Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Last Ones On Last Room Last Towel

Juneau our capital city has a cosmopolitan, touristy, gritty feel to it. The location at the head of Gastineau Channel  is magnificent, and  the scenery alone should inspire our elected officials to   keep Alaska sustainable.


The downtown is the tourist mecca. Wandering around early on Monday morning lots of the stores were closed. I thought maybe everyone took Monday off but the reason it was so peaceful is because 4 cruise ships were still on their way to the port. Having been on Island Princess I knew that very soon thousands of humans with different color stickers on their lapels would soon be riding the buses and wandering the shops.
Seeing The Sights
We decided to go to one of the more popular shore excursions Mendenhall Glacier before they got there.
The retreating  glacier is impressive flowing down from the Juneau ice field with its face in Mendenhall lake.  Nugget falls off to the right of the glacier and a short hike away is perhaps more impressive, and certainly moving faster.

Nugget Falls

Our plan to see the glacier before the buses arrived worked, but on the way back from the falls the trail was busy with cruisers hurrying off to get close to the falls in the time they had.
Pollinating Just Off The Falls Trail
 
We rode the very smooth two lane rode out  to Echo cove and discovered a paved section of the proposed Lynn Canal Highway that ended at a turn around with a gravel road that we learned  from another rider went a few miles more.
We headed back into town to mingle with the tourists, and have some dinner. We had time to kill since we wouldn’t be leaving until 1:00 am on the MV Columbia.
We had the downtown to ourselves again as the cruisers went home to their ships, and after a while we headed out to the ferry terminal to wait for our ship in lane 7.

Golden Princess At Port Juneau

We had to wait in lane 7 until everyone else had boarded. We finally got down the ramp and got the bikes tied down. The  purser had the key to our room which was the last room at the stern of the ship. Since we were tired the Spartan room was nice enough, and it even had a towel. One towel that we figured must have been the last towel on board.

 

 

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