Chapter Thirteen - Boat...Bear... & Brilliant Blue

After a good breakfast at a wonderful Bed and Breakfast, we left for the Ferry Terminal for the next leg of our trip - on to the capital city of Juneau. However, this day would be overcast, making picture taking a little difficult on our longest leg on the ferry. For 18 hours we were on the Ferry, including hour long layovers in Wrangell and Petersburg, both picturesque cities on small islands here in the Inland Passage. Due to the length of the trip which included most of

the night, we had decided to go ahead and get a cabin in order to try and get some sleep. It’s not that we couldn’t have slept elsewhere (see pictures below), it’s just that it would give us a better chance of a little quieter and more private sleep. When we entered our cabin we were surprised, and pleased, to see a Gideon Bible there.

Pulling in to Juneau at 4:45 AM, we decided to venture in to the city itself, some 12 miles from where the ferry dropped us off, especially because we needed to scope out the parking situation for later that afternoon. After completing that task, we headed up to the Mendenhall Glacier area to check out the Glacier and our campground for tonight. At the campground we found someone in our spot, and were insured by the ranger that they would be out by check out and not to worry. Knowing that, we headed out to the glacier (see pictures), tried a couple of different trails, and took a ton of pictures. What a beautiful spot.

So this afternoon we ended up parking our motorhome at Walmart, and taking a taxi back into the city of Juneau. At 1:30 we began a tour with Allen Marine Tours out to the Tracy Arm Fjords and the North and South Sawyer Glaciers. This was a wonderful tour, although I did find it a little pricy. Once again the scenery was magnificent and the wildlife encounters just put the icing on the cake. Biggest problem of the day - trying to hold my Canon 70-200 lens with the extender

steady. Lens weighs a considerable amount and the motion of the boat just made taking good pictures of the wildlife, difficult at best. First came the Orca whales, followed by humpback whales, a black bear trying to scrape barnacles off the rocks for food, and finally sea lions as they lay on broken off pieces of ice from the glacier that we were nestled right beside. Talking about the ice which really are mini icebergs now, many of which have a brilliant blue tinge to them. I’ll try and include a picture of that as well. Several small calvings took place with thunderous roars, as we all waited for the “big one” to happen (which of course did not while we were there). After seven hours of simply incredible and majestic scenery and wildlife, we finally headed home and back to our camper and the short ride out to the campground nestled up against the Mendenhall Glacier.

Of course our spot would now be ready for us - but it wasn’t. The

same camper was parked there. After debating for a few minutes whether or not to ask them to pack up and leave so we could have our pre-selected spot, we decided just to take an empty one literally a spot away. Long story short, the other campers were there for a week and simply did not want to move for the one night we had reserved the spot. No damage - ended up with a good night’s sleep, cut short by a 4:10 AM alarm.