Alaska Cruise - Day 3: Whale watching in Juneau

The first part of our excursion, in Juneau ,was whale watching. Earlier in the year, when we had been choosing excursions, we choose this one because they guaranteed us seeing a whale or they would refund part of our money at the end. It was also the thing I was the most excited about for the trip.

Our ship for whale watching. It had two inside decks with chairs. It also had a viewing deck on the back of the 2 deck and a viewing deck on the 3rd deck. 

In the of this picture there is a large white spot, that is a glacier.

Our first whale sighting! All you can see is the blow of air in about the center of the picture. 

We saw our first whale within about 15 minutes of taking off. We had all talked about hoping to see one breach, but Josh said that can hurt them to breach and they usually only do it when they are mating and the males are fighting.

We also saw a mom and her baby calf, which was a first for this company this year. I took tons of pictures, but am trying to only post the best. 

Look towards the end of the rainbow and you can see the blow. 

After watching several whales in that area, we headed to a new spot and found a ledge full of sea lions. They are so fun to watch and so loud. We even watched two of them fight and one knocked the other off of the ledge they were on. 

There is two eagles in this picture. One on the rock in the center at the bottom. And the other about three-fourths of the way up just to the right of the center.

After watching the sea lions for a bit, we headed back to look for more whales. Our captian took us by a light house.

More whales! At some point during this, Josh took my camera from me so I could just enjoy watching. I'm so glad he did. Before leaving, I couldn't decide if I wanted to take my big camera or not. In the end, I decided to leave it home and take only my digital camera. I didn't want to pack the big one around and I was also worried that I would be more worried about getting the perfect shot instead of just enjoying everything. I was so glad I made that decision.

In this last picture, you can see the tail. That is when you know they are taking a deep dive and won't be back up for a while.

The map showing where we traveled.

Our group Holding a whale baleen plate.

Whale watching was awesome and ended up being one of my favorite things about the entire trip.