Juneau, June 27 - July 6

Juneau June 27 – July 6

     Our great plans to head for Skagway didn’t come to fruition.  It just got rainier and rainier and windier and windier!  Skagway is NE up Lynn Canal, basically a fjord, about 110 miles from Juneau.  Our cruising info told us that the wind could be a challenge heading back south from Skagway, since prevailing summer winds are from the south.  Last Monday our weather station reported winds from the south up to 30 knots, so we decided to stay put and have a maintenance week.  Jerry had a few things he wanted to do and I certainly needed to some cleaning and laundry.  Going for another cruise is always good but sometimes we just need to stay home and do chores!

     We also knew we hadn’t seen much of Juneau yet.  The capital itself and the older parts of the city proper are easily within walking distance, so that was a second incentive to stay put.  Finally, we’d heard that Juneau does a bang up job of celebrating the Fourth of July and we wanted to join in community activities somewhere for this holiday.  So, stay put we did!  We sat parked right next to the pump out stations and every time I stepped off the boat my foot landed on the sign that said "No moorage"!  Yep, that's where they put us.

      Jerry has fought with his laptop for ages due to software conflicts.  Since we had a week and a good Internet connection, he decided to tackle the problem.  Of course our biggest worry was totally messing it up and not being able to run the Nobeltec navigation program.  We rely on it heavily to get us safely from point A to point B!  The boat has it’s own Ray Marine navigation software, too, but redundancy in that vital system is critical!  Long story short, after a couple of days of phone calls and frustrations, he scrubbed his hard drive, reinstalled Windows XP and all is well.  Yay!  He fired up Nobeltec and everything was there.  Double Yay!!!!

     While Jerry worked on his laptop and later while he changed the impeller on the engine, I knitted and baked bread.  I’ve still not perfected the sourdough starter recipe, but I can always make pretty decent yeast bread. 

     Chris brought me some yarn for slippers that are knitted and then felted.  Because the yarn is wool, when the slippers are washed in hot water they shrink considerably and when damp, conform to your foot.  I’ve had a pair, Jerry has a pair, and we love them.  They’ll make great gifts…look out!  Anyway in the photo you can see a before slipper…really huge…and one of Jerry’s.  They actually are quite lovely when they are done!

     Between rain showers we wandered downtown and visited the Juneau City Museum.  Once upon a time Douglas, just west across Gastineau Channel from Juneau, was the largest city in Alaska and had a huge gold-mining complex in operation…the Treadwell Mines.  The stamp plant, where the ore was crushed ran 363 days a year…not operating on Christmas and the Fourth of July.  The local residents complained they could not sleep when the ore-crushing machines were not in operation.  Must have been quite a racket.  The tunnels of the mine complex eventually intersected and flooded, causing a huge collapse of the hillside and a fire.  So much for the heyday of the town of Douglas!

     The capital building isn’t what you would expect.  It was originally the territorial seat and, as such, did not have a dome.  Apparently Alaskans aren’t interested in funding a domed capital and even argue about whether the capital should continue to reside in Juneau.  The tour was quite interesting and the best fact we walked away with is that the best place to see the Fourth of July fireworks is from the roof of the library!

At the marine park downtown they’ve got a little shelter where the Juneau Volunteer Marching Band was giving a concert of marches and patriotic music.  Because both Juneau and Douglas have Fourth of July parades, this group of hardy souls marches in both parades.  As you can see, some of these folks aren’t exactly spring chickens!

     We even wandered into the library, which is kind of interesting in itself.  The city built a four-story parking garage on the site of an old cannery, right in front of the cruise ship docks.  The local folks were up in arms that a rather unattractive building would greet Juneau visitors that pretty much destroyed the history of the location.  So, some smart city leader, realizing that Juneau really could use a new library, put it on the top floor of the parking garage.  So, the new library has a lovely view south down Gastineau Channel.  The only problem is that during the summer months, there are always cruise ships in port and when the tide is in, library patrons are eyeball to eyeball with cruise ship balcony suites!  Kind of an interesting view, though!  We sat there and read newspapers for probably an hour.  We hadn’t seen a newspaper in weeks and weeks…not counting the teeny town papers that were mostly ads!
     Sunday we walked two blocks up the street to Resurrection Lutheran Church.  We’d met Pastor Sue in Wrangell, when we attended the church there.  Sue and her husband Bill live in Juneau where she’s the pastor at the “downtown” church.  It’s been interesting and enjoyable to visit the Lutheran churches as we travel through Alaska.  We’ve met some wonderful people and certainly have felt welcomed.

     Usually we’d linger over coffee after church to visit, but this day we were meeting the sister of a Visalia friend after church.  Helen and her husband live here in Juneau and she promised us a tour of Juneau, beyond what we’d seen as we walked.  She took us north of town to Mendenhall glacier, which was truly amazing.  Imagine driving up to a glacier!  She said it had receeded quite a lot in the thirty years that they’ve lived here and son it will become a hanging glacier, no longer reaching the water’s edge.

