Juneau - 239/365

We hit the city of Juneau today! 

 We docked early again, around 7:00am (11:00am home time). There were two other cruise ships already docked, so we unfortunately had a far dock. 

Our excursion was meeting at 8:45, but Jim and I wanted to try to explore a little of Juneau, before we headed out of town to the rain forest and glacier. We got off right at 7:00 and hopped a bus to town. The ride was barely 5 minutes, but it helped a lot. We started toward the center of the city. It was a cute little city, not unlike most others, except really tiny and no buildings higher than maybe 5 stories. 

Jim, being a history buff, wanted to check out the Governor's Mansion, which was on the other side of town. We started hoofing it through the city, using our Google Maps app to help us along the way. What we didn't realize is, since Alaska is so mountainous, any staircase higher than 100 steps is listed as a "street". This helped us get quite confused..LOL! Where a street was supposed to be, it looked like it was just a cliff. Here, we would need to go down a huge flight of steps to continue on. The actual paved main roads were STRAIGHT UP! We've never seen anything like it! It was CRAZY! Needless to say, in the amount of time we had, we never did get right up to the mansion. We had a lot of laughs while trying to maneuver a stroller on those roads though. It was an adventure for sure! 

We made it back to the ship in time to go to the gardens and glacier. For this adventure it was, Jim, Reagan, Nana, Papa, Raymond, Jenn, Chips & Kathy. 

Our first stop was Glacier Gardens Rainforest Adventure. What an amazing place! It's a rainforest and botanical garden all in one! The minute you get off the bus, you see these tall tree trunks that have beautiful flowers growing out of them. They called them their upside down trees. The flowers were just GORGEOUS! From there, we hopped on an extra large golf cart for a ride through the rainforest to an overlook. As much of Alaska, the road went STRAIGHT UP through the forest, right next to cliffs with no guard rails. A few of us were quite nervous during our ride up! It was amazing though. We got to the overlook and were happy to see the ride was totally worth it! Breathtaking views overlooking the area of Mendenhall Valley. 

Soon enough, we were on our way back DOWN the mountain in our golf cart. The decent was just as scary as going up! I had the thought numerous times, "Don't fail, breaks...." 

Once we were safe at the bottom, it was off to the Mendenhall Glacier! WOW, words cannot describe how beautiful this was. We got there and took a wooded trail down to the glacier and Nugget falls. When you came out of the trees, there was a little beach area where you could walk right up to the gushing falls and take in the glacier. 

Jim went straight for the falls. He climbed up on some rocks and stuck his hand in the water. Obviously it was ICE COLD. We have never been able to get that close to a waterfall that BIG! It was really something! Between the waterfall and the glacier, you didn't know what to stare at. The glacier was just the brightest blue leading into it's own lake. There were HUGE icebergs in the water that had broken off the glacier itself. It was just the most amazing sight. We just wish we had more time there. It was that gorgeous! 

We eventually had to take the path back to the bus, where we got to see a porcupine in a tree! We didn't realize porcupines lived in Alaska, so that was pretty cool! 

Once we got back on the ship, Dora and Sponge Bob were greeting everyone as they got back on, so she was pretty excited.
After boarding, we all hit the back patio to grab some snacks, then went up to the sports deck to watch Raymond play in a soccer shoot out. It was supposed to be adults, but only two showed up, so it ended up being Ray and another guy, playing a game of soccer with a bunch of little ones. They formed two little teams and had a great time. It was great! We were all cheering and having a ball. 

Jim and Reagan even got a little swimming in after the soccer tournament!

After all that, we were all pooped, so we went to take naps before we got into Sawyer Glacier. 

This was just a ship drive by tour, so we planned on just having a balcony party. What a total HOOT! All 15 of us gathered in the Downard/Cvetkovic suite which had two balconies. We ordered room service pizza, wine, beer buckets and just hung out while cruising the amazing fjords to the glacier. It was just stunning! Just beautiful mountains, caves and waterfalls around every turn. 

The only bummer was, the bay of the glacier was FULL of ice, so we couldn't get up close to it. We still had an amazing time at our private party. 

After the party broke up, Jim, Reagan, Nana, Papa, Ed, Pam and I hit Spinnakers for a little dancing. Reagan totally got into boogieing on the dance floor. There was no one dancing, so she had the place to herself. She would grab one of us at a time to dance with her. Uncle Eddie even got in on the action! 

What a truly amazing day!! 

The photo of the day is Jim and I at the glacier. Reagan was snoozing, here...LOL!

 The next is the Zabel girls at the balcony party...

 Raymond playing soccer on the ship!

And finally, Reagan taking in a dance with Uncle Ed.