Whale Watching - Out the Road

On another sunny day this past week, we took our morning together (Andy doesn't work until 230) and drove "out the road" to look for whales. If you are referring to the map above out the road means everything north and west of the Valley... mostly past Auke Bay. We read online that one of best places is at the Shrine of St. Teresa ruins which is past Lena Cove on the map. The road north of Juneau goes for about 40 miles. We stopped at the shrine at mile 23. In Juneau the most common kinds of whales are humpback whales who frequent the waters year round but most leave from Jan - Apr for warmer waters. There are also orcas and other kinds that I'm not familiar with. Well when we first pulled up, we immediately saw a whale. We were both shocked and like "Did you just see that?" It was a big orca very close to shore. Apparently seeing orcas especially from the shore here is very rare since they hardly venture so far into the inside passage from the open ocean. (A side note: the water you see on the map is still part of the inside passage or channel and there is still one more large channel to the west of it before you reach the open ocean) There were four and then five whale watching boats closing in fast and chasing the orcas away. But as we watched it seemed there were about five in the pod and at least one baby. I have to admit I was kind of angry about how close the whale watching boats were getting to the whales, especially the baby. I think being in Hawai'i and their protectiveness of the whales kind of rubbed off on me. I wish I could report them from getting closer than law allows... haha seriously though. Anyway we watched for about 10 minutes and took pictures until the boats chased them out of our view. After we went back to the car and in search of a beach for Sydney to  play on. Eventually we ended up at Lena Beach Cove that you see on the map. It was kind of rocky but a manmade fish pass at one area had rinsed all the big rocks away, so Sydney could walk easier and play. Enjoy the pics... the zoom on my camera isn't great so the whales look tiny. Some things you just have to see in person to understand... come visit. ;-)