We drove into Haines the day before we had our Ferry booked for Juneau, just to be sure we wouldn't miss it. It turned out there wasn't much to do in Haines, most places were still shut until tourist season started.
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| Wildflowers near Juneau |
After doing a bit of window shopping, we started sussing out a camp ground for the night. After checking out the beach side one, which was just a gravel car park, and one that had zero facilities but was still charging $15, we ended up at a manicured one kept by some lovely older people.
We stretched our budget for a decent dinner, and then stretched it more for a take away lunch that cost almost the same. I didn't expect fish and chips to cost more than Australia, but there you go.
The next day we had time to kill, so we tried to investigate more sights. We decided $15 each was too much for the raptor centre, and drove to the set of "White Fang". We found this deserted, and so wet and bought coffee and sat in the sun for a bit.
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| The set of White Fang |
We got into Juneau about an hour late, and Brandon's family was having kittens. We reassured them we had not died, and that we had no service because we were in the middle of nowhere.
I'm just going to do Juneau in one big lump rather than going through it day by day. One day we dropped Brandon's family in downtown Juneau and drove to the Mt Roberts trail head. It took us about 1hour and 10minutes to get to the top, as a pretty average pace. And the others joined us soon after, via the tramway.
The two of us hiked to the cross you can see from the loop trail, which was still covered in snow. The view was marginally better from the top, and I got intimate with a devils club plant on the way down. We had lunch at the top, after I had picked some prickles out of my but cheek, and headed back down to town. Brandon and myself for free thanks to having spent more than $10 at the top. The return trip is pretty expensive otherwise at $35.
Another day in Juneau was spent at the Mendenhall Glacier. I mistakenly thought the information centre would actually have some information about the West Glacier walk, and the others ended up having to get a taxi back to town.
We started on the trail with very little information about time for distance, because I hadn't looked it up, assuming we could grab some information at the centre. At about the one and a half hour mark we came across a black bear. And we decided to turn back. When we came across a group of 3, including one Alaskan, we tagged along with them for the rest of the hike.
And boy were we glad we had! It was somewhere between 3 and 4 hours return, including a fair amount of time spent at the glacier. We walked into the ice cave, took heaps of photos, I had mud fall on my head from within the glacier. And then we walked back via the rocks that follow the shore line, sort of follow the signs that mark the glacier recession.
I recommend this hike immensely, and it is quite easy to follow, and easy to find the ice cave. However, you might die in the cave and if that happens it's on your own head (like literally the glacier might collapse on your head, crushing you)... Up to you :)
Our time in Juneau was probably spent a bit slower than our usual pace, so the other main thing we did was go to the state museum, which was pretty good. So here's some other photos.
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| Downtown Juneau |
We found downtown Juneau to become quite seedy feeling after about 8pm at night, and everywhere stops cooking dinner at 9pm. I wouldn't feel comfortable walking around town on my own after 9pm, and it's still light! There seemed to be a lot of homeless, and just North of town we saw a number of tents and shanty shacks sitting in juxtaposition to the big cruise liners.
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| exhibits at the museum |
One day Brandon and I also walked some of the "Perseverance trail". It was a really enjoyable hike, mostly uphill on the way in and then mostly downhill on the way out. The views up and down the valley were really pretty, and the steep drop off beside the walk quite impressive.
We flew over to Sitka, where our cruise would start. We walked to the totem park one day, and did the short and easy walk around the park. It's not terribly thrilling, but it was still a nice walk.
Just nearby the totem park is the Science Centre, where they also release fish fry from. They had a small halibut fish in a tank, and that was really cool to see up close. There was also a pretty big touch tank, which we had fun with.
We also went to "Fortress of the Bear" and "the Raptor Centre", but I'll cover those in my cruise post, since we did them with the cruise.
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