Alaska Part 4 - Juneau

Alaska Part 4 - Juneau

Haiiiiiiiiiii

Welcome to part 4 of my journey to Alaska. The state where the government gives it's citizens money just for living there... yep, its almost paradise.

Juneau (Pop 30,000 or so)

That is until you reach the state capital of Juneau and you realise that although they have plenty of money to give their residents, they don't have enough money to build a bus stop within 2 miles of the Ferry Terminal.

In saying that, Juneau was very scenic and had some really great hikes as well as a "drive-in" glacier.
I arrived there in early in the morning and my swiss buddy Christian and I did the 2 mile hike to the bus stop in pretty dominant rain.

Side rant: can NRL commentators and Daily Telegraph reporters come up with a new word to describe Andrew Johns. I am so sick of hearing how he "dominated" a game. Pick up a thesaurus or something for gods sake. There must be at least 10 billion other words you can use instead of dominant. Here are a few I just thought of - Over-rated, Fat, Injury-Prone

Anyways, after getting rained on a bit and repeated failed attempts by Christian to hitch-hike, we finally arrived at the bus stop and engaged in conversation with a Juneau art student who was very mature for a 17 year old, (at least he seemed to think so). He had nothing of importance to say really (a bit like this blog), but seemed to revel in using up every bit of free air time with some sort of tidbit about his life and what not. (also like this blog) Thankfully the bus came along and took us up to the town (via every other road in Juneau) and we were able to drop our bags off at the hostel ($10 per night, 9-5 lockout??, daily chore). Rather than waste the day, Christian and I grabbed something to eat at the local Cruise Ship favourite pub (very gimmicky, full of Moose heads and bear heads and saw-dust and all sorts of other stuff) called .. umm, i forget, maybe it will come to me later. Anyway, we ate there and then decided to catch the bus to the Mendenhall Glacier. The famous "Drive-In Glacier". First though here is a photo of Juneau


Juneau Picture 1
A street of Juneau. I hear its like Europe. Sorta.

The Mendenhall Glacier (Population .. its a glacier dumbass)

Once again, the bus dropped us off about 2 miles away from the Mendenhall glacier (I guess the government doesn't like to encourage the city buses to drive "into" the glacier in case the taxi drivers or tour bus drivers kick up a stink, getting free money each year obviously isn't enough for them. Gerrreaaady )

The Glacier itself was well worth the walk and was much better than the Athabasca Glacier that I saw in the Rockies. I've got comparison pictures just below.

Mendenhall Glacier

Juneau 2
The two above pictures are both of the Mendenhall Glacier. The second one is blue because im a tortured artist of some description.

Pile of Dirt
The Athabasca Glacier. It's that brown colour because they let people walk on it. The shovel was left there by Farmer Joe.

We ended up doing a hike called the "East Glacier Loop Trail". If anyone ever goes to Juneau and has a few hours to kill I recommend doing this. It had a great view of the Glacier, a really cool waterfall (pictured below) and some side tracks that you can take if you are feeling adventurous (which I was) that take you down to this river that is so bear country its not funny. Not that I saw any bears mind you, although the ranger made special mention of the amount of bear activity that had been occuring in the area. The more I hear that the more I think it is just a bunch of crap designed to make visitors lives slightly more interesting or more paranoid about seeing a bear. This is about as close as I got to a bear while I was doing the hike

Bear Poo
Bear Sighting

Yeah, thats right.. Bear poo. I don't want to think of the alternative if it ain't bear poo so we will just assume it was and move on ehhhhhhh.

AJ Falls
Here is me looking like a complete dork in front of AJ Falls, accessible by doing the East Glacier Trail or via skydiving out of a harrier jump jet from 20,000 feet.

After this hike we walked back to the bus stop and took it back to the hostel. After completing my chore for the night (I had to vaccuum the floor of the room I was in) Christian and I went out and played some pool, had a few beers, then crashed into bed. (Lots of walking was done)

Juneau Day 2 Soon.

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Comments

Comment I agree but its saturday now so I had better go

Sat Apr 15, 2006 2:43 am MST by loan

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