Juneau, etc.

Tues, June 8, 2010- After a visit from some other campers to compare notes on our respective vans we headed in to Juneau to see more of the sights.  We started with a trip to the Mendenhall Glacier.

  It is an enormous piece of ice and you can see the face from many spots in town.  We went to the Visitor Center and learned a lot of interesting things about glaciers.  Then we hiked around the lake, the same one we had hiked beside the night before, to the huge waterfall coming off the glacier.
The lake, which we could only see a small part of from the campground trail, turned out to have lots of icebergs,

many of them as large as a a small car, perhaps a SmartCar.  Up close, the glacier didn't look like all of the lovely photos you see, all glistening and shiny.  Its face was dirty from grinding up the rocks under it, and it was split into tall, thin sections, called  seracs, which looked a bit like the pages of a book fanned out.  The waterfall thundered into the lake, coming from some melt point far up in the icefield that we couldn't see.

The ice in the lake had a lovely blue color, because the ice lets all colors of the spectrum pass through except blue.  There was also some pink, from an algae that grows in it occasionally.  The base of the waterfall was about a quarter mile from the face of the glacier.  It was interesting to note the various stages of regeneration of plant life near the face.  It has receded quite a bit in recent years, and you can tell how long an area has been ice free by what has started to grow.  We then proceeded in to the city and drove by the Governor's Mansion, which looked like a New England colonial.  Then a tour of the State House, which was originally the Territorial Headquarters.  We met a young woman on the tour who had just filed a couple of days before to run for a seat in the House of Representatives.  It was interesting to get her view of things.  Then we walked down to the docks to visit the Public Library, which was reputed to have a great view of Juneau.  That turned out to be true, as it is the top floor of a parking garage.  Great use of space, large, and a lovely facility.

Wed. was the most amazing day of the trip to date.  We had booked a boat trip to Tracey Arm to view the Sawyer Glacier.  We left the dock at 8 AM on a small boat with about 40 passengers.

The day was bright, sunny and warm.  It took about 4 hours to get to the Arm, and along the way we saw several whales.  Tracy Arm is a fjord, very deep water, very steep sides, and a lot of glacial effect characteristics.  At the mouth were our first two big icebergs- they made the ones in the lake the day before look tiny!

They were very sculpted and colored blue and white and glistened in the sun. The captain was a fine naturalist, and told us all sorts of interesting facts about everything we saw.  Toward the end of the fjord the ice floes increased, and there were hundreds of seals resting on them with their pups.

They pup there because they are fairly safe from the whales who would find them tasty, as the whales don't like ice because it distorts the sounds they navigate by.  We came around the corner and there was the face of the glacier.

The boat maneuvered into a position about 400 yards from the face, so close it felt that you could reach out and touch it.  It turns out that the majestic glacier, up close, isn't a static thing- it groans and cracks and pops and bits are always falling from it.  The sound when they break off travels slower than the falling ice, so the gunshot sounds come when the ice actually hits or has already hit the water.  It looked like the falling bits were just crumbs, until you looked at them through the binoculars and realized that they were the size of basketballs.  Probably not a good idea to kayak near the face!  Parts of the face were dark blue, and some was white.  When the dark blue sections start to get lighter blue, it's because cracks have appeared behind them and they are closer to breaking off.  The face of the glacier was about a half mile long and 200 feet high. After we had been there about an hour and a half  the glacier began to calve, breaking off large pieces - a couple of them were as big as some condos. 

The sound was awesome- in the best sense of the word.  Coming back, the ice pack had thickened so we threaded our way through it verrrrry slowly, clunking and shoving bits around.  On the way back up the fjord we stopped to look at the flowers that were blooming and the Arctic terns and guillemots that were nesting on the sheer cliffs.  It's amazing where flowers will find a footing. 

Then we saw a momma bear and her triplets clambering up the steep slope.  When we returned to Juneau we piked up a pizza and went out to the very beautiful Shrine de St. Therese.

It's a little stone church on a tiny island, and there is a beautifully landscaped walk where one can say the Stations of the Cross.  As we ate our pizza a pod of whales began blowing and surfacing just off shore, for our entertainment, I'm sure!

We arrived at the ferry terminal at 10pm for a 11:15pm boarding and a 1:15am departure.  Of course, we were told that the departure had been delayed until 3:00am, so we went to bed.  We actually left at 6:30am.  About 2:00am  we changed our tickets from Skagway to Haines.  We boarded the ferry and spent the 4 hour trip sleeping in one of the lounges.