Numie ate a festive breakfast of raisin bran and 2% milk.  We got off the ship and were greeted by beautiful flowers everywhere.  We stopped to enjoy some on our way to the float plane trip.

We started the day with an amazing float plane trip over five glaciers.  It was a little foggy but we were excited to be assigned to the “Porcupine” group, keeping our streak alive to have Porcupine involved in every Alaska voyage so far.  In 2009 we saw a porcupine on the road to Denali.  In 2012 we saw one in the tree in Juneau with LJ’s parents and in 2015… the story is just so good you need to refer back to that post.  Today we were flying in a De Havillane DHC-3 Otter which seated ten passengers, the pilot and co-pilot.  We had the first three seats on the left side of the plane.  We each had our own headphones and there was great narration during the tour.  One of the glaciers we flew over was the Taku Glacier, five miles wide.  Mom thought everyone needed to see the glaciers this way to actually know what they looked like and that it was totally different from just seeing them from the ground or from the ship.  She just loved it, the train ride and the float plane are her current favorites.

After the trip, we headed back onto the ship.  It was rainy and Numie decided to skip the whale watching excursion for the afternoon to save up her energy for tomorrThe ow.  We ordered her some lunch and got our rain gear ready.  Off the ship we met with Harv and Marv’s whale watching.  This would be our fourth trip with them, we went on our previous two cruises and on one of them did back-to-back trips.  Our captains were Liz and Chad (maybe).  There were six of us instead of seven so they combined our trips and went in a larger boat, The M/V Alaskan, that would hold 12 because the water was pretty rough.  It was definitely good that they did, this was our roughest trip but still a wonderful one.  We immediately saw two bald eagles on the beach and then they went flying up above into some trees.  Captain Liz gave us some great information about humpback whales and a good reminder about mammals and the five things that make up mammals.  Do you remember from elementary school science?

We found four humpback whales, no gymnastics from them but still they are just breathtaking.  We also found some sea lions on a buoy, seven or eight of them, they seem to be quite comfortable sharing space with each other.  We met a nice couple from Fort Worth Texas and another from Michigan.  So with the rain and rough water, it wasn’t our most successful day whale watching, it was still one for the books!

We got back onboard and got ready for dinner, sharing stories about our days and chatting more about family and travel.  LJ surprised Mom and I with flowers this evening.  She loved hers so much!

Tonight’s show was an Impersonator, LJ really enjoyed him, I was kind of in the middle, partially because several of the people he did were before my time, haha.

Tomorrow… the Alaska Railroad!