Day 8 on board MV Matanuska 28^th Aug
     We dropped the hire car off at Ketchikan port after a nice meal at the Harbour Restaurant to board our next ferry at 11.30pm, the MV Matanuska. She was a slightly smaller ship than the Columbia and from our observations, not in quite such good repair, but this time the top bunk had a lot more room, thank goodness!

After a good night's sleep, we arrived at the first stop in Wrangell at 05.30 to find an unnatural stillness running through the ship and sort of whiteness outside the window – yes, we were stationary and fogged in. The wait seemed interminable: the worst hot oatmeal I have ever eaten (sorry Matanuska chefs) followed by much tea drinking, but in the lounge not on deck, until it thinned a little and we got underway about 3 hours late. I was so disappointed, as everyone had said this was the most scenic part of the Inside Passage, but we were in the lap of the weather gods; they finally listened to us later that morning.

The ship only had 90 passengers on board, including the other occupants of our B&B, a lovely lady from Australia and 2 great Southern gents from Virginia. The 5 of us spent much of the day together, and after the very dodgy start, what a great day it turned out to be. The ranger on board had a pretty captive audience for her talks as there was nothing to see outside for a while, but was very interesting nonetheless. We learned all about the Tongass Forest, glaciers and humpback whales, just hoping we would be lucky enough to see one of these creatures of the deep, even though we had a whale-watching trip booked in Juneau – little did we know....

We had a further delay at the entrance to Wrangell Narrows: this is a 22 mile stretch of very narrow hazard-strewn water, and definitely one-way only. We were very late because of the fog as was all the shipping coming the other way, including the Columbia on its way back to Bellingham, so we got a great picture of the ship we’d been on. Our half hour wait was for a barge towing a raft of logs –we had plenty of time to watch it travel soooo slowly towards us as the fog had now vanished.                                A bit of wind had got up and to our delight the misty scenery was now revealed in (most of!) its glory. We spotted bergy bits floating serenely past, some with gulls on, lots of logs with the same, then a buoy with a sea lion having a rest. We had our first view of glaciers relatively close by, as the channel is not very wide in some places, then the colourful buildings of Petersburg came into view with the snow-capped mountains as a backdrop. Perfect.  

We didn’t spend long at all in dock as we were so late and headed off northwards. And this is where the day went from being good to being stupendous....the lady ranger gathered us together in the forward lounge to do her 20 minute talk about glaciers, and it eventually finished nearly 2 hours later. No sooner had she started than an eagle-eyed passenger spotted a humpback in the distance and we all moved to the windows with our binoculars. This continued over the course of the next few hours, with almost constant sightings of whales in Frederick Sound as they started their journey to Hawaii for breeding.

I was mesmerised: whales blowing, their breath visible against the distant green of the forests, whales floating then waving their pectoral fins at us, whales humping to dive with their wonderful tails upended, and my absolute favourite – a whale breaching, jumping right out of the water just where I was looking. We must have seen about 30 in all, plus 5 Dall’s porpoise leaping and jumping in front of the ship. The ranger said she had never had as many sightings from a ferry in all her trips – my husband’s comment was more along the lines of, "HOW much money did you spend booking that trip next Friday?".....

We felt so privileged to have seen those magnificent creatures, and in such great numbers – our pictures show many black dots way off in the distance, but we know what wonderful things we observed.

There was a beautiful sunset over the mountains of Admiralty Island, and we finally reached Juneau at 10.15pm – only to find the dock full of ships. Nearly an hour later, we left the ship and reached our home for the next 3 nights, the Best Western Country Lane Inn, just over 4 hours after we should have checked in. Tired but totally elated, we fell into a very comfortable bed.

Day 9    Juneau 29^th Aug

We had a bit of a lie-in after our very long day yesterday (up at 5.30, bed at 11.45) & enjoyed a surprisingly good self-serve breakfast in the lobby. The hotel is out near the airport and about 7 miles from downtown so they run a free shuttle service. We had a stroll round the shops, full of cruise ship passengers as their dock is right downtown, and peered into the famous Red Dog saloon. We’d had such a peaceful few days and Juneau was so busy we decided to get out of the crowds and head for Mendenhall Glacier.

