As many of you know, if you follow me on Facebook, Pops and I went on an Alaskan cruise this past June (over his 65th birthday).
Pops had never been on a cruise before and I had been on a short one to the Bahamas with my mom a few years ago. That trip followed the tail end of a hurricane so, I would say, it didn’t go so well for me.
We weren’t sure if we’d like cruising, but, luckily, we found out we LOVED it!
I did find out I have a horrible time relaxing…but I’ll dive into that more in another post.
We left out of Seattle on our 7 day adventure, with our first stop being Alaska’s capital city, Juneau.
As you can see on the sign above, the yellow dot to the lower right-hand side of the state shape is where Juneau is located.
We were very fortunate on this trip to have a personal tour guide. Pop’s childhood friend Nick’s sister Stephanie has lived in Juneau for about 30 years and, lucky for us, was available to give us a tour around.
After a quick drive along Juneau’s main roadway looking for a mama bear and her cubs (that Stephanie had seen earlier) we headed over to the Mendenhall Glacier.
I must say, it was pretty spectacular to me to see a glacier – oh, and check out the amazing (truly unbelievable) weather we had!
There was a trail along the water’s edge that you could take to get a closer view. So, of course, Pops & I headed out on the 45 minute round trip hike to see what we could see.
The views were just amazing…and as you can see there’s a waterfall towards the right of the photo above – this is where we’re heading.
We made it to the waterfall – the rush of cold, misty water was amazing and also felt good!
Lots of people had the same idea!
Here’s a view facing back towards the other side of the lake:
And a closer view of the glacier:
At the visitor’s center we found out the deeper blue color shown in parts of the glacier are areas that have just calved (where chunks of the glacier have fallen into the water).
After visiting the glacier, Stephanie drove us out to St. Theresa’s Shrine.
Such a beautiful, peaceful place in the woods.
As we got there, the weather turned and it started to rain – but as we found out in Juneau, wait 5 minutes and the weather will change again!
Thanks to Stephanie for such a lovely day touring around Juneau. I know the weather isn’t always so spectacular, but I’m so happy we got to experience it and to see such gorgeous sites.
We’re then departed Juneau…next stop Skagway.
P.S. to view more of my Juneau photos, please visit my Lita’s World Flickr page.
