Alaska at its best — part two

Our second excursion on our Alaska cruise was my wife’s favorite trip as we left Skagway on the Klondike Highway into Canada. My wife loves to hike in the Tetons and loves the scenic views with lots of lakes mingled with subarctic and Arctic terrain.

As we entered Canada on the White Pass into British Columbia, we traveled through vistas which were awesome. We followed the route of the infamous gold rust into the Yukon Territory. Connor, our guide, recounted the struggles that those miners experienced.

The two highlights of that excursion for me were seeing and photographing six cinnamon-phase black bears and viewing Emerald Lake. The bears were feeding on dandelions along the side of the road and were very tolerant of smaller vehicles, but scurried off when a large truck or bus would pass by. Emerald Lake had the most beautiful colors of water that I have ever seen.

Our final excursion was out of Juneau, looking for whales before hiking to the Mendenhall Glacier. I have always dreamed of being up close and personal with a whale, and after forty-five minutes out from Auke Bay, we saw a group of boats but were informed that they were fishing boats. Disappointed, I thought it was going to be a bust; but boy, was I wrong.

Fifteen minutes later in a channel between Shelter and Lincoln Islands, our captain announced that we were entering a pod of 10 to 15 humpback whales with some sea lions.

It did not take long for me to find out that trying to keep up with that many whales was difficult – particularly locating the whales early in their surfacing. I would watch for them to create “water spouts” as they blew air from one of their two blowholes. Some of them were “resting,” with just about a foot of their backs showing while others would be feeding by making shallow dives. After three or four of these dives, a whale would show their large hump, on their back, called a “fluke-up”, indicating a deep dive. This meant that their tail would come out of the water as the dive started.

As I was trying to photograph these whale dives, I saw a frenzy on the top of the water with salmon flying out of the water.

A very large sea lion had located a school of salmon and was trying to collect brunch. It finally captured a fish and was chewing on it with gulls trying to get a free meal by landing on the lion’s head or back to get a bite. After the fish was consumed, the animal appeared to grin at me, did a barrel roll and waved at us. This was a highlight of the excursion for me.

After two hours of watching the pod of whales and a few more sea lions, we headed back to shore passing Lincoln Island where we got a glimpse of a female humpback with its calf. The 15-foot baby looked small against its 50-foot, 35-ton mom.

At Mendenhall Island, the highlight for me was watching the Arctic terns as they tried defending their nests on the beach from raiding birds. Part of our group who did not go on the whale watching, observed a bald eagle raiding some of the nests as they hiked to the glacier.

We had a wonderful cruise from Juneau to Ketchikan where we encountered many more humpbacks, and I watched pods of orcas (killer whales) hunting as we traveled the Inland Passage. For the first time on the trip, I was finally able to photograph the breaching of both the humpbacks and the orcas.

For me, the cruise was one of the highlights of my life. I was with most of my family, the meals were good, we had great weather, sunsets were awesome, and the excursions were terrific. I hope to do it again – it was a dream come true!!