Wednesday, May 22, 2019. Tracy Arm Fjord and Juneau

Wednesday, May 22, 2019 Tracy Arm and Juneau

The sun sure rises early at these northern latitudes.  By 5:15am, the sun was working it’s way across the top of the fjord that is the Tracy Arm.  The scenery is very similar to Norway’s fjords, but the Tracy Arm does become quite narrow as the ship worked its way towards the head of the fjord.  There are lots of cascading waterfalls and a few side glacial valleys that drain into the Tracy Arm, but there are no little Norwegian villages or farms in these valleys.  There were lots bits of scattered ice flows that became more and more dense as we made it up to the bend where we could see the North and South Sawyer Glaciers that formed the Tracy Arm. The ship stopped adjacent to Sawyer Island, about 4 miles short of where the South Sawyer Glacier meets the water. At this point, the ship disembarked 2 catamaran loads of passengers for an optional excursion that would speed them to the base of that glacier, while the Star Princess turned around and then headed for Juneau.  We imagine the passengers on the catamarans did get a good look at the glaciers, but we didn’t book that excursion because it was not wheel chair accessible.  They probably met up with the ship in Juneau, which was 45 miles to the north.

It seemed like the best place to view the Tracy Arm was on the deck that is above the ship’s bridge.  This is accessible by going all the way forward on deck 14, and then up about 5 steps.  Since there were four of us brothers, we were able to muscle Betty in her wheelchair up that small staircase, so she could enjoy the view, but she needed to be bundled up in her warmest clothes and wrapped in pool blankets and towels.  

There was sporadic narration by the naturalist, who ended up reciting several quotes by by various explorers in describing similar glacial fjord scenes, but from New Zealand and Chile, rather than specifically Alaska.  We did manage to spot a few mountain goats way up high on the granite faces above us with binoculars, and a couple of harbor seals in the water, but no bears or other animals aside from an occasional sea gull. 

Oddly enough, right at the point where the ship did it’s spin around, there was a hunk of ice on which a harbor seal was resting, and next to it on the ice was an obvious stain of blood.  Someone had speculated that maybe a seal had a miscarriage, or another seal had been injured and hauled itself up on that same hunk of ice because the seal that was resting on the ice looked perfectly happy.  

After the ship did its about face, we had breakfast in the buffet and then a long nap.  Janet and Ben got up for the 11:15am trivia, and got a middling score, missing the win by 2 points.  We had second guessed a few answers, so had at least entertained the correct answer for most of the questions, but just didn’t land on the right ones.

We had lunch in the dining room, but found that the rest of our party had seated themselves on a 4 top, so Ben and Janet sat separately on a 2 top.  While they sat down later, they ended up finishing up first.  

The ship docked in Juneau at 12:30PM and there were long lines for people to get off for their excursions.  We booked a gold mine tour, which ended up a nice small group tour because there were only about 16 people who had booked this excursion.  They had a small bus with a wheel chair lift in the back, and Betty was the only wheel chair confined passenger, so that was manageable. Franklin had a hard time believing that you could tour a mine in a wheel chair, but aside from the gravel parking lot, the excursion was accessible for Betty.  This was a mining tunnel that was actually originally part of a gold ore processing plant, and not really a gold mine.  The gold ore was mined a few miles away and carried by a railroad to a point above where this current “mine” is.  The ore was then dumped into a huge crusher, which then dumped the crushed ore down a chute to the processing plant, which further crushed and screened the ore, and then separated out nuggets from high grade ore mechanically, and then dumped the tailings into the channel.  This “mine” was actually the tunnel that carried the ore on a big conveyor belt from the upper crusher to the processing plant, so it was only slightly sloped, and big enough to drive a truck into.  They built a elevated walkway where the conveyor belt was, and that was how we went into and out of the “mine”.  We did see examples of equipment used for hard rock mining over the ages from the late 1800’s to the present, with narration by an interesting Tlingit who had spent most of his life as a miner.  He did operate a pneumatic drill and scoop, for which we had to don ear plugs.  It was similar to the Queen Mine tour we had taken in Arizona, and a silver mine in northern Idaho, but without the train rides.

We then got to pan some of the mine tailings for gold flakes, and everyone managed to come up with about a half dozen gold flakes in the bottom of our miniature pans, which were 6” in diameter.  We did get to do the panning in a warmed trough, so our hands didn’t get cold.  The tour then concluded with a stop in the gift shop, where you could buy a vial full of gold flakes for $5.  We had each probably only managed to pan a few fractions of a cent’s worth of gold, so we’re glad we didn’t have to do that for a living.

The weather in Juneau was unbelievable- sunny and in the 70’s, like a really nice Seattle summer day.  

We were returned to the ship by 4:30PM.  George had taken an Uber to a creek a few miles down the Gastineau channel from where the mine tour was.  He tried some fly fishing but only saw a single fish, and it wasn’t interested in biting anything George was casting to it.  So he too had returned to the ship about the same time.  We all had dinner together in the dining room which offered Surf and Turf or King Crab legs.  Of course, we ended up ordering both for Ultimate Surf and Turf.  These prawns were the ones that were nearly as large as a small lobster tail, and tasted like lobster as well.  The fillet mignon was quite good, and the King crab legs were a nice supplement.  There were just 3 leg parts on the entree dish, along with a few potatoes and asparagus spears.  

After dinner, Ben and Janet won an ABBA trivia which not only required naming song clips, but also knowing some ABBA band trivia and identifying some album covers, which was extremely hard.  We don’t think anyone got more than one album cover correct.  One looked like the ABBA band members in an art gallery with a short man in a Napoleon hat looking at a painting behind the band with his back turned to the camera.  We guessed correctly that it was the album cover for “Waterloo”.  

We finished up our evening with a Vista Lounge show put on by their duet that normally plays in the atrium- a South American keyboard/guitar player and a Russian violinist.  George was teasing Franklin that he needed to get hooked up with the cute Russian violinist, who happened to be quite talented, as well as attractive.

The ship pulled out of Juneau shortly after sunset at 10pm.  Tomorrow we arrive in Skagway, our last Alaskan port of call.