Tues July 15, 2025
Hi Gang! Like I mentioned yesterday, today is a two part day. The first is a partial sea day until about 2 PM. Then we do scenic cruising from 2 PM – 7 PM thru Tracy Arm Fjord.
For the sea day portion we did our usual routine of sleeping in and getting educated. The first speaker topic was called “Alaska’s Humpback Whales – The Gentle Giants of the North Pacific” and was given by the Naturalist Dr Rachel Cartwright. She mentioned the closest living ancestors to the humpback whales are the Hippos. There are actually two humpback whales in Juneau named Sasha and Flame that they’ve been tracking for over 40 years!
Whales in general eat 3,500 pounds of food per day (almost as much as that guy at the buffet!) and they grow 62 pounds per day in weight! She had videos where we watched both a birth and their mating ritual. And humpback whales live from 60 to 80 years! Great stuff!
The second speaker topic was called “7 Summits and 3 Poles – A Mountaineering and Expedition Odyssey by Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund Hillary”. He’s spent 16 years of his life in the wilderness and has done 50 expeditions and gotten to the 3 poles (the North Pole, the South Pole and Mt Everest as the 3rd pole).
Neil Armstrong (the first man on the moon) and his father (first to climb Mt. Everest) joined him on the trip to the geographic center of the North Pole in the Arctic. He actually had to hitchhike there on a plane full of explosives since the plane with his father and Neil was too loaded down with gear. He’s also climbed several peaks with his two sons (runs in the family!).
Both speakers and topics were excellent! Then we had lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the beauty of the Tracy Arm Fjord area. Tracy Arm is a fjord near Juneau that is named after the then Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Franklin Tracy. It is the heart of what’s called the Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness. It contains over 650,000 acres and consists of two deep and narrow fjords – Tracy Arm and Endicott Arm.
Both fjords are over 30 miles long and one-fifth of their area is covered in thin ice. During the summer, the fjords have considerable floating ice ranging from hand-sized to pieces as large as a three-story building. Yikes!
We stayed on the outside deck in front as we cruised thru the fjord. Reminded me of the beautiful fjords of Norway. But it did get a little chilly out there with the stiff breeze. The passage way to Sawyer Glacier is very narrow and I’m not sure how our ship navigated thru. There were also lots of icebergs to avoid! We didn’t see a lot of wildlife other than one humpback whale and a cute little harbor seal floating on an iceberg!
Most of the day it was overcast but the sun came out strong in the end of the day. I’ll do another update after dinner. Happy Tuesday to all!
The Wandering Italian 