8/12/16 Juneau--part 2
We took the free shuttle from the dock to downtown. Then found the Juneau Tours person to find out where to wait for the shuttle to Mendenhall Glacier. (I had pre-purchased the vouchers --$30/person roundtrip, $25 for DD12) The shuttle runs every ½ hr. Our driver to the glacier is Ben Jackson, a native of the Tlingit tribe. He’s one of the last few people fluent in the Tlingit language. He teaches the language at the schools. He told us many interesting facts on our way to the glacier. Before we got off the bus he said they don’t allow food there due to the bears…so we leave our bag of snacks and if we manage to catch the ‘right’ bus back, we’ll get them back later.
At Mendenhall Glacier, we walk around the ‘open’ parts of the Steep Creek trail to see the sockeye salmon (they turn red in fresh water), and hoping to see some bears—none there when we were there.
Raven?
We get the kids Tongass National Forest Junior Ranger packets and they fill out the workbooks during our visit. On the trail to Nugget Falls I hear ‘big’ noises in the woods and see fur…and more fur, about 15 feet off the trail—it is dense woods, so I don’t get any pictures, but yeah, we ‘saw’ 3 black bear cubs (found out later Mama bear had sent them on their own a week before and they’ve been sticking together since then.) We finish the hike to Nugget Falls.
Mendenhall Glacier
Behind the family, an iceberg on Mendenhall Lake:
On the way back, DD12 is complaining about the walk again…and yeah, she’s getting hungry. (DH and I would have loved to do the 3.5 mile East Glacier Loop trail, but the kids didn't...this trail was enough for them.) I leave her on a bench to wait for DD16 and DH while I hurry down Photo Point trail, to well…take some photos! DH joins me, and a local woman offers to take a picture of us. She mentions that we’re lucky it’s a cloudy day—the blues in the glacier really show on cloudy days.
We meet back up with the kids, go to the visitor center, watch the movie, kids finish their workbooks, get their badges, we stamp our National Park passport books, and manage to get down to our shuttle stop in time to catch the bus with our food on it. (Of course we find out there are black bears down by Steep Creek NOW, but we don’t want to miss the bus with our food…) We get on the bus, get our food, kids have a snack. We have a different driver now (she is originally from Florida), so we get her viewpoint of the area on the way back. By the time we get back to downtown Juneau it is raining—the weather was good while we were at the glacier. It’s now around 1:30PM and the town is becoming crowded with the passengers of 2 more cruise ships. DH and the kids go jewelry shopping—looking for Alaskan Alex and Ani bracelets. I go to the Alaska Shirt Company to do my souvenir shopping (shirts and postcards), kids join me later and pick out shirts for themselves. Then we wait for a shuttle back to the dock area, and take pictures of an Eagle nearby.
We get on the ship on deck 1 today, and immediately notice the cocoa and cookies! We must have missed them on Skagway day. We stop at the DVC desk to redeem our token from the nice card in our room and get 4 new DVC hats.
We come back to room to find that Anna left us 4 chocolates!
We notice that we’ve had another call from DVC, thanking members for talking to other people on the ship. We can stop at the desk and get a copy of the print of Walt and Lillian that hangs in all the staterooms. (I pick it up the next day.) DH and I go and bring snacks back for the kids, and more cocoa. Today’s ‘fruit’ ice cream flavors are banana and strawberry. We get ready for semi-formal night—DD12 gets her shower done before we leave port, but DD16 just took too long to get going—I told her now is your chance to shower while we’re not moving, but no…she’s either reading something on her phone or watching a movie on the TV. I have NO pictures of us dressed up. I’d say we had ‘casual’ dresses on--but they are dresses vs. the jeans/t-shirts we've been wearing other nights.