On Thursday we spent the day at sea and saw Glacier Bay National Park. While the kids were at kids club Abe and I just sat in the sunshine at the front of the boat and talked for hours and hours. It is so fun to visit with Abe!
Everyone got a kick out of the otters. Sometimes they would just float on their back leisurely. This one appeared to be playing with its food:
Skagway was so unexpectedly beautiful. I felt like I was in Yosemite. Everywhere you look the view is incredible, but my poor photography skills could not do it justice. I honestly did not even try to take many pictures because it was too impossibly pretty. Absolutely gorgeous.
We wandered into town and learned about the gold rush before going on a the Dewey Trail hike to a lake.
After the hike Lydia, Mary, Sruthi and I wandered around downtown Skagway. I bought the girls some hats and popcorn. It was very relaxing and peaceful and fun–one of the best highlights of the trip for me!
Despite being the capital of Alaska, Juneau only has 32,000 people in it. It is also in a rain forest climate and we definitely felt that today as it rained all morning. While the kids were at kids club in the morning (which they have been LOVING, see below), Lily and I explored Juneau and bought matching rain jackets (yay!) and got umbrellas for the kids who already had good coats. We also signed up everyone except Meera and Mani (Meera wanted to stay in) for some whale watching.
When Lily and I returned to the boat, we picked up the kids from kid’s club, enjoyed our buffet lunch and then everyone to the whale watching tour. It was unbelievable and fortunately, nobody got sea-sick:
Amazingly the rain stopped right as our tour began. We learned so many things about humpback whales. These whales feed here extensively during the summer. They eat and eat and eat and eat. They dive down for 7 to 8 minutes (max is 45) and they eat a ton of fish with each dive. Then they come up and because they are out of breath, they surface for breath 5 or so times in a row, and then they dive again. They feed this way almost all day it seems. After their months of feeding, they swim to Hawaii, give birth and mate, and then swim with their new calf all the way back to Alaska. The whole journey takes about 6 months round trip and they do the entire thing (nursing their young the whole time) without eating anything because there is no food for them on the journey or in Hawaii. So when they arrive in Alaska, they are starving, and they feast extensively. It was amazing to understand more about their patterns and see them up close.
