day 20

The alarm going off at 700 am was way too early. I hopped in the shower and called up my friend josh. We went to a bagel place grabbed breakfast and headed to the wharf to catch out boat tour out to Tracy arm. We were both tired. In fact josh didn’t go to sleep and stayed up. He told me that Andy lost me last night and was concerned but I found a place to stay so it was no big deal. We got to sit in the front of the under part of the boat. There were about 35 other people onboard. We began our 2 hour ride out to Tracy arm at about 815. Along the way we were watching out for bear eating the mussels etc along the shore lines and we also were watching out for whales and orca. On the way out we found some whale spouts and a couple bald eagles hanging out on an iceberg. At about ten am we got to the bar of Tracy arm. What makes Tracy arm so special is that there is a very narrow (200 yards) across bar that you have to carefully maneuver through to get into the arm. There are buoys that mark the spot to go in-between and there are also markers that need to be aligned to a straight line behind you with a flashing light that will flash when you are entering through the correct spot. Once we got into Tracy arm there were numerous waterfalls and icebergs galore. We even found a huge iceberg that just flipped. You know they just flip when they are bright blue. It was gorgeous. We took about 30 minutes to get through the arm. At the end there are two glaciers, sawyer and south sawyer. South sawyer glacier you can go right up to depending on the size of the icebergs. Today the icebergs were pretty small and easy to maneuver through. (Easy for the captain I’d have no idea). The boat we were on was like a catamaran but only one buoy thing. There were plenty of harbor seals along the way. When we got there it started calving right away (parts of the glacier fall into the water) which results in a loud boom. We saw a harbor porpoise too. This spot so far back into Tracy arm is ideal for harbor seals to have their young because their natural predator (transient orca) echo system gets all messed up within the arm. We hung out at the glacier for about a half hour before heading back. We gave it a round of applause (josh’s idea... he was a deck hand for Allen marine the ship people) and sure enough just as the boat turned around and was heading out the large chunk to the right all collapsed into the water. We then worked our way back through the arm. As we got to the bar the large blue iceberg was no longer the vibrant blue. Crazy! We did not hit bottom through the bar and started the two hour trek back. Along the way we found a family of 4 female orca with a couple calves. Usually orca have a male with them but we thought he might be out ahead of them scanning the waters. About 300 I got back (and into cell phone range). Grabbed a drink at flight deck from john and went to get my stuff back from will but decided that I would crash on his couch that night too. Then Carter, the boy I met the night before came down and met up with me after I tried on a fur-kini that was promised to me the night before... ya I didn’t end up getting it. It was cute for a furkini. Ha-ha. Carter then took me to my house so I could do a load of laundry and pack clothes for the next day. Then we went to canton house out by the Juneau mall. Ya-no where near the size of the MOA. I had a dinner complete with beef and pork lo mein and fried rice then we picked up his friend that lived by auke bay by Brent and headed to the hanger. They ended up having a party out in the valley with a mechanical bull they were excited to go see so they ended up taking off and I ventured the streets of downtown Juneau again. I ended up meeting up with john from flight deck and Abby was out too. Tonight I met this nice gentleman named matt at imperial. Gave him my phone number and then headed out to rendezvous where I ran into will. Will then brought me to the couch and I fell asleep rather quickly.