Alaska

On a cold, windy, rainy day in Juneau my family went on a whale watch excursion, if you can call it that. Our guide was Cap'n Allen of Adventures In Alaska. Had we not made our reservations well in advance we would certainly have chosen a better day for it. As it turned out, we were the only ones on his boat so we got a custom tour. We saw several humpback whales but only their backs and tails, not fancy leaps from the water. We saw a sea lion popping up in the wake of another boat and, seeing that we enjoyed that, Captain Allen took us to a buoy where the sea lions hang out so we could get a close look.

These whales head south for the winter just as a number the people and birds from this climate tend to do. The whales come back through about this time of year to feed on the herring and krill, about a half ton a day. They blow just before they surface and a little misty spout can be seen above the surface of the water. Then the back shows as they ready for the next dive. The tail is the last thing seen before they disappear for six to ten minutes. Its hard to tell just where they will resurface so the boats just hang around and wait...and hope. There are so many whale watch boats that there is a CB radio channel specifically for whale watch and the captains help each other out by broadcasting the general locations of their sightings.

Cap'n Allen now has a bear magnet on his boat. It was a challenge finding something metal on that mostly fiberglass boat to stick a magnet on. He was even kind enough to ham it up for the camera.