From Ketchikan

Thur - Juneau
The ship docked in Juneau at 8:30, right on time. The Captain, and crew, made up almost 2 hours during the journey here from Haines during the night. We were 2 hours late leaving Haines because a guy on the ship was sick enough that they had an air ambulance come from Juneau to get him. A Doctor in Haines was called to look at the guy late Wed PM. He said the air ambulance was needed, as opposed to taking him to Juneau on a ferry. (I think the ferry ride is 3 or 4 hours. The local volunteer fire department EMS people picked up the air ambulance crew, brought them to the ship, helped get the guy off the ship and into the ambulance and took them back to the Haines airport. I hope the guy had insurance for the air ambulance. Earlier Wed the driver who took us 444 wheeling told about a friend of his who had to use the service.The bill was $35,000.
We were off the ship and waiting for our bus when it arrived. We first went to the Mendenhall Glacier. We saw it when we were here before. It is impressive to see. It has been receding since 1750, 267 years, but it seems that the global warming people have their knickers in a twist because they think man is responsible for causing it to recede quicker in the past 50 or so years.
Then we went down to the waterfront and boarded a boat to go whale watching. We spotted the first whale before we were hardly away from the dock. We were on the boat about 3 hours and saw several more whales. We slowed or stopped when they were spotted so we typically got to see each one multiple times. None of them jumped up in the air. They just came up got a couple of breaths and went back down for 7-15 minutes before coming up again. We stopped at an island lodge for about an hour for a "salmon bake" The food was quite good.
After returing to the area where the ship was docked we walked around Juneau for an hour or so. Even though it is the state capitol it would be at the bottom of our list for places to visit in Alaska. It is just to commercialized. think about being in a large VERY EXPENSVIVE flea market or craft store; that is Juneau. Jewelery place after jewlery place, fur place after fur place, diamond store after diamond store, and on and on. The scenery is great once you get away from the downtown, but to get away you have to have a boat or an airplane. There are no roads in and out of Juneau.
We left the dock at 5:30PM and are headed to Ketchikan. We will dock there tomorrow morning. We don't have any excursions planned while there. We intend to just walk around and enjoy the sites.
Friday - The overnight trip to Ketcikan was smooth. We arrived at 11AM, right on schedule. Ketchikan is much larger than I rembered. Yesterday's information packet said that we those who wanted to go ashore before 2PM would do so via a tender. We anchored in the harbor because all the 5 berths were full of cruise ships. The crew dropped at least 6 lifeboats into the water and those were the tenders. We had lunch on board and then rode to the dock area in one of the life boats (tenders). They are enclosed, which was good because it is in the high 40's and drizzling. We were back aboard by about 2:30, not much to see in Ketchikan if you don't want to buy souveniers made in China or diamonds. One block had 7 diamond stores in a row. Another block had on one side and 2 on the other side. The only explanation I can think of is that there are a lot of foriegners on the cruise ships (and there are, 90 Australians in just one group on our ship. the ones we have talked to are nice folks). These people may be from socialist nations, like those in Europe, that have huge Value Added Taxes (25%) included in the purchase of amost every items. If these folks buy jewelery while on vacation they may try and get away with not telling the customs people in their home countries. If they don't get caught, and they probably would not, they get away without paying the 25% VAT tax.
We have enjoyed our Alaska vacation and would like to see more of Alaska some time in the, but realistically that probably won't happen. If we did come back we agree that it would not be on another cruise. Even with the week long tour prior to getting on the didn't allow us the flexibility we like. We would like to spend more time around Anchorage & Fairbanks. We would probably fly into one of them and rent a vehicle.
AAARRGHHH!! My keyboard or tablet just went nuts and erased a lot of what I just typed, so I had to retype it.
I will see if I can get this posted now, while we are in port and have cell service. I might even attempt to post some more photos.
God is good, may He bless you and yours.