Western Canadian Rockies (WCR) – Day 15 – Juneau

As we approach Juneau, we can see glaciers that are in the mountains along the waterway.
Today, Monday June 24 has us arriving in Juneau Alaska at 10:00 am.  On the way, we slow down so some passengers can disembark onto a boat as they head off to another location.

Along the way, we continue to see the mountains on both sides of the ship growing tall and snow capped beginning from the seaway.  While we head into Juneau harbor, the Coast Guard escorts us.  And yes, they were loaded and locked with 50mm ammunition.

Here is an old dock that has seen better days; I wonder if anyone uses this house or if the Town plans on waiting until it collapse into the sea before cleaning it up.

We have an excursion scheduled at 3:20 pm to go to Mendenhall Glacier.  In the mean time, after an early lunch we walked around town.  Here is Carmen in front of the Welcome sign.  As you can see, it was a very nice day.

We stopped at the Red Dog Saloon, mostly for the picture stop, since neither of us was hungry nor did we want to spend the time, so we stood in front while we had our picture taken.

As we walked around the town biding our time, we passed a number of jewelry shops, I mean a number of them, but except for one, we stayed out of them.  As you can see, the main street has the typical tourist shops of a tourist town.

Our excursion is in two parts, the first is to Mendenhall Glacier then we’ll ride the gondola to the top of Mount Roberts.  At the Mendenhall Glacier, we bypassed the information center to get a closer view of the glacier and Nugget Falls.  As we came around the bend, Carmen got this picture of the glacier in the background behind Nugget Falls.  What a fantastic view.  As you can see there is quite a bit of water coming down the falls, but still great.

Here is a close up view of the bottom third of the falls.  I used a 1/10 second exposure at f32.  There is a lot of water coming over the falls and any long exposure just creates a big white space.  I would have liked to have seen less water in the falls, but you get what you get when you only have an hour’s time. 

Before we left the Nugget Falls area, I took a picture of Carmen and myself in front of it.  What a fantastic place!

There were several icebergs in the lake from Mendenhall Glacier.  This one near Nugget Falls looked like a mushroom.

This one was very large and it would have been neat to have been here when it calved and fell off of the glacier.  It almost looks like a ship on the sea.

A close up of the glacier clearly shows the blue from the densely compressed glacier ice.

Leaving the glacier and returning back to the information center, I took a wide angle picture of both Mendenhall Glacier and Nugget Falls.  You can also see Photo Point where the people are standing in the lower left.  You can also see several icebergs in Mendenhall Lake even the little mushroom shaped berg just to the left of the falls.

Just as we were waiting for the bus to return and take us back to the ship, it started to thunder and began raining.  By the time we returned to the ship the rain had stopped and we were ready for our ride up the Mount Roberts Tramway.  Unfortunately, because of the lightning, the tramway was shut down and they were only returning people to the bottom of the mountain, so we never went up.  Maybe next time we’ll get to go.

Tomorrow we go to Skagway, until then, Bob and Carmen.