the journal

 Our trip to Juneau began with a tour around town and ended with a 1000 feet ascent up the hill next to the Mendenhall Glacier.  The city of Juneau was quite nice once you get out of the tourist spots.  The hike was in the biggest range of rainforest in the world – the Pacific Coast rainforest.  I was a bit surprised to know that this area was such a major rainforest but the thick vegetation and significant variety of fungi was indicative of the climate.  We hiked up really rugged and steep terrain to get to this beautiful vista.  Enjoy the photos.

Skagway was originally a gold rush town with a rich history of growth during the early 20th century.  Now the cruise ships tour a charming little town set in a beautiful valley that’s part of the rainforest.  The “ads” or grafitti that you see on the rocks is reminiscent of the way the mining town advertised supplies, housing and services in the mining days.  This was the first thing we saw entering the port.  The fish swimming upstream is part of an effort to repopulate the salmon population in a stream that’s the main attraction in the city park. Touring the town brought us to the most photographed building in Skagway.  This building was constructed entirely of driftwood and has remained since 1899.  Risa and I did a little shopping in town and then had the best lunch of Alaskan King Crab legs. They truly are all they’re cracked up to be.  It was also at this lunch that we fell in love with the Alaska Brewing Company products.  Man those beers are fabulous… especially the Amber Ale and White Beer.  All this was prior to our cycling through the rainforest to the flats.  We were in the wilderness with enormous trees and little bike paths.  We even saw the remains of a mining town that had only a cemetery and the front of building left in an overgrown forest.  I really liked this cycling experience.

If I were opening this page on a website I wouldn’t believe it was real.  But alas, I was there, took this photo and reveled in the incredible beauty of something so rare in my lifetime.  It’s really hard to comprehend the magnitude of the glaciers.  The size of the icebergs are also hard to understand from the deck of a huge cruise ship.  The only photos that represent this are those of the smaller ship moving closer to the ice.  There are two days of glacier glory.  The first day was sunny and warm in Glacier Bay.  The second day was cold and foggy in College Fjord.  But on the second day there were seals.  Many seals resting on the ice at the foot of the glaciers.  Both days illicited a mantra that I repeated to myself over and over – I am close to heaven, what a lucky girl I am.

So the ship landed in Whittier, Alaska.  This is a charming and unusual town.  There are only about 800 people living in the city and almost all of them live in one building.  The city became quite important during WWII so soldiers could protect the USA from the Japanese.  Because Whittier is raining all the time there is great cloud cover so the military installations wouldn’t be detected.  There is also a very long tunnel going through the mountain and it happens to be the second longest in the US.  But enough tourist information… we were on the bus tour because the outing we had planned was cancelled.  So instead we got to see a fabulous animal preserve and the Native Heritage Center.

Leaving Anchorage on the Alaska Railroad was spectacular.  We were seated in the dome car with great views.  Of course when we passed Wasilla we were able to see Russia…  After a few hours on the train we arrived at the absolutely charming town of Talkeetna.  This is where they filmed one of my favorite TV shows – “Northern Exposure”.  They filmed here for about four years but the cameras kept freezing so they moved to the lower 48.  We left Talkeetna in a jet boat that took us to the lodge via three of Alaska’s rivers that converge at several places.  The river cruise gave us great views of the eagles and a peek at Mount McKinley.  Leaving the boat was interesting as we pulled up to the shore underneath a highway overpass.  The lodge was a nice wilderness place to stay.  Ain’t Alaska grand?