It’s not a sentence you hear very often: the first thing I saw this morning was four brown bears feeding on a humpback whale. An unfortunate victim of a ship strike in July, this whale was dragged to a remote beach on Admiralty Island for scientists to perform a necropsy. By now, the whale has softened to the point that brown bears, apparently, really like it. We watched with interest their interactions—mostly tolerating each other feeding, but each with its own quadrant of whale—and came away with some images of beautiful bear faces shiny with whale bits. Somehow, afterwards, we still had appetites for our own breakfast.
After breakfast we had a surprise visit by Howard Franklin, who was one of the first prospectors to come to the young town of Juneau after the gold strike in 1880. He’s pretty spry for an old guy…or was it one of our naturalists?
We sailed to Point Retreat, at the northern tip of Admiralty Island, where we explored in the expedition landing craft or made a beach landing and hiked through the forest to visit the Point Retreat Light. This is a historic lighthouse, built in the Moderne style in 1923, now being lovingly restored by the Alaska Lighthouse Association. We met Laurie Telfer, one half of the couple that runs this non-profit, and she was gracious enough to allow us to walk through the keeper’s quarters (also home to Laurie and her husband), and even climb a steep spiral stairway to the light. With the brilliant clear day, the views were outstanding.
From Point Retreat it is a short sail to Juneau, and we had all afternoon to explore. First was a visit to the Mendenhall Glacier, a recreation area within the Tongass National Forest, where trails of many lengths were available for hiking and strolling. We walked the short distance to the shore of Mendenhall Lake to look across at the glacier, or wandered down to Steep Creek where the last of the sockeye are spawning. Some hiked more vigorously, through the first vegetation to grow in the wake of this retreating glacier, to an enormous waterfall that thunders hundreds of feet from a side valley to Mendenhall Lake. A few made it even further afield, hiking the East Glacier trail, which climbs the hillside until it is above the level the glacier was at during its last advance. Old forest grows there, crowned with big trees and thick with moss and mushrooms. Inside the visitor center, exhibits interpreted the area; just outside the visitor center, a bear walked with cubs.
Then we were off to downtown, heart of the capitol city. There are more than 130 historic buildings in a five-block area in downtown Juneau, built in the gold-mining era. In Juneau’s early days, this was the place you went to spend your money. And, many of us noticed, that hasn’t completely changed. Maybe we’ll even head off to a local saloon after dinner.
