More Juneau
June 22, 2022
We woke up to a cloudy, rainy day. So the weather was not ideal for our ten hour cruise to Tracy Arm Fjord. And it was cold! Too cold to spend much time on deck.
We saw harbor seals floating on ice from South Stewart Glacier. This glacier’s face was over 200 feet high. While we were nearby, the glacier calved twice while our boat was surrounded by ice and icebergs. We also saw a few eagles, whales and black bears. The fjord’s walls were over one thousand feet high, with quite a few waterfalls. On a sunny or partly sunny day, it must be spectacular. Except for Glacier Bay, we did not have the best luck with boat tours on this trip.
They always look like they are waving!
We returned to Juneau to warm up around 6 p.m.
Thursday, June 23, 2022
This morning, the weather was much nicer, so we followed a walking tour of Old Juneau, and saw the Russian Orthodox Church, built in 1893 for Serbians who missed the religion.
Top is view from above the church, and bottom is the Sealaska Heritage Building, not far from our hotel.
We then looked at the State Capitol (completed in 1931, before statehood), with its Seward statue outside, and then went to the Juneau Douglas City Museum. The museum shows a 26 minute movie with a history of the area. We learned about Elizabeth Peratrovich, who was Vice President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood, which helped pass the Alaska Equal Rights Act in 1945.
We then walked down a long staircase lined with flowers to the Alaska State Museum in a very modern building. It has really well done, with exhibits of the native peoples in all parts of the state and it had sections dealing with the Russian occupation, the American acquisition, the gold rush period, World War II and the statehood period. It rivals (or perhaps surpasses) the Anchorage Museum in quality. Really great museum.
After lunch at a brewpub, we went to the Glacier Garden Rainforest exhibit, with its nice gardens. We were driven up the mountain in a golf cart to a very fine view of Juneau and Gastineau Canal. The land was restored after a big landslide, and some of the trees that were toppled have been made, upside down, into beautiful flower planters.
View from Glacier Gardens back toward Juneau.
We then drove north on the Glacier Highway, past the airport and Auke Bay, as far as the end of the paved road. There were beautiful views of the Chilkat Range, which separates Juneau from Glacier Bay.
It was warm today.
Views from our drive.
We returned to Juneau for our last evening. Tomorrow morning, we will turn in our rental car and fly to Sitka.
