This is the day I had been waiting for, whale watching in Icy Strait Point, near Hoonah, Alaska. I hadn’t seen a whale yet on this cruise. We had booked Glacier Wind Charters independently after we had watched a Parodeejay vlog recommending them. Teresa, who along with her husband Shawn, and sons Casey and Kyle, own Glacier Wind Charters, and are year round residents of Hoonah, was so helpful in setting up a small tour for us.

Glacier Wind Charters Whale and Wildlife Watching tour

We arrived at the Icy Straight Point dock early in the morning. We were a bit early for our 9:30 am tour, so we walked around the area. This is a cruise port that doesn’t have much to do, so you can either book an excursion, or you can just stay on the ship. At the port you can walk along the beach over to the old cannery which has a gift shop and a coffee shop. There are also a couple of small restaurants in the area. You can take a free gondola ride up to the other dock, but there’s not much there either. The ride is nice though. Also, you can walk to Hoonah along the waterfront, which is about a mile and a half away. It’s a very small town without a lot to do though.

We met with Teresa of Glacier Wind Charters at 9:15 am at the Excursion Hub. She is such a nice lady. We had 13 on our tour, and she had us all get into her van. It’s only about 5 minutes into Hoonah, where the dock is. We went down a ramp to the boat, the Apogee, and saw a Bald Eagle right there on a post.

The boat holds 13 passengers, and is very comfortable, with large windows all the way around for viewing. There is a toilet, but you have to go outside on the back deck to get to it. They even supply snacks and hot chocolate. And it brought us a beautiful sunny day outside, rare for Alaska.

Brothers Casey and Kyle are the boat’s crew, and very friendly and knowledgeable about the area. We rode along for about 45 minutes learning about the area, until they stopped at a huge group of otters, plus some seals. We stayed there for a while, then rode on to find some whales. When the boat stopped each time, we were all able to go outside onto the platform that wraps all around the boat. With only 13 passengers onboard there is room for everyone to see what’s going on all around the area. I loved that about this excursion. On the way we saw another excursion boat that carried 150 passengers on a whale watching tour. It looked like they couldn’t see anything in the crowd on the deck. I’ll take our 13 passengers over that any day.

After we rode awhile we finally found whales! It seems that whales are very unpredictable. We could see the spouts, and some of the backs, but not much else. A few of them finally showed their tails, but we never did see a breach or bubble feeding. That was disappointing, but there’s not much that could be done about it. You can’t tell a whale what to do, that’s for sure. But we had a great time anyway. The guys even gave us some extra time to try and find more whales. Plus, we saw Seals and Otters. So cute.

We got back to the dock at after 1 pm, and Teresa was there to meet us. She drove us back to the port, and we decided to ride the gondola over to the other port to see what was there. Not much, but it was a nice scenic ride. They do have a zipline and a gondola to the top of the mountain for a fee, and a small giftshop. There are plenty of restrooms in the area also.

A Word on laundry

One of the perks of being an Elite status member is free laundry service, and with as much as you have to pack for Alaska layers, it sounded great. But so far I’m not entirely impressed with it. The staff keeps telling us that our clothing is “broken”, but I’m not sure what they mean by that. I got one shirt back with a yellow tag on the hem, and the paperwork said broken. Maybe a bit of the hem was out or something, but I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Then we sent more items and our room Steward, Marte called and said two shirt were “broken” and should they clean them? We said yes, but we’re still waiting on the shirt from two days ago. We’ve decided that we’ll do our own laundry from now on. The machines don’t need a token so they are free, (we just have to push in the knob where you normally put your money), and we brought our own detergent. It did annoy me that I had set a timer and gotten back to my clothing in the washing machine promptly, but someone had already put my clothing on top of the dryer. But the dryer was free also at least.

Dinner and the Officers Cocktail Party

One of the other perks of being an Elite member is being invited to the cocktail parties. So, we went to dinner at our normal time, and after that went to the cocktail party. We were met by Marija from Guest Services. She’s so sweet, she made sure that we were sat with a nice couple from Australia, and were comfortable. We were joined by Sheila from Guest Services, and Sheila is hysterical. We had a great time and a great conversation, and the drinks and hors d’oeuvres were flowing. They had a great Blue Hawaiian drink that we definitely enjoyed.

By the time we got out of the party it was too late to see the show, so we decided to call it a night and relax in the room. We started watching The Martian on our On Demand TV, we’ll finish it later. There was an early docking coming up in Skagway in the morning. Docking always wakes me up.