A day at Icy Strait Point – Hoonah, Alaska
After a bit of rain and lot of cold wind at Skagway, the incredible weather is back with us. I’m still a day behind on the blog but hope to catch up tonight, as we’re now at sea en route to Sitka following a superb day at the Hubbard Glacier.
Our head waiter, Eduardo, is wonderful – attentive and charming. Here he presents the options for dessert – “yummy, yummy!” 🙂
The classical quartet “Anthem Strings” plays in the tiny Cova Cafe di Milano every evening. We aren’t taking advantage of nearly enough of the music or other activities on the ship, but there are only so many hours in a day!
The view at 10:44 pm after leaving Skagway.
Sunrise today was at 04:29, and we arrived at Icy Strait Point (Hoonah) at about 06:00. We had booked a whale watching tour with F.I.S.H.E.S. ($159 each for 3 hours) for 07:30 so caught one of the first tenders. There was no lineup at all for the tender, which was a nice surprise.
Floyd was waiting outside the Icy Strait Point gates for us – Cathy and I, Dee and Nancy from our CruiseCritic group, and Len and Chris from Great Britain. We were soon on board Floyd’s boat, heading out of Hoonah harbor under a partly-clear sky.
Searching for whales…
…and bears along the beaches.
While it didn’t take too long to find some humpback whales (a cow and calf), we weren’t able to get close to them. We did, though, get up close to some sea lions, who often follow whales. Note that one has a rather serious injury, perhaps from an orca.
Sightings like this may not be the norm, but are sure worth waiting for!
A broader view of the scene. Even if there were no whales this would be a wonderful place to spend a day.
When a humpback whale surfaces this close to your boat you have to be very quick to capture the event.
Spouts and tails are what you usually see when humpback watching but while we saw lots of less common behaviours there were no tails. Finally just as we were about to head back to Hoonah I got this shot.
Floyd and the Silver Spoon back at the Hoonah harbor.
The Hoonah small boat harbor.
The Infinity at Icy Strait Point (ISP). ISP is a facility built for the cruise industry – it’s beautifully done, partly because only one ship per day is allowed.
After our whale-watching tour we went back to the ship to get changed, relax and have lunch.
The hot saltwater therapy pool is wonderful.
The ISP sea kayaking excursion.
The Crab Station at ISP has whole, fresh Dungeness crab for $21.15, halves for $13.75, which seemed reasonable.
ISP on a day like we had is a superb place to wander, or to just park yourself on a bench and enjoy the sun and scenery.
The hot new attraction is the ZipRider – on a mile-long cable you can reach speeds of 60mph!
Cathy with our table-mates Lucy and Ed, who are from Florida. They had just done the ZipRider and Ed shot a video that he showed us at dinner – that’s some ride for $99!!
This sign is a great way to get “souvenir shots” with your ship in the background.
This humpback provided hundreds of people with decent whale watching for free – right from the ship, beach or dock!
The beach at ISP as the whale cruised by.
I went back to the ship at 1:00 pm to get ready for my next presentation, this one on glaciers. Cathy stayed at ISP and soaked up the sunshine with some new friends.
We sailed from ISP at 5:00 pm, towards the end of my presentation which drew about 180 people (a number that I’m very pleased with). Sailing west from Hoonah we met Holland America’s Veendam.
The “portholes” in the floor of the Oceanview Cafe are pretty cool 🙂
Watch watching is usually not very good from a cruise ship. This day was the exception – in the space of 2 hours we saw half a dozen orca fairly close, and perhaps 2 dozen humpbacks including this one. This photo was shot from my table in the Oceanview Cafe on Deck 10.
The view from the Constellation Lounge on Deck 11.
There were hundreds of sea lions on these rocks. A bit too distant for my camera but a great sight anyway.
The view as we started to cross the Gulf of Alaska at 10:48 pm.
A broader look at the same view as above. To those of you who think that you wouldn’t like cruising because of the crowds, this situation is more common than crowds are 🙂
Tomorrow we’ll take a detour to see the incredible Hubbard Glacier! 🙂
About The Author
