I believe I left you hanging in Heritage Coffee shop with the ridiculously slow internet. We tried McDonald's yesterday to the same end. Alaska, like Juneau, keeps the people within its boundaries quite secluded. I have also decided that the internet speed may have contributed to Sarah Palin's ridiculous Paul Revere story. I got bored enough and frustrated enough to start making things up, so...
We found a place to camp at Mendenhall Glacier campground which is off Montana Creek Road which is off Mendenhall Loop Road. Yes, there is a glacier called Mendenhall Glacier quite nearby. I'd say less than five miles away.
After setting up our tent, we went to this place called Glacier Gardens Adventure. I know what you're thinking, because I thought it too, how much adventure can there be in a garden? Well, when the gardens are on the side of a mountain in Alaska, pretty much the entire time is an adventure.
Did you know that southeast Alaska is a rainforest? I sure did not either. They get around 300--three hundred--inches of precipitation a year. That's about 2.5 feet of rain or snow a MONTH. No wonder these people call rain "liquid sunshine". It's the only way to stay positive in a land that is pitch black half the year and cloudy 90% of the time it's light all the time.
Of course, it's not rainforest like you would think of Amazon rainforest. They mostly have spruce and hemlock trees, so there isn't much in the way of leafy tree vegetation. There is a LOT of moss everywhere--on trees, on rocks, everywhere. They also grow crazy amounts of beautifully colored flowers. As their special thing at this place, they shove hemlock trees upside down into the ground and mess with the roots to make the roots area a place to grow more plants. It's a really neat idea.
Our tour guide, Jenny, takes us to the top of the Gardens' property. We drive up 600 feet in a golf cart. Can you hear my knees knocking? I don't like being on switchback roads with guardrails in our van with my dad driving, let alone being in an open golf cart, no guardrails, with a 21-year-old driving. She was nice and did get us up and down the mountain without anyone careening to their deaths, but still...
The view from their boardwalk at the top was awesome. Way better than what we would have seen if we had taken some tourists' tram in town. Here, we could see the islands and the water. In town we would have seen cruise ships.
All-in-all, I was a bit dubious about this gardens adventure thing, but it was great. It was beautiful, and quite relaxing. We were leaving right as bus loads of other people were getting in--just in the nick of time.
After our gardens adventure, we adventured out to Mendenhall Glacier. Ashley and I didn't realize this would turn into 5 miles of climbing uphill and wandering through absolute wilderness (on paths, of course). It was worth it tho, for sure.
We saw lots of waterfalls with crystal clear water. I saw the first squirrel we have seen in Alaska. Seriously, the first one. I guess we have been over water a lot... We climbed uphill a LOT but the views of the glacier were amazing. The trail we were on was a workout trail for some locals--some of them were even out and about alone with earphones on--they didn't seem too scared of big, brown mammals.
The last part of our trek was along the bay that goes right up to the glacier. There is a huge waterfall just a little over to the right of the glacier. Unlike most parks that keep you a safe distance from the really cool stuff, at this place, you could get as close as you wanted to the falls and the glacier. If you had the right gear, you could probably go play ON the glacier. I guess no one has died there yet...
I didn't have appropriate glacier-playing gear, and with the occasional icy blasts coming in on the breeze, I was quite content with my view from across the bay. We touched the water which was definitely cold, but it wasn't nearly as cold as I was thinking it would be. I still wouldn't want to go swimming.
**I had to come back here for a minute because glaciers are just so...terrifying...I'm riding in a ferry miles away, but they are so MASSIVE I can see them all the way from the water. They just sort of flow down the mountain from their ice fields, then stop. Abruptly. A sheer blue-iced cliff. Terrifyingly cool, no pun intended. Or maybe it is...**
After our journey, we went to Safeway to get dinner from their deli...food place...thing. To say the least, it took us longer to get the food than to eat it. But it was warm, and we didn't have to cook or clean, so it worked.
I've been trying to find Alaska Starbucks mugs, but they don't have any real stores in Juneau, so that's not happening until Anchorage, at least.
Sleeping was uneventful except that I woke up a few times, and it was always clearly light...
Day 13
We slept in, as much as you can when it's been light the whole night, til 9:30. Well, I slept til then. I think everyone else was awake before that, and Mom and Dad went walking way earlier.
The goals for the day were to check on McD's WiFi (fail), check Fred Meyers' Starbucks for mugs (fail), and check out downtown Juneau (win). Oh, and go to the end of the road (win).
