Juneau, Alaska's capitol, is another small city which can only be accessed by boat or plane. You can't get there via roadways. I didn't take any pictures of the city as there was nothing too impressive--a few government buildings. Our tour guide showed us several areas around the town which took a few minutes and then we drove for about 20 minutes to a national park and the Mendenhall glacier. This was an area with a visitor's center, several hiking trails for various viewpoints of the glacier and a stream teaming with red salmon and waterfalls into a lake. The whole area was gorgeous. It was cloudy as it usually is. However, a few minutes before we were scheduled to leave, the sun peaked through and shone directly on the glacier highlighting it's rugged beauty.
We could see a lot of red salmon in this stream but didn't have the skills to take a good photo so just take our word for it. We saw red salmon.
We had to be back on the ship by 1 p.m. that day as the captain had plans to take us down a fjord to see another glacier. Due to a large amount of ice flow in Tracey's Arm, a very popular fjord, he chose to take us down Endicott's Arm. We weren't aware of the switch at the time. We just knew we had limited daylight to make it down the arm and then do a couple of three sixty turns to see the glacier at the end and then get back out of the arm before sunset. It was a chilly, but gorgeous afternoon and Steve and I spent the entire time on the ship's deck enjoying the amazing scenery. We couldn't understand why so many passengers didn't venture out as it was spectacular. It was definitely one of our favorite parts of the trip. All the way down the arm, we had mountains, glaciers and waterfalls all around us. We also had occasional calves of floating ice.
Here is Steve with Dawes glacier directly behind him with the typical blue ice and dirt trails that looked like vehicle tracks.
We loved our afternoon with the glaciers and beauty of the mountains that surround them.
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