5/9/23: Juneau, Alaska: A Capital with No Roads to Anywhere!

 

Our fourth day of sailing north from Vancouver brought us to Juneau, the state capital, the third largest city, and, though technically on the mainland, it is for all intents and purposes an island. There are only 50 miles of roads around Juneau so it's really hard to get lost there! The only way in or out of town is by boat or plane - don't know about you but I think I'd be way too stir-crazy to deal with that sort of isolation.

But its soaring mountains lead to superb hiking just minutes from downtown and Mendenhall Glacier, a massive glacier that calves into a lake only a dozen miles up the road. I read that NOT visiting Mendenhall is like going to Rome and skipping the Colosseum. The glacier is the biggest lure for most people coming to Juneau and it was certainly the first on our itinerary.

Our driver to the glacier, Archie, was a member of the Tlingit tribe and grew up on an island 45 miles south of Juneau. His family are huge fishermen, catching up to 4,500 fish a day. He certainly caught our attention when he told us to look for golf balls in the trees - huh? 'Golf balls' were really some of the 600 eagles that make their habitat in the trees along the Egan Highway, the second most expensive highway in the US! More fun facts from Archie about the country's 49th state:

• Tiny Juneau with a population of just 32,000 still had an international airport, providing one flight a week to Canada counts!
• If you're a fan of McDonald's filet-o-fish sandwiches like Steven is, know all that fish come from Alaskan waters.
• Bears run 35 mph so don't ever try and run from them!
• A not-so-fun fact if you're not a rain-lover - There are 115 days in Juneau in the summer but 112 of them are rainy!

Archie joked when he said to make a stop at the glacier, he'd slow down to 55 mph so we could all do a tuck and roll to get out of the bus! Luckily, we all survived intact. Too funny seeing a car with Colorado license plates in the glacier parking lot in landlocked Juneau!

Mendenhall was indeed a spectacular sight but it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be for us. There's no doubt after touring much of the world that we've been extremely fortunate to witness some of the top sights anywhere, including jaw-dropping glaciers in Antarctica and Patagonia that will always be the ones to compare all others. Does that make us jaded - yes absolutely.

Please don't get me wrong - knowing it flowed 13 miles from its source in the Juneau Icefield, and that it had a half-mile face before ending at Mendenhall Lake was darn impressive. The icing on the cake was being there on a lovely sunny day with snowcapped mountains and blue skies that brought out the riveting blue ice.

Steven and I hoped to experience together the stunning falls near the glacier up close on the Nuggets Fall Trail but after getting pretty far on my walker, I decided the terrain was not meant for walkers. Before my accident last fall in Guatemala, I never really gave a thought of walkers as being anything but pedestrians! Steven continued while I turned back and looked for an easier trail and view of the falls.

A beaver, a possum, a bear, a porcupine - as many thoughts as there were people on the trail guessing! 

Photo Point was perfect for me: a brief walk on a paved path with a beautiful view of the glacier. Back in 1935, visitors were able to touch the face of the glacier from this point.

The stone indicated evidence of the glacier's movement down the valley as boulders that were carried under the glacier left glacial grooves or scars in the bedrock that was left behind.

Somewhere over by Nugget Falls was lucky Steven admiring them from close up. 

Naomi: Here I was with Hugo, your walker aka rollator that was essential as we trudged through much of Alaska. No wonder that later in the trip Hugo decided it needed some well-deserved R&R and TLC! Thanks, Chris, for designing the lightest bag possible for me - wow, did I love my snazzy red CP purse.

A cute Covid sign in the glacier visitor center!

Tree stumps were visible once the high tide had receded in the Mendenhall Wetlands as we got a bus back to the city.

During low tide in Salmon Creek, some of the 150 or so eagles pick off salmon if the bears don't get to them first, that is!

Even though Ketichan where we'd stopped the day before is known as, or perhaps promotes itself as, the Totem Pole Capital of Alaska, Juneau was sure doing its damndest to give Ketichan a run for its money.

Watching seaplanes take off and land one almost after another on the waterfront was a novelty. 

Murals were everywhere in Juneau - one of the most stunning ones was on the side of City Hall was The Raven which depicted all the clan animals gazing as the first human was born from a clamshell.

The Tsimshian clan house in the foyer of the Walter Soboleff Center is thought to be the largest carved and painted house front in the world. It was designed to honor the master artists of the 1800s and also be a teaching tool for current and future generations of Northwest Coast artists.

As many of you might know, Steven and I began a fun trek during the Covid years visiting the state capitals and their capitol buildings. For us, it was a real treat touring Alaska's Capitol Building, likely the country's most understated as it resembled an overgrown high school! No gold dome adorned the roof, gilt and marble were missing but we were still curious enough to wander around inside. It's pretty safe to say, the capitol's few charms didn't lure other day trippers from the cruise ships but it was nice to know we'd now 'crossed it off the list' of capitols as far as we could remember.

In case you're curious, Alaska was a Russian colony from 1744 until the USA bought it in 1867 for over $7 million dollars. It achieved statehood in 1959.

Juneau wasn't always Alaska's capital. The city of Sitka was the capital of Russian Alaska and early American Alaska but by 1900 the region's commerce had mostly moved to Joe Juneau's former mining camp which caused officials to establish Juneau as the capital. When the population and a lot of the state's economic activity moved northwest after WW II, some residents wanted the capital to be moved to Anchorage. After much debate, the movement collapsed when the steep price for the new capitol in the 1970s angered voters.

Catty corner to the capitol was the Juneau-Douglas City Museum which focused on gold and mining displays. We were more impressed, however, by the majestic totem pole out front!

The capitol's lone security guide evidently didn't have much to do that afternoon as we saw him taking a stroll outside which certainly wouldn't have been the case in any big city capital! When we asked him the shortest way to St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church so we could avoid as many of the town's hills as possible, he secreted us through a private walkway in the capitol that dropped us off on the street above.

Against the backdrop of Mt. Juneau, the onion-domed church was the state's oldest Russian Orthodox church dated from 1895. Sadly, the exterior looked a little worse for wear because of the moisture from the rainforest around it. As it was still too early in the tourist season, we were unable to view any of the original vestments and religious relics from Russia.

Here was another step street just like the ones we'd spotted in Ketichan! No way could I manage to ascend those steps in Hugo!

I dare you to try going downhill while holding onto a walker for dear life - it was fun once we returned to the bottom but not til then!

No doubt the city's liking of the color gray had something to do with the constantly cloudy skies!

One of the features we really liked about the city was the Juneau Seawalk, a lovely boardwalk along the ocean. As we drove by earlier in the bus, we were lucky enough to spot a life-size sculpture of a breaching humpback whale but I was too pooped later that afternoon to walk back and snag a picture.

I can't remember whether that was our behemoth cruise ship in the background or from another cruise line!

Next post: Our last day ashore in Skagway, a town with one main street that looked like it came out of a film set it was so perfect, or was that too perfect? You can decide.

Posted on June 16th, 2023, from Soggy Denver whose gorgeous foothills visible from our front porch are resembling the Irish countryside more and more every day with the record amounts of rain we're receiving. Too bad we can't get send some of it to my native Canada to fight the many forest fires that are raging out of control. Keep safe, please.