Juneau

No roads in, no roads out, so you arrive here by water or air. And this the capital. Pretty interesting, but not surprising for a state with lesss than 400,000 inhabitants. In area, it could contain California, Texas and Montana, but no one lives here. Harsh, the interior, akin to Australia where all the living takes place along the coast. We docked this morning and boarded our bus for Auke Bay where we started our whale watch. We were lucky and saw several humpbacks and a few babies, one of which was kind enough to breach. Very, very cool. I was struck by the affinity that humans have for whales. We were all so thrilled whenever we saw them. It must be that they are so very huge but so peaceful and just want to go about their business - as should we all. After the whales, we moved on to the Mendenhall Glacier in the Tongass National Forrest. It was wonderful but a little worrisome since 100 years ago you would have been able to touch the glacier from the Visitor's Center and it's now quite a walk and a lake's distance away. It's quite thrilling to see the hunks of ice floating in the lake, espeically when you see those impossibly blue pieces of ice comprising the recent glacial calves. Taking leave of common sense, I started to scramble up a rock hill near the glacier(climbing wall, anyone?) after seeing Larry buzz up without issue. Once committed (couldn't go down), I realized I was stuck. Darned swinging camera! Larry came back for me, took the camera and offered a hand up, the dear man. A friendly enough man looked us over and said, "Well! I live here and I've never seen anyone come up that way!" Indeed. There were several nice walkways and a good hike to an impressive roaring waterfall, but we didn't have enough time on our stop for that one. Back to the ship, lunch, shopping in town, and our evening activities rounded out the day.