Alaska Summer Solstice Cruise - Juneau, Alaska

Cruise Day 24

Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Today we are in Juneau, the capital of Alaska.  It is a relatively large town of around 32,000, but the only way in or out is by air or sea.  There are no roads through the mountains around Juneau, so it is pretty isolated, but it’s a busy place as it has the only hospital and other facilities in the area and a lot of patients get medivaced into here from the nearby smaller towns such as Haines.

Juneau (red marker) is our last port in Alaska.

The town of Juneau.  We are docked where the red marker is near the bottom right.

Juneua is also a very popular cruise port and is very busy during the summer months.  Including our ship, there were already three ships docked and two more due early in the afternoon.  Our ship, at just under 2000 passengers, is the smallest and altogether there will be over 17,000 cruise ship passengers in town today; that’s quite a few for a town of 32,000.  It’s business as usual for them though, as it is the same most days in the summer, but with cruise ships getting bigger and bigger, Juneau is considering limiting the number of passengers allowed each day.  That makes sense to me as the town is being overrun by us tourists.

We were here in 2014, but unfortunately, I had a bad cold so all we did was walk around town for a while, but today we hope to make up for that with a whale watching cruise organized by one of our Cruise Critic Roll Call members.

Our tour left at eight and we had to check in early, so we were up at 6:30 to make sure we were ready and had time for breakfast before we left.  When we got up, we saw the usual cloudy, foggy weather we have seen recently, but this time it was actually raining.

We are docked where the red marker is and we had a half hour drive to the boat harbor (yellow marker) where our tour started.

 

Some views of Juneau from our balcony.

Just after we docked, another ship pulled in right behind us.

By the time we got off the ship (we are docked again) the rain had let up, but it was still cool and overcast.  We are docked right in town, but it was a bit of a walk from the ship to town as it is a long trek from the dock to shore.  We found our group and met our guide Renee who would take us to our whale watching boat.  There were only eight of us on the tour, so it was a nice small group.  It was about a half hour drive from the dock to the boat harbor, but Renee talked about the area and about her life, so time went by quickly.

A view from the dock.

The small boat harbor where the Athena Rose was docked.

After reaching the small boat harbor we got on the boat and met Winston, Renee’s husband and captain of the Athena Rose, their boat named after their daughter.  Together they own and run Alaska Sea to Shore tour company.  After getting settled on the boat and getting our safety instructions, we set out searching for whales.  They spotted some spouts ahead and we found a mother and her calf who were fairly active, but they seemed to wander off, so we went to a different area where we hit the jackpot as we saw whale spouts all around us, there were probably 10 to 15 humpback whales in the area.

We're on our way.

Wherever there's a buoy, you almost always see sea lions.

Boats converge where there's been a reported whale sighting.

Val and I had been outside on the back of the boat, but Renee said we should come to the front as there was a lot of activity ahead of us.  Just as we reached the front someone screamed, and two whales breached at the same time to the front right of the boat.  Val was looking right at it and saw the whole thing, but I had been looking ahead and only saw the enormous splash they had created when they reentered the water.  Unfortunately, since we had just moved to the front, neither one of us had our cameras ready and didn’t get any pictures.  At least Val was able to see it as it was quite spectacular.

After that there was quite a bit of activity around us; sometimes just tail sightings, but at other times we saw breaching.  It was my day to be lucky as I got some whales breaching as well as some good tail pictures.  We stayed there quite a while enjoying the show the whales were putting on.

Part of this tour was a landing at an island where we could get off the boat and walk around, but when asked whether we wanted to do that or stay and watch the whales, everyone voted to stay where the whales were.  All good things must come to an end and we had to start the 45 minute trip back to the harbor and then the thirty minute drive back to the ship as Renee and Winston had another tour scheduled for the afternoon.

Back to the boat harbor.

Val got some great shots of an eagle sitting on a light pole in the harbor.  It was a long ways off, but with a long zoom and a lot of cropping, the pictures turned out pretty well.

What a great tour we had, Renee and Winston were very nice, and we really enjoyed being with them.  Even though it was overcast and rainy, we never got too cold and for the most part we stayed dry.  If you are ever in Juneau, I would highly recommend Renee and Winston and Sea to Shore Tours, they do a great job.

We got back to the dock where the ship was around 12:30 and decided to look for a place to eat lunch.  There was a place called Tracy’s Crab Shack nearby that had been highly recommended and we decided to try there, but there was a line out the door and it was starting to rain, so we decided to go back to the ship and eat lunch there.

You can see the long line standing in the rain waiting to get into Tracy's Crab Shack.  Val and I decided to skip that and have lunch on the ship.

After eating lunch, we spent the afternoon relaxing and watching the activity going on in town from our balcony.  It had really started to rain, so we gave up on any ideas we had about getting off the ship and going back into Juneau.  I downloaded our pictures, and Val and I looked at them.  I got the good whale shots today, but Val got some great eagle pictures from the dock when we got off the whale watching boat.

We had another good dinner tonight and I have to say that the food on this cruise has been excellent.  We have had a couple of disappointments, but for the most part everything has been very good.  All the fish dishes have been very tasty and well-cooked particularly the salmon.  The fish are all fresh, so I think that’s what made it so good.  They have also had a Seafood Jambalaya that is really good and that put me in a dilemma tonight.  They were offering both the jambalaya and bami goreng, a Indonesian dish I had tried a few nights ago and really liked.  I convinced Val to have the bami goreng, so I joined her, and she liked it as much as I did and is going to try to make it sometime when we are home.

Our ship was the first to arrive this morning at 6:30 AM and will be the last to leave tonight at 11:00 PM, a long day in Juneau.  Because of the late departure the casino wouldn’t open until late, so after dinner Val and I returned to our room and relaxed until bedtime.  We didn’t stay up very late as we were tired from our early morning today.  Tomorrow will be at sea all day as it will be a day of scenic cruising.