Ketchikan. Tracy Arm. Juneau.

Our first port of call was Ketchikan. It is called the Salmon capitol of the world. The down town streets were covered with Salmon and fish houses, a heavenly sight for Joe and I. The city is beautiful and is surrounded by snow covered mountains and water. You even have to take a ferry to get to their airport.

It was gorgeous the day we arrived. This was the only stop that Joe and I picked a shore excursion different from the rest of our group. We decided to zip line in the Alaskan rain forest. It was so much fun and quite a thrill. We froze. But it never rained on us and the view from way up high, over looking the lush green tree tops was spectacular. We were able to zip on 7 different lines 150 ft. in the air. The longest one was nearly 900 ft. long. We crossed over a few suspension bridges along the way and enjoyed taking in all the sites. Later in the season you can see bears fishing for salmon in the creeks that ran below, but we were a little early in the season, so no bear sitings for us. It was a great way to see the rain forest and appreciate the cities beauty.

That night we whale watched from our ship. We didn't get to see Humpback whales, but saw other sea life including many killer whales. It was fun to listen to the naturalist over the deck loud speakers announcing our whale siting like we were at a sports arena, "We've got whales folks! Killer whales! They may not be Humpbacks, but we've got whales!" Out of nowhere people came running to the side of the ship for a view. It was pretty exciting.

The next morning we woke up real early to enjoy the beauty of Tracy Arm. It is a narrow passage filled with fjords, waterfalls and glaciers. We saw a black bear, bald eagles and many small icebergs along the way. We also saw our first glaciers. It was amazing to see glaciers that close. Seeing the blue color of the ice made the glaciers even more amazing. It was COLD out there. We bundled and bundled, but man, was it cold that early morning. But personally, that is the only way I think ice bergs should be seen, in freezing temperatures.
That same day we arrived in Juneau. It rained the entire time we were there. We wondered if our canoe trip was going to be cancelled, but it wasn't. My mom, dad, Josh, Shanen, Joe and I took the bus with 5 others to Mendenhall Lake for our 12 man canoe trip. It was pouring, freezing and as soon as I saw that canoe, my heart sunk. False advertisement was all I could think. The canoe was tiny and didn't look "stable" at all like the brochure said. Well I couldn't back out so we put on layer after layer of waterproof (yeah right) gear and set foot into our canoe. The lake we were on was frozen only two days earlier and had just barely melted. Icebergs were all around us and we were touching them with our ores and going right over the smaller ones with our canoe. We had to navigate around them and actually had to stop before we made it all the way to the waterfall near the Mendenhall Glacier, because the icebergs were getting too big and there were too many to safely make it through. The rain kept pouring down and the wind picked up for little white caps in the water. It was thrilling and exciting and the day was absolutely perfect! I think we would have really missed out on the glacier/iceberg experience if the weather conditions had been any other way. It was unanimous that this excursion was the favorite!