Juneau, Alaska

As you probably all know, one of our goals is to visit every state capital. Visiting Juneau, Alaska, has to qualify as the hardest and most expensive capital visit yet! Since you can’t drive to Juneau, your options are flying or taking the ferry (in our case, from Haines, following the route we were on moving towards Fairbanks). Since we wanted our truck with us in Juneau, we opted for the ferry. The ferry cost $290 round trip, and since the schedule is such that the soonest we could come back was two days after arriving, we had to spend two nights in Juneau. After doing the research, Dan found the best deal possible at The Alaskan Hotel in the heart of downtown Juneau - and that was $90 a night. We didn't think that was much of a deal to begin with, but we were even more convinced after getting there. Downtown consists of only about three blocks, but it is just like any typical downtown anywhere - just smaller! The Alaskan Hotel is the oldest operating hotel in Juneau, established in 1913, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. I honestly don't think they've done much to improve the place since then, either.

The problem with The Alaskan Hotel was, well, just about everything!! We didn't get the room we reserved, and had to lug our bags from one floor to another getting that straightened out. No place to park, so we ended up six blocks away with hills like San Francisco to deal with. The room was really hot, with no apparent way to cool it down, other than opening the windows. The TV didn't work, we didn't have enough towels, and everything reeked of cigarette smoke. I could go on, but you probably get the picture. The clientele was…different. We were on the third floor, and our windows opened out into the street. We didn't think that would be so bad once the businesses closed down. Well, we were wrong... things just got started at about 10:00 p.m. and went on until at least 4:00 a.m. - we lost track after a while. Right underneath us was a big street party going on, and on, and on…(police, ambulance, and fire truck came at one point and hauled one woman to the hospital and another to jail after they had it out). Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep that night. We checked out the next morning and checked in to the Super 8, nine miles from downtown. A lot less history, but a lot more comfort.

But back to the beginning. We arrived in Juneau on Friday afternoon and drove straight to the Mendenhall Glacier and spent a couple of hours walking around. It was a beautiful day and I was very excited to be seeing a real glacier. In the park, in addition to the glacier, we saw a trumpet swan, mountain goats way up the side of a mountain, and a porcupine. I hope to see more glaciers before leaving Alaska, but this was the first, and will always have special meaning. We figured we would tour the capital on Saturday, but we were foiled again! The capital building is only open Monday through Friday, so we missed our opportunity to see the inside, but got some shots of the exterior. We spent the day walking and driving in and around Juneau and the surrounding areas. We saw several cruise ships arrive and depart while we were there, and Juneau seems to cater to the tourists, and is in fact a big part of their economy.

I’ve included pictures from the glacier and some of downtown Juneau.

Drive Through Canada

On Thursday, May 1st we left Elma, Washington after a wonderful two-week visit with family. My mother lives in Hoquiam, my sister and her husband live in Aberdeen, my daughter and two granddaughters live in Seattle, and I also have a niece and nephew and their families that live in the area. I spent as much time as possible with my loved ones in those two weeks, and then before I knew it, time was upon us, and we were preparing to begin our journey to Fairbanks, Alaska. The first leg of our journey consisted of traveling through Canada, first through British Columbia, then the Yukon Territory, then crossing into Alaska 40 miles from Haines. If anyone is looking at the map, and wondering why we would follow that route to Fairbanks, it is because we wanted to visit Juneau (the capital of Alaska) prior to arriving in Fairbanks. The only way to Juneau is by ferry, and Haines, Alaska, was the most logical place for us to catch the ferry to Juneau on our way to Fairbanks. I will have a separate post on our Juneau trip; this post is to cover the beautiful drive through Canada and most especially the Northern Canadian Rockies.

Since we were traveling in early May, it was still very cold, and there was lots of snow on the ground and in the mountains. The lakes and rivers were still frozen over, and this was quite a treat for me to see. I have never been anywhere that gets cold enough, long enough, to freeze more than just a puddle. The beauty of the frozen lakes nestled in low rolling hills or between towering mountains was impossible to capture in a photograph, but believe me, we tried! Many times we were the only vehicle on the road for miles at a time, and the solitude combined with the winter-like landscape was like something I’ve only seen on calendars or postcards. When I thought things couldn’t get any more spectacular, we found ourselves in the Northern Canadian Rockies. The appearance of the Canadian Rockies is a result of the area being very heavily glaciated, producing sharply pointed mountains separated by wide, U-shaped valleys gouged by glaciers, whereas the American Rockies are more rounded with river-carved V-shaped valleys between them.

Almost just as spectacular was the area between Haines Junction, Yukon Territory, and Haines, Alaska which winds through the Alaskan Mountain range. I don’t know if we were just lucky, but on the day we traveled through this area on our way to Haines, it was bright sunshine and crystal clear blue skies. This afforded us clear views of all the splendor the mountain range had to offer. I feel so fortunate we had such perfect weather, because on our return trip five days later, it was foggy and cloudy with poor visibility. If both days had been like that, we would never have experienced this once in a lifetime opportunity.

I’ve attached one picture of the RV park we stayed in the first day we were in Canada (Hope, B.C.), and several of the Northern Canadian Rockies and the Alaskan Mountain Range.