Fred Meyer is this store which, as absolutely unbelievable as this sounds, is like Wal-Mart on steroids. It's got a huge grocery section PLUS it has everything a department store would have. It's gigantic. And it has a nicer feel than Wal-Mart. They have an itty bitty Starbucks like Safeway. No mugs. No good WiFi either.
Our first stop in Juneau is the Alaska State Museum. One floor is dedicated to the Native peoples who have lived here well before any of the rest of us showed up. Another floor is dedicated to the Russian exploration of Alaska, and the "development" of this wilderness. I didn't realize that Russia was here first, tho that definitely makes sense. I'm still not sure why it's called Alaska. There was this guy whose name was close, so that might be it. It was called Unalaska for awhile, and there's still a town called that, but I guess that seemed too Lewis Carroll for them, even back then. I also didn't realize that a little part of Alaska was actually occupied by the Japanese during World War 2. The Japanese were trying to distract our forces from the main Pacific Theater following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We pushed them out though, and that's been the only occupation of the United States since, I believe, the War of 1812.
That's a bit of the more serious stuff I learned. I also played in the kids' room--did you really think I could pass up the chance for some immature foolishness? Never! So I climbed aboard the half of a ship called Discovery, spun the steering wheel of the ship (I know, it has to have a different name, but I was up at 4:20 this morning, okay?), and climbed below the deck...good thing I'm small! We all played the room's Eye Spy game. It was fantastic.
They also had an entire exhibit of hats. "Greetings From Alaska" hats and mining helmets and beaded headdresses and hats made of all kinds of fur. There were two rather large rooms just of hats. And even there, even in this exhibit focused solely on hats, my silly green "eared" hat would have stood out as unique. Who knows? Maybe it came from Alaska.
The last thing that kept capturing my attention, mostly because it was just odd that it was there, was this gigantic globe right around the corner from the front desk. Four projectors shined their lights on it, and every 3 minutes it would show something different. I mostly saw projections about earthquakes or wave heights due to earthquakes, but I did catch it showing air travel once too. It was captivating, but I'm not 100% sure what that had to do with Alaskan history.
After the museum, we headed downtown. This is, essentially, about 4 or 5 blocks of pure tourist trap overrun with people who don't look before they cross the street. There are as many jewelry stores as there are gift shops. I find this quite surprising because it's not cheap or easy to get up here, and then you spend money on diamonds that look exactly like the diamonds in your mall at home? Really?
We waded through the crowds, stopped in this shop that sells clothing made from bamboo (soft, but bizarre), and bought some postcards. We found a little park with no shade to write our postcards. Shade would have been nice because it was quite...HOT! Finally, after days and days, I can say I was actually HOT! And it was all of 73 degrees I think.
We got into the post office store place right as they were closing for lunch (they have weird stores that are also post offices, rather than just plain post offices, so I guess they get to close for lunch). We get them in the mail, and head to the end of the road!
You can only get to Juneau by air or sea. Well, I guess you could walk, but with the mountains as high as they are and with the amount of precipitation they get a year, I don't think too many people go for that. Point is, at this current moment in time, you cannot drive to Juneau from anywhere, and you cannot drive from Juneau to anywhere. That seems absolutely absurd to me, but the residents of Juneau are up in arms because the road is being extended. I'm not sure how far, but from the very little that I read, it seems as though the road will finally connect Juneau to the rest of the world...or at least one other place in the world. Juneau residents think this may ruin things, and I suppose they might be right. Either way,the end of the road does exist. There's a yellow diamond sign that says "END" on it. But it doesn't dead-end to a wall of forest now but traps to gravel and road-building equipment.
We went back to our campsite pretty early and ate dinner. Then I tucked in to read for a while. Eventually I just had to duck into my sleeping bag to block out the light because we had to get up super early.
Beginning of Day 14
We were up, like I said, at 4:20 Alaska time. That means we might have actually beat some of you East Coasties up this morning. I find that to be necessary but absurd.
We had to be checked in for our ferry ride at 6 am, but we had to break down camp before we left, so... Up we were.
Everything went smoothly, and we were ready to go early.
Now I'm sitting on the Fairweather, headed to Sitka, AK. There is still a huge Russian influence there. I'm writing this on my cell-phone, sipping my cooled McDonald's coffee, occasionally catching the mist from a spouting whales. The sly things won't pop up for us to get a good look at them this morning unfortunately.
Service just went completely out. I had cell service for quite a while, even after my phone said "data service call failure" indicating that my mobile web was gone. I'll probably be posting this from Sitka.
Oooohhh! Just saw a humpback whale do some tail slaps!
Battery is critical. Bye.
Craziness: we're at this campground right off the water of the island Sitka is on. They have WiFi, but I have no cell service. Weird.
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