On Wednesday, August 24th we docked in Juneau. We had some pretty incredible excursions planned, including a tram ride up Mount Roberts, dog sledding, and a two-hour glacier trek, so we were totally pumped and ready to go! We scarfed a quick breakfast on board and were the first people off the ship at 7 a.m. when we pulled into port. Unfortunately the atmosphere was teeming with an impenetrable layer of low, heavy cloud cover and it was rainy, not exactly ideal weather for, well, anything. But this kind of weather is just part of Alaska and we knew that, so we came prepared to have an amazing time regardless of the weather. One of the tour guides told us that this was the third straight week of rain in Juneau, so they were pretty ready for the skies to clear too!
While we had a stockpile of adventurous excursions on our agenda, many of the people on our cruise had one thing and one thing only planned for Juneau: diamond shopping. Alaska, and Juneau in particular, is known for their quality diamond and gemstone jewelry for a mere fraction of the price that you’ll find them in the lower 48 states. Without exaggerating there is literally a solid line of at least twenty + large jewelry shops on the main drag of Juneau, waiting for your business immediately after you step foot off the ship. To a whole heck of a lot of people on the cruise, this was thrilling. To us, not so much. We came to see Alaska, not the insides of thirty jewelry stores. I’d done some research on our ports of call ahead of time, so I sort of knew what to expect. That being said, we made sure to book excursions that would get us out of the touristy drag of Juneau and into the great outdoors to do something truly unique. Still, despite our great line-up of activities, Ted and I both agreed that Juneau was our least favorite port of call, but only because it was so geared toward tourists and shopping. If you make a concerted effort to look past that and check out some areas a little further out, it’s a really nice place to visit and offers a lot of neat things to see and do. We walked the town, got a traditional Russian dumpling carryout dish at Pel’Meni for lunch, (Alaska has a rich Russian heritage), picked up some dry smoked salmon to take home, and enjoyed a celebratory dinner of delicious Alaskan seafood for Ted’s birthday.
As always, click to enlarge….the details are pretty tremendous! And if you’re only going to enlarge one set of pictures, make it the glacier ones because they are insanely cool!
Our first excursion was dog sledding in the rainforest. There was an actual on-snow Iditarod-style dog sledding excursion, but I’d read that the on-snow dog sledding excursions have a tendency to get cancelled often due to inclement weather on the glaciers. Sledding through the rainforest was far less expensive (allowing us to put the money toward our glacier excursion!) and still gave us the opportunity to learn about the dog sled culture, the supplies and equipment they use, and it still gave us time to spend with the pups. If we go back to Alaska, we’ll definitely try the snow sledding one next time though! When we first arrived at the sledding camp the dogs were so excited to see people because they know it means that they’ll get to run soon – they bark like crazy and howl and jump up and down like little whirling dervishes. Our sled was pulled by 15 dogs capable of hauling up to 3,000 lbs. We went for a ride through the rainforest while the musher stood on the back of the cart giving directional commands and signals to the dogs. By this time it was raining steadily so we were absolutely soaked and pretty chilled. But it was a lot of fun to go sledding, meet each of the dogs and experience their individual personalities (the troublemaker, the shy guy, the easily distracted pup, the leader of the pack, etc.), learn about the real snow sleds, the Iditarod, and all the balms, harnesses, foods, blankets and medications they use on the dogs out on the sled routes, cuddle up with the new puppies who will soon be trained to pull sleds of their very own, and cross a 300 ft. suspension bridge over the rushing Fish Creek (a Door County reference – we were thrilled!). All in all, we had fun, but I’d recommend saving up your cash and shelling out for the on-snow glacier sledding if you possibly make it happen. For us doing both the glacier trek and the glacier dog sledding was a financial impossibility so we chose the glacier trek over the snow sledding since we’ve both seen/lived in snow before but hadn’t walked on a glacier. It’s a tough call, but they’re both expensive excursions so you kind of have to pick and choose. And either way you get to experience dog sledding!
Next we went up the Mount Roberts tramway that carries you from the base of Mount Roberts, near the docks, to the top of the mountain which is a nature preserve overlooking Juneau. It’s a really steep tram ride and, on a clear day, I imagine it’s an incredible view! But we were stuck in a thick cloud pretty much all day, so we were able to see very little. We did get to see a bald eagle who’d been injured and is now under the care of the raptor center and we did take a quick hike through some of the trails at the top of the mountain, but otherwise it was too cold, rainy, and cloudy to do much else. On the way down we spotted an eagle in the wild and, with the help of our trusty monocular and a camera, we got to observe him up close!
And finally, our favorite part of the day that almost wasn’t….glacier trekking! Because the clouds were so low and the rain was making the glaciers slick, the two-hour glacier trek we were so looking forward to was cancelled….twice. I was bummed beyond belief when I learned that we wouldn’t be getting to slip on those trekking suits and ice boots, grab our ice poles, and helicopter up to the top of a glacier to the blue ice caves, dip my fingers in a glacial pond, or learn how to ice climb. This was probably the one excursion I was looking forward to the most. Miraculously, as only sheer dumb luck would have it, there was another company who did helicopter flights out onto the glaciers but this company went to a different glacier that was further south (or north, or something…) that wasn’t under such a severe weather advisory, so they were still running flights. Since our initial excursion was cancelled and the cost fully refunded because of the weather, we quickly booked a last-minute tour with the other company, Era. The new excursion only gave us a 30-minute walkabout on the glacier instead of a two hour extensive trek, but we thought 30-minutes was just right with the poor weather and we still had a completely amazing experience that we were lucky to have at all! On the bus ride back into Juneau we learned that our group of six was the last group to get to go on the glacier because right after we arrived back to the helicopter hanger the weather on all the glaciers became too treacherous with the rain and clouds so the helicopters could no longer land on them and the rest of the flights for the time being were cancelled.
The experience was just incredible – both the helicopter ride and the glacier! First they gear you up with boots to help you get traction on the glacier, then they make sure everyone has a life vest on. They walk you out to the windy tarmac and, based on weights and balances, assign you a seat in the helicopter. After all six passengers are safely packed in like sardines you get a briefing on how to operate some of the crucial buttons, levers, doors, etc. of the helicopter, learn how to use the headsets, and meet your pilot. We had a great pilot! He had a lot of knowledge and was able to answer any question we threw at him, but he also had a lot of cool stories. He said that the previous week he and another pilot were helicoptering above the glaciers to check the weather conditions for passenger flights and he saw a brown bear hanging out on one of the glaciers! Can you even imagine how beautiful that must’ve been?
The helicopter lifts off the ground and gives you a really neat birds-eye view of Juneau, the mountains, the ocean, and the glaciers. The flight is about 30 minutes or so each way and flies you over several key glaciers before the pilot decides which one will be the best to land on. Once you’re on ground and the propeller has stopped spinning you’re free to get out and explore! We walked a part of the glacier, took in the awesome landscape, learned a lot about the glaciers from our pilot and tasted glacial water. The ice chunk the pilot gave me was so dense and tight that if I took it back with me I could have left it out on my dresser on the cruise ship for the rest of the week and it still wouldn’t have melted, he said. If we go back to Alaska, I’d totally want to do this again! It’s just so surreal to be standing on something that literally shaped the world we live on but may no longer be there one day.
Up next: Adventures in Sitka!
