Day Trip To Juneau

We woke up Thursday to sun streaming in through the windows.  Of course the sun rises here at 3:45 in the morning and sets at 10:45 p.m.

We are staying at Garden City RV Park surrounded by mountains.

Today we took the Fjord Express to Juneau.  We headed to the Skagway Small Boat Harbor at 7:30.

Shortly, our ride appeared and we boarded.

Before we left, I snapped this picture of a blue heron catching his morning meal.

We left the harbor heading to Haines to pick up the rest of the group. There would be 52 of us on the fast ferry boat.

We passed this waterfalls

before we arrived at Haines.

We picked up the rest of the passengers and headed to Juneau.  The only word that keeps coming to mind to describe the scenery is SPECTACULAR!!!

 It was a 3 hour journey from Skagway to Juneau and we also stopped to do some wildlife watching.  We passed a colony of Steller sea lions who were extremely noisy, but very cute.

We saw many eagles on treetops and soaring high in the sky.

The most wonderful sight of all was the humpback whale breaching.  We followed the spouts of water the whale would make when breathing and then all of a sudden it came completely out of the water. It was an absolutely amazing sight.

There were glaciers galore as we continued our journey.

This one even has a waterfall coming off of it at the bottom.

We came to this separation in the ocean where the glacial water (the darker water) meets the ocean water (blue green) looking like two totally separated bodies of water with a definite line of distinction.

We arrived in Juneau and boarded a bus to downtown.

Jim and I immediately headed to the dock where the floatplanes were landing and taking off and watched for awhile.  We also had a delicious fish and chips lunch overlooking the harbor.

After lunch, we headed over the the Mount Roberts Tramway to get a birdseye view of the city.

We were told it was a beautiful day in Juneau (we knew that already :)  On average, there are only 86 sunny days a year.  We were so excited that we were able to visit on one of them!

As the tram car went hight, the view opened up below us.

From the top it looked like this.

The left side

and the right side.

After three hours on our own, we loaded up on the bus to visit Mendenhall Glacier.  The blue ice could be vividly seen as we viewed the glacier.   We also went to the Visitor's Center to watch the movie about its history.

There were also these pretty yellow flowers that looked like they had been waxed, just beautiful.

We finished our glacier tour and headed back to the boat for our return trip. We saw several spouts from humpbacks but never saw one emerge.

We passed this Princess cruise liner heading to Juneau from Skagway.

We also passed the Eldred Rock Lighthouse.  It was beautiful reflecting into the water.

We arrived back in Skagway at 8:15 after having a most wonderful adventure.