We arrived in Juneau in the early morning. Since I managed to crawl out of bed with a moderate amount of assistance, it was pretty obvious that I was not going to be doing anything involving major activity or sports today. George, on the other hand, was off to hike glacier areas (no helicopters were taken nor was the environment risked in the process of doing this).
I wandered carefully off the ship and headed into town. Not surprising, at the next dock there were dozens of booths selling tickets to the Mendenhall Glacier. At 1/3 the price of the NCL arranged tour, I figured that I might be able to stand riding in the bus (school bus – you remember those?).
The scenery on the way up showed eagles (didn’t have the camera out in time) lots of track housing and pickup trucks and snowmobiles on blocks in front yards.
The Glacier itself? I will let you judge. It is receding at an alarming rate but still is breath taking even from a distance. I turned down the opportunity to hike 45 minutes over uneven terrain to the waterfall electing instead to just sit on a bench and look at both the people and the calves of ice in the glacier lake. The blue line is real and comes from freeze/thaw and crystallization of the compressed ice and snow so that layer reflects light differently from that around it.
Heading back down to town, I wandered around. Now that I know to look for yarn and quilt shops, it was not hard to find Changing Tides (lovely quilts, patterns and loon fabric) and A Fine Skein where I bought a lovely project bag, a few more stitch-markers and a small bit of lovely yarn.
Back to the ship, I was wiped. I will be posting Glacier Bay as a separate entry since otherwise the number of pictures would be overwhelming.
I had never realised that blue color is real. Even the snowmen we made up there had that blue color to the snow where the light hit it just so. I usually like a stronger indigo but that was such a lovely sight to me.