We’re just returning from a vacation in Alaska. Vacation is not something we get to do, and this one was very special because we spent it with our daughter Andrea, her husband Tim, and most importantly, our granddaughter Avery. We spent a whole week away from the heat in Houston to spend in chilly Alaska.
Our trip started in Seattle to catch a cruise ship for a one-day trip to Ketchikan, Alaska. We arrived and went directly to our “shore excursion,” which was to go fishing for halibut, salmon, or rockfish — whichever one would hit our line.
Fortunately, we got all three… or should I say the boys in our group did. The girls sat in the front of the boat and the boys in the back, but when all the fish were being caught in the back, Andrea decided that she and Tim should change seats. You know what happened then. Tim caught a fish from Andrea’s spot. Oh well. That’s why they call it “fishing,” not “catching.”
We then went on shore for a “shore lunch” of the fish the boys caught. What fun! Avery walked along the beach and collected the two shells she could bring back. Back to the boat and on to our next adventure.
Juneau was our next stop for a day of whale watching. We were very fortunate with the weather there. Juneau gets a lot of rain since it’s in a rainforest, but our day was beautiful. We were also fortunate to be able to see how whales get together, rounded up the fish, and ate them. It was great to see animals in their own habitat. We saw four whales come to the surface and smash into the fish they had just herded in a circle.
We learned how these whales were here in Alaska eating a lot of fish before they made their way to Hawaii to have their babies since the water in Alaska (surprise) was too cold for the babies to survive. Hawaii sounds like a better and warmer place to have a baby whale that is 14 feet long.
After all the sightings we then moved to see a real glacier. It was incredible to realize how old and how blue the Mendenhall Glacier really was. This is one of the U.S. Forest Service parks, and there were park rangers there to explain how it all works. There were also walkways to get as close as you would want to get to a block of ice that is a mile and a half wide and 12 miles long.
We got back to the boat and off to cruise the Sawyer Glacier. There were incredibly beautiful mountains with glaciers on many of the mountains and ice blocks floating in the water. It’s very weird for a girl from Texas to see ice blocks floating in the water outside our balcony. We toured the mountains until dark which is really late – there are 17 hours of daylight and very little night. Thank goodness for really heavy curtains in our room to block the light out.
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