Alaska Adventure Day 4 Juneau

We were still sailing toward Juneau when we got up Monday morning. We got our coffee delivered and decided to try the Cosmopolitan Restaurant for breakfast---eggs benedict!

Since we weren’t scheduled into Juneau until noon, we went to the 10:00 “Emilio Robba Flower Demonstration”, then stopped to watch the “Sushi Demonstration”. Once again, they offered samples at the end—and I was surprised to find that sushi isn’t half bad.

Once we docked in Juneau, we gave our cell phones a try and got through to John and E.D. Then, it was off to explore Juneau- in the rain. Tied with Fairbanks as Alaska’s second largest “city”, Juneau is the largest city in Southeast Alaska.

A Bit of History:
Juneau got its start about 20 years before the Klondike gold rush. In 1880, a German entrepreneur in Sitka, George Pilz, hired two men to investigate the glittering rock samples brought to him from the Gastineau Channel. For $4/day and the rights to two of every three stakes they made, these two “inveterate drunkards”- Dick Harris and Joe Juneau- set out with Auk Indian guides. They holed up in an Auk village for three weeks of carousing- discovering “hooch”- liquor distilled from ferns by the Indians. In one month, they had used up their three months of supplies, lost their boat and were forced to head back to Sitka. Needless to say, Pilz was infuriated and sent them back. On this trip they found gold streaks running through the rocks and little lumps the size of peas. They staked several claims- Harris gave his name to the first township built around the site. But, after some shady land dealings, the name was changed to Juneau, after his partner Joe. Both Joe and Dick drank away their fortune and died penniless. The mountains around Juneau were rich in low grade gold ore, and for years the Juneau and Treadwell Mines were at the core of the city.

Juneau Today:
Today the population is about 31,000. The primary employers are government, tourism, mining, fishing and fish processing. Strangely enough, Juneau is the capital city. With its’ inaccessible location (it’s the only state capitol that can’t be reached by road from anywhere else in the state), there have been multiple-unsuccessful attempts to move it. Today the debate is about “The Road”—a road connecting Juneau to Skagway.

The cruise ship industry has made a major impact on this port city. With the capacity for 5 huge cruise ships a day, the population can increase by 10,000 tourists/day walking through downtown.

With 60 miles of paved highway, a BJ’s for shopping and a small shopping area near the port (the St Thomas of the Inside Passage), it didn’t take us long to explore the heart of the town. We asked one of the store owners about the local economy and learned that most of the stores near the ports are owned by the cruise lines. In fact, 50% of the stores in Juneau are owned by the cruise lines. In Ketchikan, it’s 75% and in Skagway a whopping 90%! At that point, we decided to try to patronize locally owned stores.

Climate:
The rain we were experiencing wasn’t unusual. Annual precipitation is 57 inches and 98 inches of snowfall.

Exploring Juneau:
We were glad to have our long sleeved shirts and jackets with us. With limited time (docking at noon, with whale watching scheduled for 3:00), we decided to skip the Mendenhall Glacier trip (we got views of it on the way to our whale watching tour) and just spend the time in town .

We stopped for a glass of wine at the local bar, the “Red Dog Saloon”. We got a seat at the bar and met a nice woman from our cruise (we kept running into her at every port- sitting at a local bar with a beer). The floor was thick with sawdust, animal heads were on every wall and they had a great honky-tonk piano player providing entertainment.

With rain still coming down, we made our way to “Captain Larry’s Orca Enterprises” for our 3:30 whale watching tour. We had to take a bus (which was their newest acquisition- an old Prevost bus- that couldn’t seem to go past 30 mph) to Auke Bay. There we boarded Captain Larry’s purple jet boat. The boat was huge- we got a front row seat- and with the rain and cold, stayed inside the heated cabin the entire time! We spent 2 ½ hours on the water (the channel was 2000’ deep) and saw orcas and hump-backed whales. The naturalist on board gave us some info on the wildlife.

We were lucky to see 5 orcas and we saw a group of humpback whales creating a bubble net – then lunging up in unison to feed.

Interesting facts:
Orcas:
* So called “killer whales”, they are actually part of the dolphin family.
* They move in extended family groups, called pods. These pods are matrilineal – the mother and all of her children staying together until the mother dies.
* They can swim up to 29 mph and hunt salmon, seals, sea lions and even juvenile whales.
* The males can be up to 30 feet long and their dorsal fins can be as long as 6 feet. The males live up to 30 years. The females can live up to 50 years.

Humpback Whales:
* One quarter of the worlds’ whale population (8,000-10,000) feed in Alaska in the summer
* They spend their summers in Alaska feeding then swim to Mexico or Hawaii for the winter- where they give birth to their young.
* They have a 12 month gestation period and give birth to a single calf, 12-15 feet in length, weighing about 1 ton.
* A full grown whale weighs up to 40 tons and averages 45 feet long.
* They weave nets of bubbles beneath schools of fish to create a concentrated cloud, then lunge upward through the fish, mouths wide open, eating them in a single swoop.
* Their lungs are the size of a VW Beetle and they weigh about 9000 pounds!

It was time to head back to the ship. We were greeted with hot chocolate—did that ever taste good! Since we missed our main dinner seating, we tried dinner at the Waterfall Grill. While the pizza was disappointing, we made up for it at the dessert bar. We got a slice of some decadent chocolate dessert—and topped it off with a scoop of ice cream!

Back at the room, we had a message light on our phone. It turned out that Mom had won a drawing from one of the local stores- and was the proud winner of an Ammolite Pendant. Mike, the shopping guy, dropped it off at our room, claiming that it was worth $250! Having never heard of Ammolite before, we discovered that it’s only commercially mined in Alberta, Canada and the supply may be exhausted in 15-20 years.

That little surprise gave us our second wind---it was nearing 10:30 PM – but we decided to take in the 10:30 show, Jeff Nease, a comedian. We dragged into the theater, but left with sides hurting from laughing so hard.