August 26-27, 2006 (Days 94-95)

Saturday:
Today we awoke to cool weather and sprinkles of rain. Our activity today is a high-speed catamaran boat trip to Juneau. The group was split in two, with one half going today and the other half of the group scheduled the next day. We were asked to switch to group one (alphabetically, we are always in group 2!), to even out the numbers.

We were to carpool to the docks where we would board the catamaran at 8:30 a.m. The catamaran was enclosed and a rather new boat. The only way anyone can get into Juneau is by boat or airplane. The ride was surprisingly smooth, until we hit some open waters where it became rough. We bounced around quite a bit. We traveled 75 miles to Juneau in 2 hours. The captain was good to slow down at places for us to see sealife—otters, seals, birds. We also saw humpback whales breaching and diving, bringing their tails out of the water and a beautiful and graceful display. There were also a couple lighthouses along the way.

About 2/3 of the way to Juneau, we felt a thump and the boat slowed down. Power had been lost in one of the two engines. The captain went down into the engine room and said we would be able to reach Juneau, but it would take a little longer with one engine. We later learned that the propeller shaft had been broken off and was not even attached to the boat on the one of two engines. We now wonder what it came into contact with to break it off like that?!

We had a hard time docking at Juneau as there was no power on one side. There were several crew hands waiting there to help get the crippled boat to the dock.

After getting off the catamaran, we boarded a bus to take us on a town tour. We were then left off downtown for 2 ½ hours. Juneau is also a cruise ship port and there were four cruise ships in that day. It was truly a tourist town and was packed with thousands of people. We walked around and visited a couple places we had read about, then got a quick sandwich and were back at the bus stop where we boarded our bus again to go to the Mendenhall Glacier. We were at the Glacier for about an hour. We were once again in bear territory and were told to be careful as we walked around the streams on the wooden boardwalks at the glacier.

The bus then took us back to the dock where we boarded another boat, not a catamaran, and all of us were a little doubtful if we wanted to ride on this smaller boat. We had no choice if we wanted to get back to Haines, AK. We learned on that trip that because the “ferry” line had no more catamarans to replace the crippled one, the other half of the group scheduled the next day, would not get to go on a trip to Juneau. So, we were lucky to get this excursion under our belts!


Sunday:
This was a free day for us, so we enjoyed sleeping in a little and puttering around the trailer and campground. In the afternoon, we went into town to see what we could, but there wasn’t much there.

We had a driver’s meeting in the evening to prepare for our move to Whitehorse, YT, the next day.

Till then….