Juneau

Our next stop was Juneau which is a city that is only accessed by air or water and is the centre of Alaska’s government, which seems strange when you can’t get there by road only by air and water. It was quite a big town and was home to the Tlingit Natives for thousands of years until gold rush fever developed late in the 19th century. 

Once gold fever started an enterprising mining engineer named George Pilz offered a reward to any native who could produce gold. Auk Tlingit Chief Kowee presented a sizeable nugget and that was all that was needed for Pilz and his cohorts Richard Harris and Joseph Juneau to start prospecting.

The town was originally named Harrisburg but the locals changed the name to Juneau to reflect their allegiance to co-founder Joseph Juneau. It was established as Alaska’s capital in 1906.

This is a mural telling the story of how man came to be according to the Tlingit legend.

Our day started at 9.30 with a trip to Mendenhall Glacier, one of the highlights of Juneau. It was a short drive out to the glacier and our driver Dave regaled us with some tales about how the city was established and the characters that played a part in the development of the town. One of the stories was about the fact that outside the Federal Building there is a statue of pelicans (unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of this) and the story goes that Juneau and Florida were both getting statues made of their state bird emblem by the same artist and when they were finished the statues were sent to the wrong city. So Juneau whose emblem is a bald eagle ended up with pelicans and Florida ended up with a bald eagle one and they never bothered to change them. 

We arrived at the glacier and what a fabulous sight it was! It was a bit overcast and gloomy but that only made the colours stand out more. The glacier is 12 miles long, a half mile wide and from 300 to 1800 feet deep. It is slowly retreating and this is what has formed the Mendenhall Lake. There were a number of walking trails and we chose to do the Photo Point and Nugget Falls trails. You could easily have spent lots of time hiking around but these two were the most popular.

It was just magnificent to be able to get so  close to it even if we were actually a long way away. The colour of the blue was fabulous and we certainly made the most of the opportunities for photos. It wasn’t quite as crowded as Lake Louise which was really nice. 

 


We walked around the trail to Nugget Falls which again was an impressive amount of water coming over the falls. This part of the world has so many fabulous waterfalls and waterways, it is just magic. 

Nugget Falls

Nugget falls and the Glacier

After a few more photos and a walk back to the information centre to see the displays where we didn’t stay long we decided we would have a look over the opposite side  in an area called Steep Creek where we had heard that bears like to frequent. As we walked along the walkway we saw salmon in the creek. As we walked around the trail we could see where a bear had wandered through due to the trampled bushes near the creek. But no bears were found by us.

Steep Creek

Our next excursion was to the Mount Roberts Tramway which takes you 1800 feet up to the top of Mount Roberts. We decided to have lunch atop the mountain as there were great views across the town. The rain really started to fall while we were there but it was all good. There was a lot of crab options on the menu and the tram guide on the way up recommended the crab nachos and that sounded good to me. Our waitress was and Aussie who came from Perth and who looked like she was a left over from the 60s. As she brought out the lunches my crab nachos was enormous and it was the small size!!! Cheryl ordered 1/2 a crab and she was happy that she finally got her crab!

 

After a delicious lunch we made our way back downtown to have a look around. Like Ketchikan there were quite a few historic buildings but Juneau didn’t have the nice feel about it that Ketchikan had. Possibly because it is a much bigger city and it has developed away from the town centre. Like Ketchikan there were a lot of tourist shops and especially jewellery ones. This seems to be a theme on the cruise and in the ports that this is the place to buy jewellery with Tanzanite being a popular stone around and about. I found my Pandora Alaska charm and that’s about all the shopping I was going to do.

Juneau is home to Heritage Coffee an international award-winning roaster so we decided to see what all the fuss was about and can I say it was the nicest coffee I had had the whole time we have been away. I know that everyone says you can’t get a decent coffee over here and for the most part they were correct but this one was very nice. Just a pity that we can’t take it with us everywhere we go. Even the coffee on the ship is served in a bucket and isn’t great. 

We left John and Cheryl after this as they went back to the ship and we thought we would have a bit of a look around but after awhile we decided we would just do a short walk and see if we could get a drink at the Red Dog saloon a famous watering hole in the downtown area. As we walked past the harbour we were admiring a boat which was docked there and 2 young locals told us it was Oprah Winfrey’s boat. I didn’t actually believe but they convinced us that it was correct. Anyway it was a tale to tell when we got back to the ship. 

Supposedly Oprah Winfrey's boat

We went past the Red Dog Saloon, but the line was out the door and the place was packed. When you consider there were 4 cruise boats in that day it was no wonder it was packed. Apparently Wyatt Earp’s gun hangs above the bar and the legend says that Wyatt Earp when he came into town on the way to the gold rush had to check his guns into the Marshall’s office in Juneau on June 27 1900 and didn't have time to collect them before the boat sailed and they were never claimed. 

We also saw this chalkboard on one of the streets where people had written on it what they wanted to do before they died and there were some really nice things written, some were about travel, some were about getting married and some were about just getting their life together.

After our little walk around the rain started to fall again so we made our way back to the ship for a rest before an easy dinner as we had had such a big lunch. Another day which has flown by.