Juneau was a bit of a disappointment. Mostly because of the weather and because we were staying near the airport rather than downtown with more to do and see.
Here is on picture from Juneau that gives an idea of the weather. This is the Mendenhall Glacier and a lake that I didn’t learn the name of.
From Juneau we took another ferry, the M/V Kennicott, and headed north again. This ferry was a little smaller and less fancy than the previous one. One of the stops on the way was the fishing village of Yakatak. We got off and wandered around a little. Here is a picture of the general store, which was surprisingly well stocked with anything you might need.
The end of the ferry ride for us was at Whittier. Here’s a picture of the port area with numerous small shops and restaurants.
We arrived in Whittier about 7:30am and were scheduled to leave by train that evening at 6:30. In that time we had scheduled a sight-seeing cruise of Prince William Sound. Here’s a shot of that boat, the Nunatak.
This was a 6 hour cruise around Prince William Sound where we saw glaciers, wildlife, a fish hatchery, and beautiful mountains. We also had a nice lunch on-board of crab cakes and pasta.
One bit of wildlife that was quite common were the Sea Otters. Here is a “raft” of them floating along watching us watch them.
The boat took us through drifting ice right up to the base of several different glaciers. Here is Surprise Glacier. We did see some small chunks of ice falling from the face of the glacier but none of the great “Sploosh!” kinds of events that you see in the documentaries
.
On the drifting ice at the base of the glacier were a large number of seals and sea otters. Here are some of the seals.
Near the glacier, high up in the rock someone spotted a mountain goat. Even with the 300mm zoom lens s/he was too far away for a really good shot but, for what it’s worth, here is the best of several images I took.
When we were heading back to Whittier we encountered several Orcas (killer whales) They were rather hard to locate when they surfaced and I made good use of the continuous shooting mode on my camera.
We got back to Whittier in time for a beer before heading to the train station. Here is the train that took us the 50-odd miles from Whittier to Anchorage.
We’ll be spending today in Anchorage and then we will head out, via rental car, to our next stop, Copper Center, AK. I hope to have Internet access there but I’m not positive.
Thanks for taking me along on the tour. 🙂 I loved all the pictures and am still grinning because it feels almost like I was there. The picture of the mountain goat is great. Also the whale and the otters and seals. Everything looked lovely.
Alice, I’m glad you are enjoying my little travel documentary. I would recommend that everyone who enjoys nature go to Alaska, just to see what things were like before too many people moved in. My small blog posts can’t do it justice. Maybe I will put together a more detailed description on my main web page when we get home.
What Alice says. You and Jan are doing a grand job documenting this trip and that Nikon is doing a wonderful job recording what you see.
A couple more shots of you and Jan in your Alaska duds would be nice too. 😉
Okay Mike, we will try to get some pix of the two of us while up here. Jan just got a new ALASKA sweat shirt and maybe we will get a picture up on the blog of that soon. Me, I’m just in my regular travel clothes – nothing special for Alaska. Jan wouldn’t let me get the foam rubber moose hat…..
How funny Tom! LMAO!