Day 7 (part 1)

Juneau

We did so much this day that I'm going to break it into two or three posts.   We docked in Juneau at 7AM.  Ron was first off the ship at 8:30 for his tour to Mendenhall Glacier and ride up Mt. Roberts Tramway.  Hard as it is to believe, he passed on joining me for . . .

A seaplane ride over five glaciers!  Wha-hoo!

I was assigned to the yellow plane with just 5 other passengers.  The other planes had eight or even 10, but when the girl was assigning planes, you could see she saved the bigger people for last.  What does that tell me that I was in that group?

Even with only the six of us and the pilot, it seemed that we were never going to get airborne.  Hey!  That's like a bonus boat ride!

Then we were up and over the mountains.

Although we were told the names of all five glaciers, I only remember two.  This is one I forgot.

But I remember Taku Glacier, which we flew over for quite awhile.  At 36 miles long and 4845 feet thick, it's recognized as the thickest glacier known in the world.  (This is according to Wikipedia since I didn't remember anything the guide said.)  It covers an area of  386 square miles.

As you can see, glaciers are full of crevices, not smooth like I had always imagined them.

Then we were over the Juneau Icefield, an unbelievable 1500 square miles in size.  Here's the view out my window.

And out the other side.

Hey!  Aren't we getting a little close to the peaks?

Here's another one whose name is unknown to me.

But this one I know is Mendenhall Glacier.  Ron is at that visitors center in the upper left corner of the picture.  Oh, I think I see him waving.

Mendenhall has a lot of that nice blue color.

One more look back up the glacier.

From the sky, you can see that most of the residential area of Juneau clearly lies in the valley that was carved by Mendenhall Glacier.  They better hope there's not another ice age.

I don't know if you can see it, but the airport runway is near the bottom of the previous picture.  Right next to it is a man-made water runway for all the seaplanes.

Lastly, we passed downtown Juneau before landing.

This rivals the train ride for my favorite thing.