Now for those of you that don’t know, Juneau is the capital of Alaska and the only way to reach the town is by water or by air.  There are no roads that lead to Juneau.  Crazy huh?  That is why we arrived by ship .

Juneau was a bigger city than Skagway and looked more than just a tourist destination.  Of course it should, it IS the capital!

This is the dock we were tied to

On the dock

city of Juneau

City of Juneau

Juneau harbor

So you can see, a much bigger city than Skagway.

While we waited for the time for our excursion in Juneau to start, we were having some bloodies on the aft deck.  There was a ship behind us that was getting ready to ship off.

Ship in front of us

As it was pulling away I saw Bull Winkle the moose on the other ship

Is that Bull Winkle?

Boy!  That looked like a fun ship to be on 

Our excursion this time was a tour of Juneau City and a trip to the Mendenhall Glacier.  We had to go a little further along the dock to get our bus.  There we saw the cable car

Cable Car

Cable Ride

I bet that is quite the view up at the top.

We found our bus

There’s our bus!

and started our tour.  Turns out our bus driver was an actual person that lives in Juneau.  He told us how the state of Alaska pays each and every citizen of Alaska $1000 per year if they live there for a year.  That can go along way to paying for your kids education or if you don’t have kids, how about a cruise to the lower 48?  Well, anyway, the guy took us across the water so we could get a picture of our ship

There’s our ship

See all those float planes hanging around the bow?  They look like toys next to the ship.  This ship is supposed to be the length of 3 football fields.  For those of you that don’t watch football, that’s 1080 for 3 of them.  That made me feel like I was getting some exercise on the ship when we walked from end to end going to the various bars.   Anywho, our next stop was the Mendenhall Glacier.   Apparently they have had to move their visitor center twice

Mendenhall Glacier Visitor’s Center current location

because the glacier has receded so much over the years.  Here some pictures show how much

1958

1985

2003

2010

Current day

I took this one the day we were there.  Quite a difference in 60 years, or even just 15 years.

While we were there I had to use the head and I mean REALLY use the head 

As I was sitting in there doing my business I noticed this sign on the back of the door

In the bathroom at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center

WHAT???!!!!  I can’t even believe they had to put that up there to remind someone the correct way to sit on a toilet.  Is the “no” for people who have a bidet?  Is this “no” for people who are used to leaning up against their snowmobiles?  Is this “no” for people who are used to leaning again trees? Come on ladies!  This is the 21st century!  You MUST know how to use a proper toilet by now?  Well, anyway, I got a big chuckle out of that and I just had to take a picture.  I’ve never seen that before, have you?

We went back outside after I was done with my business and we could see a falls in the distance

Falls by the Mendenhall Glacier

They did have some trails you could follow around but not much shade so we just hung around the visitor center until our bus came back.  The tour of the town was nice but I found this kind of boring.  You can look up pictures on the internet to see this and go on that cable car instead .

When we got back to town we had a few hours to kill so we decided to stop into a bar for a local brew

Bar we stopped in to have a drink

The girls were dressed like 1800 bar maids and ours gave me crap when I ordered a Bud Light…”You come all the way from the lower 48 to Alaska and you order a Bud Light?”.  Ok, you got me, I ended up ordering an Alaskan brew….not to bad.  We also decided to take a little walk thru the shops.  Gary found himself a new friend

Gary’s new friend

So cute!  I, of course, had to go up and give him a squeeze.  The bear not Gary , I’ll give him a squeeze later.

When we were done checking out the town, we headed on board the ship.  Every time we went off and on the ship, we had to show them our room key.  When we first got on the ship they took our picture so that when they scanned our room key, our picture popped up.  They also have you put your cells, purses, back-packs, bags etc on a conveyor belt that is run thru an X-ray machine and you pass thru a medal detector…”Please remove your hat”, just like at the airport.  Gives you a sense of comfort knowing anyone with an AK-47 won’t be let on the boat.

So after a long day in town, we headed out for a nice cool drink

Drinks, drinks and more drinks

I think those might be Mai Tai’s.  Our next stop would be Ketchikan!

Oh BTW.  I wore out the battery in the camera I brought with us and I forgot to pack the charger for it, DUH!  Luckily, Gary’s phone has a very good camera.  All the pictures from Juneau on, are from his phone camera.  I was very impressed.