2022-05-17: Juneau, Alaska

We are in Juneau, Alaska today. Due to a medical emergency, the ship arrived in Juneau around midnight last night instead of it’s scheduled time of 7:00am this morning. We woke up around 8:00am to get cleaned up and dressed for the day. We headed to the Oceanview Cafe for a quick breakfast before heading off the ship at 9:30am. We had a tour to the Mendenhall Glacier and a salmon bake today. There were two other ships in port this morning; the Norwegian Bliss and Royal Princess.

We met our tour bus on the dock just outside the ship. We hit the road shortly after boarding the bus. The drive to the Mendenhall Glacier was only about 15 or 20 minutes. Along the way we got to see some of Juneau and we also saw some bald eagles. The population of Juneau is about 32,000 people. It has been the capital of Alaska since it was moved from Sitka in 1906. The driver gave us some information about the area and the glacier during the drive. The glacier has been receding due to global warming.

The bus dropped us off at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitors Center. There are a few paths you can take from there. We first headed to a viewing area that overlooks the glacier and the lake at it’s base. The glacier is quite pretty. It was an overcast day which apparently is better for seeing the different colours of the glacier ice.

We continued down another trail from there that was about a mile long that took us to Nugget Falls which is just beside the mouth of the glacier. The lake the falls and glacier run into had some icebergs that we assume broke off the glacier floating around. The water of the lake was very silty. Our bus driver mentioned that some people like to drink from the water fall, but it’s very silty and tastes like dirt, so drink it at your own risk. We elected to avoid drinking the dirty water. It was a very pretty area. After spending some time enjoying the views, we returned down the path to the visitors center. Amanda was quite intrigued by the ferns that were popping up along the pathway.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to enter the visitors center. We could have used another half hour at least at the site but our time was up. We boarded the bus and headed back to Juneau for our next stop which was the Gold Creek Salmon Bake. This was an outdoor area next to Salmon Creek that runs through Juneau where gold prospectors worked back in the day. There is still some old equipment along the river from those days. There is a short path up to a small waterfall that was quite pretty. The main attraction here is the salmon bake of course. It’s basically an open air restaurant. They had a small buffet with some chicken and some side dishes such as salad, cornbread, rice, potatoes, pickles, and beets. They had a wood fired grill beside the buffet where they cooked chunks of fresh salmon. They also offered a brown sugar sauce for the salmon if desired. The meal was delicious. Especially the salmon and the cornbread. We bought a pint of the Alaskan Brewing Company’s Hazy IPA that they were selling on site. It was too hoppy for our taste. Our bus and driver left one we were dropped off at the salmon bake. They were running shuttles from the restaurant back to the ships. The only issue we had with that, is they were waiting until the busses were full before leaving instead of running them on a schedule. We just missed one of the shuttles and ended up waiting over half an hour before the next bus left.

We saw Norwegian Bliss leaving port from the shuttle but noticed there was another Norwegian ship at the dock where Norwegian Bliss left from. The Norwegian Bliss and Norwegian Encore traded places. The shuttle dropped us off right in front of our ship which was docked in downtown Juneau. We called home and talked to Patrick and Darrell’s parents quickly. Then we explored the area and poked through the shops for a couple of hours. We debated going up the Mt. Roberts Tram but they were asking $45/person to ride the tram. That’s more expensive than we remember it being and we’ve done the tram before so we elected to skip it.

We headed back to the ship and relaxed in our room for a bit before heading up to the pool deck. We were going to make use of the hot tubs but they were full when we arrived. We went for a swim in the solarium pool instead while we waited for the hot tubs to clear up. The solarium pool was heated to a warm temperature anyway. We were disappointed that the folks in the hot tubs apparently decided the hot tubs were for their enjoyment only and parked themselves there forever. We finally gave up on waiting for them to leave and headed back to our room.

We got ourselves cleaned up and headed to the dining room for dinner. The dining room was quieter this evening since we were in port until 9:00pm today. Amanda had spinach and ricotta ravioli, braised short ribs, and an apple tart tatin for dinner. Darrell had cream of broccoli soup, New York striploin, and the apple tart tatin. There was an olive oil cremeux on the dessert menu and we didn’t know what it was. Darrell asked the waiter and he was happy to explain it’s a type of custard made with olive oil. He decided to bring one of those for us to try as well. It was quite tasty.

We headed to the theatre after dinner for tonight’s show. A magician by the name of Gabriel was today’s entertainment. We enjoyed the show. There were a few illusions that we could see through but others that were really well done. We actually saw him wandering around Icy Strait Point yesterday not realizing he was one of the entertainers. He remember noticing he seemed to be very serious they day before for some reason. The ship was underway to our next port of Skagway by the time the show was over. We returned to our room after the show and relaxed a bit before calling it a night.