Traveling with the Stampers: Juneau, Alaska

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Juneau, Alaska

As we waited to disembark Wayne took a picture of this man who looks like a typical Alaskan Sourdough. These are people who lived in Alaska in the early 1900s and existed on sourdough bread. They were so named because in order to keep the sourdough warm and active throughout the winter they kept it under their arms and you can guess what they smelled like. Now it is just someone who lives off the land in Alaska.

We saw these beautiful Lupines on the way to the dock. They look like overgrown bluebonnets.

This day we were setting out on a whale watching trip. We were on a large three storied catamaran that held three bus-loads of people. The scenery was beautiful on the trip out.

We took so many pictures that it is impossible to show them all so I made a collage.

It wasn’t long before we ran into a pod of Orcas. We are not exactly sure how many there were. There were at least three and more likely five.

This was one of the best pictures.

As we were headed towards a pod of humpback whales, there was a single humpback showing off in back of the boat.

This was one of the better pictures.

Most of the time you only get to see the hump or the tail of the humpback whale as evidenced below.

The humpback whales we found were bubble net fishing where a group of whales will swim around its prey in a circle and blow bubbles, create loud vocal sounds or slap their fins against the water to stun fish into forming into a small ball and rising to the surface in which the whale can then swim up and lunge at the fish with an open mouth and engulf thousands of small fish in a single gulp using their baleen plates to separate water and debris from their prey. Wayne got this picture of them surfacing.