Juneau, Alaska - June 28, 2018

Our big adventure for this port was an all-day trip into the Tracy Arm Fjord aboard a jet-powered catamaran. The boat was nice and the young crew members were great.

Although we did not fully explore Juneau we found it interesting that even though it is located on the Alaskan mainland, Juneau it totally isolated. It sits beautifully between rugged mountains and the ocean. There are no roads connecting the city to the rest of Alaska or to the rest of North America. Everything and everyone coming in and out must go by plane, ferry or boat. Still it is the state capitol.

The city looks fairly modern with a few multi-story 1960-70 era buildings. The picturesque city appears to be flung in a coastal valley with green and snow-capped mountains for a backdrop. It is nestled at the base of Mount Juneau and across the channel from Douglas Island. This capitol city has a total population of about 30,000 people. Can you imagine? Most universities have that many students or more.

We boarded our catamaran and boated for a couple of hours through Stephens Passage within the Tongass National Forest and finally entered the Holkham Bay and Tracy and Endicott Arms. The scenery was dazzling. Again, we passed beautiful islands wooded with spruce and hemlocks and miles of steep fjord coastline. Traveling close to shore, we kept our eyes peeled for wildlife like brown and black bears, mountain goats, wolves, black-tailed deer, harbor seals and bald eagles.

As info, Fjords are caused by retreating/shrinking glaciers and the telling difference between a fjord and a similar valley between mountains made by other causes is the tall sides of the valley in a distinct u-shape.

Tracy Arm Fjord is in the heart of the Tracy Arm-Fjord's Terror Wilderness, curiously named after a young seaman named Ford who, in 1889, rowed a dinghy into the narrow entrance of the fjord at slack tide. The tide began to rise, forcing its way through the bottleneck entrance into the fjord, and Ford was trapped in the turbulent currents for the next "terrifying" six hours. (heh-heh! Must have been absolutely frightful!)

As we reached the Sawyer Glacier, it was like traversing through soup with floating dumplings of ice. More near the glacier, the water was filled with icebergs. Some had families of curious harbor seal with babies lounging on them. So cute!!! Seeing icebergs so close up is fantastic, considering the ice is centuries old, but we reminded ourselves these things are treacherous indeed. The volume of the iceberg seen above the water is only a hint of the ice below the water. This beautiful ice chunk can ripe a murderous gash in a catamaran or other more sizeable vessel for that matter.

While we were in awe of the Hubbard Glacier yesterday, we were flabbergasted by the Sawyer glacier. Taller but not so nearly wide across the face, the Sawyer glacier was much more colorful - whites, blues, light green and then deep rich green. And it was very active. It calved several times we were there. We heard a loud crack of the crevice. Moments later we saw the crash of huge chunks of century-old fall into the ocean. Finally we would hear the delayed thunder of the fall. After we learned what to expect, everyone on the catamaran sat quietly listening for activity, and when the glacier calved once again, we cheered!!!

On our trip back to Juneau, we encountered a family of humpbacks feeding and diving. Unlike Orcas or other whales, humpback whales are baleen whales which mean they do not have teeth. To feed, they take in huge gulps of water and strain our through their curtain of fibrous baleen which traps krill and small schooling fish. Because the waters of Alaska are nutrient rich, the whales feed and mate here in summer and then migrate to Hawaii and Mexico in winter to give birth and raise the young to an age where they can travel. In a typical summer day a humpback can eat over a ton of food . . . in warmer waters, there is no food but more importantly, there are fewer predators like Orcas which have teeth and eat virtually anything. Giving birth there gives the humpback babies a chance to grow and survive before heading back up north to feed once again. We saw the much smaller, much prettier Minke whales too. Like the humpback whale, Minkes are baleen feeders. We saw bald eagles in the distance and low and behold, we saw a herd of about 8 or 9 mountain goats traversing the steep sides of the fjord. Talk about excited!!!

As we approached the harbor on our return trip we saw salmon jumping in the water here and there. In fact, we also witnessed an eagle swoop down to catch one. The fish was so large that the eagle had to virtually dog-paddle with its wings to get its catch to shore. We were told that once the eagles pierces its prey with its talons, it cannot undo the piercing. This means that when the eagle catches a fish it must be strong enough to get the fighting fish ashore by flying or dog-paddling on the water or else the eagle risks drowning itself.