Before going to bed last night we were warned to set our clocks back 1 hour. We are back in the USA. We are now 3 hours behind Houston. We have entered into US waters. We got an extra hour of sleep! After another huge breakfast, I went to the Tech workshop on the Cloud and learned some new things about sharing that will come in handy. Gary walked the deck. After lunch we got to our first port-Juneau. It is the capital of Alaska and has 30,000 people. You can only access it by boat or plane-no roads into Juneau! We disembark at 1 pm after having our ship ID card scanned. Security is tight. One must get scanned anytime leaving or coming back on board. Also hand washing is stressed on the ship and Purell sanitizers are every where-elevators, entrance to dining rooms-glad all are germ conscious.
We are excited because I have booked a 4 hr. salmon fishing trip with a max of 6 people. Jim picks us up from the ship dock and drives us about 20 min to Auke Bay. The views of Mendenhall Glacier are spectacular- a 128 mile glacier that is a 3 mile walk from down town. There is another small glacier next to it - Laughton glacier. Christian is our captain and his boat is the Eagle's Nest. Two other guys that flew in on their own plane Thurs are with us. They are from Chicago and Colorado and have a single engine plane. We course to go 7 miles out, when we come upon a herd of whales that put on a spectacular show blowing water, diving and flashing their beautiful tales. We come across 3 different groups of these magnificent creatures and marvel at them while trying to capture them on film and movies. That takes a good hour of our time but we all wanted to see the whales. We get out about 7 miles and Christian drops 3 lines at depths of 74 ft and 45 ft. We are surrounded by beautiful snow capped mountains, the temperature is 70 degrees, and we now wait and talk. Christian, who is 51, has had a varied life from Maine to New Orleans to the Pacific islands and keeps us all interested. His dad has done several major sculptures. Finally we have a bite and the guys say I'm up first. Christian coaches me to keep the top of my reel up and start reeling. I don't fish so I'm glad for any advice and have a great time pulling whatever it is in. After 7-10 minutes I pull out a beauty-a 12 pound Coho, also known as a Silver salmon! Christian knocks its head with a small club and I hold it out for pictures with PRIDE!! I've never caught a big fish. It will be sent to the meat market in Juneau, filleted, packaged on dry ice and sent to Spring when we get home. It will be the most expensive salmon I have ever eaten with the charter, license and shipping! What the heck-it's only money! Unfortuneately, that's the only bite of the day, so the guys don't get a chance. But it was a great afternoon for all the whale watching, fishing, sharing stories and being in a beautiful part of the world. After saying good bye to our boat mates, Jim picks us up and pulls into a lot for us to take glacier pictures. Once we get back to town, Gary and I walk about and see the capital, the governor's house and parks. We observe several eagles. We reboard at 8:45 pm and begin repacking for the land tour -bags have to be outside our door by midnight and we must meet in the morning in the theater at 7 am with our tour guide.