Juneau was one of my favorite places on the entire trip. For one, it was the only place where there was sunshine, albeit for only a few hours. But there was no rain! And we had a very long stay in port. Finally, I got to sit in the outdoor jacuzzi on the Lido deck and the weather was decent.

Juneau is the (current) capital of the great state of Alaska. From what I heard during my time in Juneau, there is a movement afoot to move the capital from Juneau to Anchorage. Anchorage is a bigger city to be sure. And Juneau is only accessible via land or sea - there are no roads into and out of Juneau. There are roads in Juneau, however. Anchorage also seems to be open all year, as it were. Juneau is a very touristy place, at least it was to my eyes. Once the cruise ships stop coming and the weather gets colder, a lot of place closes down until next year.

I did enjoy my time in Juneau. I had booked the Mendenall Lake Canoe Adventure excursion and I was one of 5 (!) that went on that from the ship. Our guide does not live there all year round - he works seasonally. He said the 5 was plenty; the canoe can fit up to 12 but, if there are that many, about 1/2 of them don't paddle most of the time. All 5 of us did paddle, so it worked out just fine.

The Excursion lasted about 4 hours and we paddled about 4 1/2 miles from the north shore of the Lake across the Lake up to within about 100 feet of the foot of the Mendenhall Glacier. A truly impressive sight from that vantage point, to be sure. It is dangerous to go any closer due to possibility of calving - chunks of the glacier breaking off into the lake. As it was, we passed several large former pieces of glacier as we canoed about the Lake.

After spending a bit of time near the Glacier, we paddled over to a small beach near Nugget Falls, which was on the south side of the Lake. When I say the beach was next to the Falls, I mean it was right next to the Falls - I could have walked right into the bottom of the Falls as they entered the Lake. Here, we exited the canoe and had a quick snack of hot cider, cheese, and crackers.

The pictures from the Excursion are below.

After the Excursion, I spent a lot of time souvenir shopping in downtown Juneau. This is the part of town that closes up towards the end of September. There were a lot of shops selling a lot of the same thing but it was fun just to walk up and down what felt like very safe but unfamiliar streets. My one regret is that I did not take the tram to to the top of the hills to the east of town. However, my thinking at the time is that, while there was no rain, the day became increasingly cloudy as it went on and the visibility would have been poor at best.