Week One

My cruise along the Alaskan coast lasted 7 days. I ended up going up and back twice while there so I got a lot of pictures from the same few ports. Here are some from week 1. The weather was perfect as you may see from the photos. Most of the time it was in the 80's in the day and 40's at night. These first pictures are from the first port, Ketchikan.

The next batch of photos here are of Juneau, AK. I started the day taking a cable car up Mt. Roberts. From there I hiked around some of the trails.

After I hiked around the mountain, I decided to catch a bus to the Mendenhall Glacier. It was only $5 and a short ride.

As usual more pictures of rocks and ice. Today was the hottest day ever recorded in Juneau, 91. I think I brought some Florida weather with me. It was nice but I really expected much cooler weather. It is really hard to show the proper perspective with these photos. The glacier is about 2 miles from the sign in the first picture. I hiked around the glacial lake to within a mile of it. I didn't get past the waterfall. The water was around 40 degrees there and I didn't have any dry clothes to put on after crossing water. There were reports of a couple of bears nearby, but I didn't see them, just their tracks.

Skagway was a gold rush town. I am not going into any history here but there is lots of info about it on the net. It, like most port towns, depend on tourism to bolster their economy. Lots of jewelry shops and other nick-nack shops dispersed through some nicer shops and galleries. I always went to the cyber cafe, got a double mocha and checked my e-mail. One of the local attractions here is the White Pass-Yukon Railway. I took a trip about 30 miles to the Canadian border one day there and a bike trip to Dyea, a nearby (former) gold rush town.