Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Day 9 – 10 June 2014


Last night was interesting with all the families and their kids spread all over the ship. It was hard to find a place to set and relax without kids running around or the smell of dirty diapers. This is just something you have to accept since this is the primary transportation for a lot of people in the state and it is expensive to take a family of 4 or 5 anywhere in Alaska. Several of the public areas looked like a camp ground with sleeping bags and people laying around. This is not a cruise ship so don’t expect it to be if you decide to take your vehicle on the ferry.

We have had a good time talking to the other 5 motorcycle riders going to Whittier with us. We spent a couple of hours in the bar last night giving one of the novice riders a hard time about what to expect riding through the tunnel at Whittier. He is about 55-60 and rode street bikes but he bought a BIG Triumph 3 cylinder 1200 cc adventure bike for this trip. His first time on this kind of bike. He is riding with a husband/wife team both on their own BMW adventure bikes. They are very experienced. All three of them are camping on their trip so their bikes are loaded down. I thought the Triumph was going to be dropped while he was trying to get it in the staging queue at Bellingham. It will be interesting to watch him as we get back on the road at Whittier.

Sunset is 9:22 pm and sunrise around 4:30 am. Lots of daylight and the further north we go the more we have. We were surrounded by a pack, herd, group (whatever they are called) of small whales just before sunset last night. They were about 15’ long and several times surfaced and blew their spout. One of the other passengers said he saw a large humpback feeding with its mouth wide open as it surfaced. I missed that.

We are approaching Juneau and will spend several hours on/off loading people and vehicles. I hope some of these folks are getting off but I expect we will be crowded the rest of the way to Whittier. The ferry port is not in the main part of the town. The info from the Purser is that you have to walk 30 minutes to get to the bus to ride another 30 minutes to the center of town. The same thing to return. That is 2 hours of the 4 to 5 hours we will be in port. I really don’t have a desire to make that trip to see the town so will probably just get off and walk around whatever is close to the ferry dock. It is obvious that the prime docks are reserved for the cruise ships. They dock close to town center for easy access to the tourist traps. We are seeing more and more of them. There were 6 large cruise ships in dock or leaving/arriving in Ketchikan. I expect to see the same as we arrive at Juneau in about an hour.

We just saw another whale surface and blow heading the opposite direction of the ferry. Yesterday as we pulled into Ketchikan a bald eagle flew right by the deck we were standing not more than 20 feet from the ferry.

Weather is overcast with the ceiling maybe 500 feet since the trees along the shore on the hills are in the clouds. Temperature is cool but not cold and no rain; so far. I will write more later today.

11:30 local

Jim and I plus three of the other bikers shared a taxi to downtown Juneau. On the way we took a side trip to the Mendenhall Glacier which is about 10 miles out of town. Really worth the cost to make this side trip because it was beautiful. Took lots of pictures and will post then following this blog update. We had breakfast at the Capital Hotel then walked the streets. Three cruise ships arrived about that time and filled the town with thousands of tourists. We did beat the crowd to the glacier and had it to ourselves. Ferry leaves in about an hour and we have been told that the weather is improving and we should have a good crossing of the open section to our next two destinations. The only thing I bought was Alaska stickers for my saddle bags. Pictures in following posts.

No comments:

Post a Comment