Whales!

No burying the lede on this one. We saw humpback whales!

We went on a whale watching trip out of Juneau, trading the big cruise ship for a much smaller and faster boat.

Captain Jack was straight out of central casting. We were told that he pioneered whale watching trips back in the 90's and that he's the best at finding whales. My rational brain may suspect there is no causal link between grizzled appearance and whale locating prowess, but just like a fancy label increases one's actual enjoyment of a bottle of wine, I have no doubt that Captain Jack increased our actual enjoyment of this excursion.

These sea lions were the first big animals we saw. They would usually qualify as the main attraction of any nature outing, but this one had bigger things ahead.

Environmental regulations prohibit boats from approaching closer than 100 yards. The strategy is to find an area with lots of whale activity, get as close as you can, then park and hope they come to you. We were incredibly lucky that a pod of four humpbacks surfaced about 15 feet from our boat.
 

They were close enough that we could see their blowhole muscles expanding and contracting.

Blowhole, hump, then tail. We never saw the whole whale at once, so even this close it was still hard to wrap your head around just how large these animals really are.

We were also lucky that while we were waiting on the whales, there was a group of really active sea lions very close to our boat. Again, it's hard to believe that these were not the most amazing animals we saw on our trip.

These photos are all Aaron's but Juniper was also documenting the trip.

 

She was a delightful mix of amazed, inspired, and content after we saw the whales. Her goodwill bubbled over into extra snuggliness.

Lucky to see such amazing animals and lucky to share the experience with family.