{"id":9669,"date":"2011-09-21T01:01:06","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T08:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=9669"},"modified":"2011-09-21T01:01:06","modified_gmt":"2011-09-21T08:01:06","slug":"9669","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=9669","title":{"rendered":"Flight, Feast Fit for Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>JUNEAU \u2014 This is the capital of Alaska<\/a>, although a lot of people here still wonder why, and it’s also where we committed to taking a float plane to a feast. But we must digress…<\/p>\n

Having just disembarked from the Coral Princess<\/a>, with tickets in hand for the flight-and-feast shore excursion, we began to wonder if we’d made a mistake. Everybody else in our group of 18 seemed to be going to some glacier, or to catch fish they couldn’t keep, or to get a ride on a dog sled in the snow. Up to this point, we’d thoroughly enjoyed every excursion we’d taken and, frankly, we thought maybe our luck had simply run out.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In cruise ports, there are always local vendors pitching trips to wherever. On the pier at Juneau<\/a>, there was a long line of little booths that seemed to be joined at the corners. We decided to approach one of the vendors, explaining that we weren’t customers since we already had something booked.<\/p>\n

“Where are you going?” asked Abe Tanha.<\/p>\n

“The Taku Lodge Flight and Feast.”<\/p>\n

“You’re gonna love it,” said Abe. “It was the first tour I ever went on when I came here five years ago. That spoiled it for me. Nothing else was ever that good.”<\/p>\n

“Excellent.”<\/p>\n

“You’re gonna fly over five glaciers…”<\/p>\n

“This is sounding better.”<\/p>\n

“…and when you get to the lodge there’s a guy with a 10-foot stick to keep the bears from getting closer than four or five feet from you.”<\/p>\n

There was one other concern that Abe, a nice young guy even though he’s a Red Sox fan, wasn’t able to alleviate. One of us doesn’t swim, and she’s afraid of heights.<\/p>\n

As we waited to board one of the five single-engine DeHavilland Otters that was noisily approaching the dock, there was some trepidation. Well, for one of us. What followed was a rewarding, fascinating experience. We knew from the name of the excursion that we’d have more salmon than we could eat, but the “flight” part was the eye-opener. Along with the bear.<\/p>\n

The pilot, Sam Wright (no relation to the Wright brothers), quickly had us high enough to be looking down at glaciers. We’d spent a chunk of the previous week looking at glaciers \"\"<\/a>and, now that you mention it, they were starting to look the same. Or at least like blood relatives. What we saw from both sides of the single-engine Otter were massive glaciers that looked like giant pieces of marshmallow laid side by each by a being greater than the ones who walk on earth. The most massive was the Taku Glacier, five miles wide and 57 miles long. It’s among Alaska’s top 10 in size but the nearby Mendenhall Glacier gets all the attention, because you can drive to it. Access is everything.<\/p>\n

The Taku is reachable by float plane or by taking a long, long boat ride.<\/p>\n

The lodge has a story of its own, one too long to tell here. But there is a man who guards \"\"<\/a>the feasters from the bears with a stick a little shorter than 10 feet. The bear, arriving on cue when the dinner bell rings, didn’t get closer to us than 60 feet \u2014 although if he decided one of us looked better than the salmon lunch he could have \u2014 but it was close enough for us to enjoy the bear’s barbecue. There was no salmon, just the drippings from the barbecue onto the sand beneath. No bear ever tasted better sand!<\/p>\n

The ride back was less spectacular only because we’d already seen this part of the Juneau Icefield, and the surrounding mountains, a few hours earlier.<\/p>\n

So yes, Abe was right. This excursion was the best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JUNEAU \u2014 This is the capital of Alaska, although a lot of people here still wonder why, and it’s also where we committed to taking a float plane to a feast. But we must digress… Having just disembarked from the Coral Princess, with tickets in hand for the flight-and-feast shore excursion, we began to wonder… Continue reading Flight, Feast Fit for Surprise<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,31,36,15],"tags":[45,157,51,717,64,93],"class_list":["post-9669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","category-ports","category-reviews","category-stories","tag-alaska","tag-alaska-cruises","tag-cruise-ports","tag-juneau","tag-princess-cruise","tag-shore-excursions","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}