Floatplane Trip to Taku Lodge

I should have cropped this to make it look like I was the pilot.

As crew we can sometimes obtain discounted rates for some of the activities/excursions that are available to the guests. One such activity that the casino staff took advantage of was the Taku Glacier Lodge Flight & Feast.



The excursion was set in Juneau. Initially I had a slight problem in that I was scheduled for In-Port Manning (IPM) duty that day. Whenever the ship is in port, a certain percentage of the crew is required to stay on board in the event of an emergency. We'll help show the guests how to evacuate the ship. In practice, we're simply stuck on the ship. IPM days are usually when I do laundry, catch up on writing, or better yet sleep most of the day away. IPM can pose a problem when it occurs during a port you'd like to explore or, as in my case, have an activity planned. So you find another crewmember who's in your assigned group and work out an IPM duty switch with them, which is what I did to get my Juneau day free.

That day we went down to the docks where the floatplanes are located and there we all lied about how much we weigh on the sign-in sheet before we boarded our plane. Each person was given a window seat.

I've flown in small planes like this a handful of times and I always get a thrill out of them because it's as close as I'll probably ever get to flying a plane myself. This time was particularly exciting because we would be taking off and landing on water. I'd seen several floatplanes landing from my vantage point at the front of the ship, so I knew that the landings were very smooth. I expected as much from the take-off and wasn't disappointed. It was exactly like lifting off from an asphalt runway and very "airy" since there wasn't a steep incline to power us up to a high altitude.

The pilot flew us very low over the Norris and Mendenhall Glaciers. Glaciers are very interesting because they're essentially rivers that have frozen in place. Temperature shifts cause the ice to sink, rise and reform into scale-like formations.

Patches of water appear brilliantly blue, more intense than Caribbean waters, because the ice crystals absorb every wavelength of the color spectrum except blue, which they reflect back at your eye.

As we neared our destination we flew over mountains and lakes. Through our headphones we were given a pre-recorded presentation about what we were looking at but I couldn’t pay attention to a word of it with such visual distractions.

Three lakes.

I think we all held our breaths for the landing since none of us had landed on water before. Just as on take-off, the landing was smoother than a land-based one would be. There was the tiniest of jolts to let us know we'd made contact with the surface of the water and then we were steered in to the docks where final destination was the Taku Lodge, a large cabin which is nicely isolated and feels as though it's located on a private island. From there we had an impressive view of a glacier:

It's eerie how much this looks like a tidal wave.

and a visit from the local wildlife.

The bear comes out whenever he smells salmon being cooked at the lodge's fire pit. A worker with a big stick keeps the bear treed so no one gets hurt. After the food is distributed during lunch and all the guests are safely inside the lodge, the bear will venture over to the fire pit and eat the sand beneath the grills which has absorbed the dripped salmon oils.

Lunch consisted of white and pink salmon, cinnamon apples, barbeque baked beans, coleslaw and sourdough and herb breads. My salmon was a bit overcooked but the general consensus was that the food was very delicious. After we ate we explored the grounds and the gift shop and then it was time to re-board our floatplane for the flight back to Juneau.

Our floatplanes landing.

Juneau from the sky.