Juneau, August 8

Jim, Marcy, Matthew and I went on a whale watching tour this morning. Yes, I know my reputation for seeing whales is lousy, but this tour operator guarantees that you will see whales or they will give you $100, so I figured neither I nor the other tourists could lose too badly if my presence kept the wildlife away.

So, the weather was Juneau normal which means rain and/or very low clouds clinging to the mountains for almost the whole tour. Fortunately, the excursion boat had two levels of enclosed deck plus an open one, however, rain outsdie and fog inside on the windows didn't help my photography skills any.

And we did indeed see whales...a lot of humpback whales. Plus most of the sightings were even on my side of the boat! There were at least 5 or 6 whales playing around in this one area with at least as many whale watching boats drifting around watching them. According to our guide/naturalist, it is pretty unusual to see that many humpbacks in one area at the same time. We even saw one breach (although all I got on camera was a blurry view of the resulting splash as you can see) which the guide says only happens once or twice a month.

Then we saw some Stellar sea lions hauled out on a buoy where there was only room for about three of these huge animals. Shortly after that we came upon a pod of transient (as opposed to local) orcas attempting to kill a sea lion. They play with their prey until it is exhausted before killing and eating it. The sea lion looked like a goner, but the orcas played with it a little too long, and eventually, it got into shallower water, and the killer whales gave up and moved on. The last we saw of the sea lion, it was sitting up, partially out of the water, but there was no way to tell how badly it might have been wounded or whether it would survive. It was definitely a front row seat for a segment of a Nature tv special! The guide said they only see orcas maybe a couple of times a month, and she had never seen a pod hunting before, and she's been doing whale tours for over 5 years...she was so excited as to be almost speechless.

After I got back to the ship, I grabbed some lunch and Connie and I had a nice, comfortable, quiet afternoon up in the Crow's Nest at the front of the ship. There were 3 other ships in port, but they were docked behind us so we could ignore them and speculate about the gorgeous ocean-going yacht docked ahead of us. Also, Connie saw a bald eagle being summarily chased by a seagull!

Dinner this evening for all 5 of us was at the fancy Pinnacle Grill to celebrate Matthew's 21st birthday. It was a lovely dinner, beautifully served, and Jim had chosen some exquisite wines to go with it. The Pinnacle Grill folks presented Matthew with a cake, and the lady maitre d' kissed him on both cheeks which embarrassed him no end. It was almost a three hour dinner which is guaranteed to stiffen up the knees of probably all of us except Matthew!