Day Eight - Juneau

We got here while we were asleep, so there are no arrival pictures. Since Juneau is the state capitol, I thought this was our best chance at civilization and shipwide wifi. I am still out of luck. Surprisingly, the only port so far that had wifi was Whittier – our embarkation point. If I’d known that, I would have logged on sooner while we were there. Vancouver will probably have it but I don’t know how much opportunity there will be to use it.

There is a lot to see and do here in Juneau. We are only taking a quick tour and a visit to Mendenhall Glacier, which is apparently the main feature here, but there are hiking, fishing, flying and zipline tours. Who knew there was an Alaskan rainforest?

Mendenhall is much more visible than Margerie and much more accessible, although I overheard a man saying he never wanted to get on another bus for the rest of his life. By the time I realized there was a path to the waterfall next to the glacier, I didn’t have time to get there and back before the bus came back to pick us up. One of the park service workers was a Brendan Caley from Wisconsin and he was fun to talk to. Another was a Juneau native who’d never left the state until last year when he went to college in Utah. Cute blond boy. I asked what he thought. He said he found it very dry compared to rainy Juneau and was surprised by the sunny days and blue sky. “I always thought the sky was white.” Plus, the weather was more variable there and he didn't like getting into a hot car and burning his hand on the seatbelt hardware. Juneau is probably the most temperate area in Alaska, with a mean winter temperature of 32 degrees. He said it does occasionally get “pretty dang hot” as in the 90s, but the norm is in the 70s for summer. He said he couldn’t possibly take anything in the 100s and he’d probably melt.

I did get beautiful pictures, and also snapped the taxidermy of the glacier (black) bear and Alexander Archipelago Wolf. Our bus driver said there are four colors of black bear: black, brown, glacier grey and something else that I don’t remember. He also said that since much of Juneau was carved out by the Mendenhall Glacier which pressurized the landscape, the ground is actually rising about an inch a year. We learned that there is a spot in Juneau called the triple threat because it’s on a fault line, a flood zone and an avalanche area. That’s where they built their school complex. Not exactly kid friendly.

We saw several bald eagles from a distance on the bus. The time at the glacier was much longer than we were originally told, which left no time to see any of Juneau on our own. I asked if we could be dropped off in town to save us the walking-back-to-town time, which gave a handful of us about 35 minutes to wander, take pics, pick up souvenirs and get back to the ship by all aboard. It was really rushed and harsh but I did pick up the little nothings I wanted and we were right on time. Saw two bald eagles from the cabin but they were flying, so I couldn’t take pictures of them. It took the last-minuters not quite 10 minutes to board and then it turned out that three people were still missing. They have such tight security here that I can’t imagine anyone sneaking on without being detected but I was told that is more often the case than that they were left in town. The captain announced that if they didn’t call in and they weren’t found after scouring the ship within a few minutes of our scheduled departure time of 4pm, we were leaving. We left 15 minutes late and there was no announcement as to whether we left with or without them. Lucy, we’re ho-ome! I spoke to a crew member at the front desk and she said if the missing people were crew, there would be no waiting for them, they would have to meet the ship at the next port and then gather up their stuff and go home, no questions asked. I guess the rest of the crew would have to pick up the slack.

Harris and Mingdhi, breakfast companions from the other day, took the Glacier Gardens Rainforest tour and we met up with them at the glacier. He shared some of his pictures with us. You would never think to find that type of flora in Alaska. There were some trees that died, were re-planted upside-down and the roots covered with flowers. I don’t know what kind of trees or why they died. But it was strange and beautiful.