June 23, 2023 – Juneau, AK

Went to Cabanas this morning for breakfast, and then grabbed our stuff to get ready for our whale watching in Glacier photo tour. The tour guide company was Gastineau Guiding everyone was great and I would book with them again.

When we got on the bus we learned, we were going to go out looking for whales first, and then do the hike afterwards. There are only 15 people in our group. We were on a nice small boat and headed out into the water. The Captain said we were going to an area near the Juneau lighthouse. We saw a buoy with a giant Stellar Sea Lion.

There were a couple Sea Lions swimming around. It was pretty cool they would follow behind the whales to get a fish left overs. So the Captain would keep an eye on the sea lions to get see where the whales where headed.

Then the captain said he got a call about some whales feeding, so we took off over to that area.

Right in front of the light house were a pod of humpback whales. As we were sitting there some Dahl porpoise showed up. They were super fast and you couldn’t tell where they were going. The captain said the moving whale were bubble feeding so we were going to move locations. The first time they popped up it was amazing. Bubble jet feeding was on my list of things to see and it was amazing. The boat we were on had windows that opened so everyone had a great view of the whales. Bubble Net Feeding was on my wish list of something to see and it did not disappoint. There were so many whales working together it was amazing! I took about 400 picture while we were out. I’m still trying to go through everything!

We were out there for at least an hour watching the whales feed. You never really knew exactly where they would pop up and just hoped you were looking in the correct direction. I could have stay out all day following the whales it was so amazing.

This was the boat we were on seats around the outside all facing the middle. The windows all opened and you could get a great view of the whales. Or you could walk out on the front or back and get an amazing view. There were only about 10 passengers on the boat, it could have held up to 18 I believe, but this was the perfect amount of people. There is a bath but it was under the steering area not sure if I would use it seemed like a really small area.

This is the inside of the boat all of the windows open outward to get a great view. Life vests were all underneath the seats.

It was sad when we had to leave it was such an amazing sight. But it was time to let someone else whale watch and we were going on a hike at Mendenhall Glacier.

The “hike” was a nice pace and the terrain wasn’t too bad. There was only 1 part that had an incline and that wasn’t bad. When we got done with the hike we headed into town. We got dropped off in the downtown area, so we could do some shopping. There were 5 ships in port today, so all the stores were packed! We decided to look for some things and head back to the ship for a late lunch. We didn’t want to deal with all the people trying to eat. It was actually a little warm today got up to about 65 but it felt warm. We were thinking it was at least in the upper 70s.

When it was time to sail away I needed my jacket again. The temperature hadn’t changed much but the ocean breeze and the clouds came back out.

Dinner tonight was back at Triton’s.