Ketchikan to Juneau

June 29, 2021

Our friends Alan and Eileen joined us for our travel leg from Ketchikan to Juneau. We’d hoped to see the bears feeding at Anan Wildlife Observatory but it was too early for the salmon run which attracts the bears so we continued on to Wrangell. Along the way we caught a beautiful “white” king salmon. These fish account for about one-third of king salmon caught in Alaska and the meat is white. It is delicious when eaten raw with no hint of salmon flavor. But when cooked it tastes like pink king salmon.

From Wrangell we went to Petersburg, our last city until we reached Juneau. There would be no cell phones or Internet for a week! We visited the Sawyer Glaciers in Tracy Arm where we saw a huge piece of the glacier break off sending a tidal wave through the icebergs that surrounded our boat. The trip up Tracy Arm was stunning with many icebergs and waterfalls and seals lazing on small bergs along with their pups. It was sad to see how much the glaciers had receded since our visit in 2010.

We were surprised to find two other boats anchored in Tracy Arm Cove with friends of our guests. All three boats had arrived independently under different circumstances. We enjoyed the hospitality of Tamara Lee Ann as we swapped tales of Alaska.

The next day we went to Ford’s Terror where we had to wait for slack high water to enter the narrow pass that led into a fjord with cascading waterfalls. We anchored for the night surrounded by high mountains and observed a brown bear (grizzly) with her cub feeding near the boat. It rained all night and when we awoke there were a gazillion waterfalls. It was spectacular.

During our trip we caught salmon, crabs, and shrimp and saw whales, dolphins, and bears. The weather was cool but we only had one day that rained so hard that the women went below to do a jigsaw puzzle. The weather turned sunny and hot as we arrived in Juneau where sadly our guests departed.

Tracy Arm & Sawyer Glaciers