The Wood Between the Worlds

DAY 1: Portland to Juneau

This is the first airplane ride that the boys can remember, so it was pretty exciting for them as we were shoving out of Portland.


We arrived in Juneau after two pretty quick plane rides and we *thought* that we had 3.5 hours to kill until we were supposed to catch our ferry up to Skagway. Brent's sister (whom we were visiting in Skagway) arranged for us to have a rental car for that time so we could take a self tour of Juneau.

So we drove to downtown Juneau:
Juneau has a very pretty and quaint downtown area. It is very hilly and reminded us of San Fransisco or the Avenues in Salt Lake City. We had awesome bagels with fresh, delicious lox.

We took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up turning around in no other than the Alaska Governor's Mansion driveway. It wasn't until after we were down the street that we realized it was Sarah Pallin's Governor Mansion(!)...so we went back and did it again:

Kind of interesting...
although the locals later told us that she doesn't live in Juneau when the legislative sessions are over...
she stays at her home in Wasilla with her family.

Then we drove up the highway from downtown to the 'must see' sight in Juneau...
The Mendenhall Glacier:
Big, BIG Amazing Glacier!!
It comes from a large (gigantic), continues ice/glacier field that goes for miles and miles (The Juneau ice field, which is connected to some of the glaciers that we visited later on our trip). Because of this ice field, there are no roads in or out of Juneau.
Anyway, the Mendenhall Glacier is (probably?) the only glacier on this ice field that you can drive right up to from town. All the rest are way up high in the mountains. It's just an amazing sight to see this glacier coming out of the mountains and into the valley. The glacier melts into Mendenhall Lake, and there is a visitors center there with hiking trails and cruise ship tourists galore!
...there were so many Asian tourists there that I was feeling "camera technology inferiority"!
So...we wished that we could've stayed longer to play at the Mendenhall Glacier...but we were off to catch a ferry to our final destination: Skagway.
or so we thought...

We arrived at the Ferry terminal 1/2 hour before our ferry was supposed to leave, but alas...there was NO ferry, the building was completely closed (before the posted business hours on the door). We were dumbfounded...this was when we were introduced to what we call "Alaskan time." Oh yeah... Well, supposedly just because their official website posted the ferry departure time of 4:30 one week ago, they have every right to change that time to 3:00...leaving passengers stranded in Juneau for the night.

Well, we took a chance to look on the bright-side of the situation: we had the rental car for 24 hours and there were plenty of things left to see in Juneau...so we called our accommodation in Skagway and let them know that we wouldn't make it tonight (they were SO nice not to charge us), we called the rental car company and let them know that we were keeping the car and we found a great little Motel 8 with continental breakfast service and a VERY friendly staff! They even LOVED our kids, which unfortunately doesn't happen very often.

We found a really cool park and let the boys run off some steam. The sun came out and made for a very lovely evening. The sun is SO bright in Alaska this time of year. I found it amazing that when it's behind the clouds, it's chilly and you need a jacket. When the sun comes out, the temperature feels like it goes up 20+ degrees and the sun is scorching. And it just does NOT set...7 o'clock, 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock...the sun is still in the same place. We finally left to find some dinner and turn in for bed...even though at 11:00 it was still light outside.