native Cultures and history, we viewed St Micheal's a Russian Orthodox Church that was wonderfully rebuilt and preserved as best as the members were able, after a devastating fire... The homes are neat and pretty, truly an inspiring place. At every turn we saw really pleasant flower beds and clean little alleyways. Victorian homes that had been turned into galleries and shops. More churches, parks and schools. We would have liked to have wandered around there longer.
Day 9 (Cruise Day 6) I was too tired to spend any time off the ship, but hubby got off in Ketchikan. The town appeared to be really lovely, but several days in a row of site seeing were more than I could stand, and I needed a rest. We were also there for a very short visit (only 4 hours). Knowing what I know now, I think I would not visit Juneau and reserve my strength to take in
Ketchikan. As it was I had a wonderful day just relaxing on the ship and reading in a deck chair. This was the one overcast day we had, but it did not actually rain. The information we had was that the annual rainfall is something like 13 FEET a year and we caught this port on one of the 10 days that it had not rained so far in 2008...Day 10 (Cruise Day 7) Our last port before returning to Seattle was to spend the evening in Victoria B.C on Vancouver Island. Really a lovely experience as well. We took a bus tour of the island and saw the whole
thing in a little over 2 hours. Hubby was ready to move, he was so impress with the scenery (of course there were several places we felt that way about, we just could never afford to live there.) The view from the top of one hill was fantastic, so that is the one I will share here... You can see 2 ships in the harbor, the far one was ours.There is actually one final day of our trip, which was spent traveling home. We disembarked early that morning and made our way to the airport by shuttle. Our flight home was uneventful but long as was the shuttle ride to our home town... So we don't really count that last day as part of the vacation... it was just... the end!
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