  Following our usual pattern of not doing an organised tour, we got the Glacier Express ($16 return) which runs every half hour, and came across an English couple who live 30 miles from us! We had a lot in common and spent the journey discussing our experiences so far in Alaska, both deciding it was wonderful. On arrival we headed for the viewing platform to see the pink salmon in the creek – they looked very different to the salmon in Ketchikan as they were bright red ready for spawning – then on the trail round the ponds.

It was a beautiful day, hot and sunny, and the views of the glacier were just breathtaking: different shades of green for the fir trees, bright blue sky, shining white snow on the tops of the mountains and the wonderful iridescent blue of the glacier. We walked the trail to Nugget Falls and the layers of clothes came off - we even have a picture of us in T-shirts. What a contrast to yesterday: fog, mist & wind! The lake below the glacier had several large bergs floating in it, all with the same wonderful blue-white as their parent – we were not lucky enough to see one calving, the second thing on my wish-list. But we did take many, many photos. It was a lovely walk through the forest, stopping often to inspect plants & interesting fungi.

Returning to the visitor centre, we paid the very reasonable $3 entrance fee and enjoyed the film about the Juneau Icefield, having very little previous knowledge about its extent; hopefully we would be able to see some of the 38 glaciers it feeds when we flew to Anchorage. We went back to the city on the bus and went to see about going up Mt Roberts on the tram, but decided not at $31 each and with a degree of tiredness creeping in (it really was a loooong day yesterday). We revived a little with a snack at the Mesa Grill hotdog stand on the cruise ship dock (great hotdogs and very pleasant server who has been there for 30 years) then decided to get the express service bus back as the hotel shuttle only runs to & from downtown every 2 hours.



 Locals put us off at the nearest stop, and more locals pointed us in the right direction – our map only covered downtown, but everywhere we went we found that people were so helpful & friendly, getting around wasn’t an issue. The walk was a lot longer than we anticipated, at least it seemed so to our tired bodies, but we got there eventually. After recuperating with a beer, we asked the shuttle to take us to Donna’s Diner we’d passed on our trek, thinking it was too far to walk, but it turned out to be a maximum of one block....we felt rather silly. We had a pleasant meal then walked home!

Day 10   Juneau 30^th Aug

This was the day of our much anticipated whale watch, the one my husband said we needn’t do as we’d seen them all on the ferry. How wrong he was, and he had the grace to admit it. We’d booked with Harv & Marv after many recommendations – just 6 people on the boat so really personal service. They picked us up in the shuttle and took us to Auke Bay to board the boat with Captain Russell. It was raining again (how lucky we were yesterday) but suddenly stopped when we reached the dock where we met our fellow voyagers: one couple from Texas and their friends from Michigan. We all got on very well and chatted as we sailed out of the harbour: nice misty views of the mountains and their glaciers, but nothing compared to what we would see.

A pod of Dall’s porpoise spent at least 5 minutes swimming with our boat, ducking and diving right by us, and the water was so clear we could even watch them underwater. There was no wind at all, not even a breath to raise a ruffle, and the inlet was like gently swaying satin. We sped up to get into the sound, floated gently for a while, then it happened: pods of humpbacks all around. The rules say you should keep 100yds from whales to avoid stressing them, but the whales don’t seem to have read the brochure and some swam really close to the boat. We watched in awe as they used their blowholes, then frolicked and dived, flashing their tail flukes so we could snap picture after picture of them. One was so close we could see the water streaming off its tail as it submerged, and hubby even managed to capture it on film. Magic.

We eventually moved on to give them a rest, and stopped to watch a whole island full of Steller sea lions of every shade of brown, from a buttery cream to dark chocolate and all shades in between.                                                       Most were reclining, some were swimming in the sea and a couple looked like old ladies having a chin-wag over the garden fence; they look so ungainly on land but then are transformed into sleek gliders when they enter the water.

Captain Russell (who was a mine of information on what we were seeing) put the hydrophone into the water and I was entranced listening to the whale songs we heard.




We encountered several more whales, including 3 who put on a real show by diving simultaneously. Sadly it was time to head back, but it was a truly memorable morning – and as we stepped onto the dock, the rain came down again.

Nothing could top that experience so we didn’t try – some washing, some snoozing, some reading, a meal at the Valley restaurant next door, repacking the suitcases ready for the next chapter: a flight to Anchorage and an RV to explore in. I couldn’t wait!