     Juneau takes great pride in their Fourth of July activities and begins the celebration at midnight July 3^rd with fireworks.  Rather than being one of the last places in the US to have a fireworks show, they’re the first!  They park a barge in Gastineau Channel so that everyone has a front row seat.  We walked about half a mile down the street and watched, and we glad it was only sprinkling!  The parade the next morning was delightful!  The theme was celebrating all the emergency services people…policemen, firefighters, coast guard, etc.  Of course there were lots of kids in the parade and I particularly liked this little guy who looked like he’d not recovered from the fireworks from the night before!  We stood next to a family of five, three kids under 6.  The little girl, about 2, was hilarious as she took in the amazing sights, scrambled to grab candy tossed from the passing floats, and was totally enthralled when Spongebob Squarepants walked by!

     After the Juneau parade we made our way over to Resurrection Lutheran church, where they were barbecuing free hot dogs for all the parade attendees.  Apparently they’ve done this for several years, since they’re only about 2 blocks off the parade route.  They ply everyone with hot dogs as the parade goers return to their cars.  What a sweet idea!  Tasted good, too!

     We caught a shuttle across the bridge to catch the second parade of the day at Douglas, across the channel.  Lots of other things were happening at Douglas, too:  a sandcastle contest, races, bands, dogs catching Frisbees…yep, these folks take Fourth of July seriously!  We wandered through all of the activities and thought we’d be right on time to see the parade at three.  Nope!  Apparently the paper had it wrong and the parade happened at two, while we were at Sandy Beach watching castle construction.  Rats!  Glad we caught the one in Juneau.  The photo at the left, taken at the Juneau parade, is of the mascot for the University of Southeast Alaska…a whale, I think.  The kids in the crowd were quite taken with this guy. 

     The shuttle back to Juneau, across the bridge quit running before we were ready to leave, so we walked back…a good way to work off all those hot dogs!  We were able to see Juneau from the other side of the channel and enjoy a new perspective.  What lovely country this is!  Monday must be a big cruise ship day because we saw three parked at the docks and one hovering in the channel.  We wondered if any of the cruisers joined in the Fourth of July festivities.

     Tuesday we took a city bus north of Juneau to go to Costco and do some serious re-supplying.  As of Wednesday, July 8 we will have been cruising on the boat for 7 weeks, and although we’ve certainly been to grocery stores along the way, we needed to re-stock big stuff like paper towels and meat.  We think Costco has some of the best meat!  This Costco is the only one in Southeast Alaska so we took advantage of the opportunity.  Our plan was to take the bus to Costco and call a taxi to take us back to the boat, since we knew we’d have too many bags to manage on a bus.  Taking a taxi isn’t something we do very often and we weren’t really comfortable with the idea.  But, we just didn’t see any other way to get all our purchases back to the boat.  Imagine our surprise when we ran into Pastor Sue and Bill at Costco!  They were there shopping, too, and they offered to take us back to Harris Harbor.  It was a huge relief on my part and it gave us a chance to visit with them some more.  We gave them the tour of the boat and told them some of our cruising stories.  What nice folks!  It was fun to learn that Sue plays the flute in the Juneau Volunteer Marching Band…this band, that we’d been listening to for 2 days! 

     So that brings us to today, Wednesday.  We’ll clean the boat and get the laundry caught up.  Beth arrives tomorrow morning…lands at 11:15.  Our plan is to do a little sightseeing tomorrow afternoon (we still haven’t made it to the Russian Orthodox Church here in Juneau) and take off on Friday morning.  Our tentative route to Sitka:

v  Friday we’ll head north and west and stay in Swanson Harbor.  We hope to see lots of whales as we cruise through Icy Strait.

v  Saturday we’ll head west along the north end of Chicagof Island and anchor in Elfin Cove.  This is supposed to be a beautiful spot.

v  Sunday we’ll explore Elfin Cove, fish and stay another night there.

v  Monday we’ll point the boat east and back track, looking for more whales!  Monday night, we’ll stay in Hoonah and explore this little fishing village.

v  Tuesday we’ll head south down Chatham Strait and explore Tenakee Hot Springs and anchor in Saltery Bay in Tenakee Inlet

v  Wednesday we’ll enter Peril Strait (what a great name) and that night we’ll anchor in Appleton Cove, Baranof Island

v  Thursday we’ll continue west in Peril Straight and anchor in Baby Bear Bay, Baranof Island.

v  Friday we’ll go through Serguis Narrows on our way to Krestof Sound and anchor in DeGraff Bay on Krestof Island.

v  Saturday we head for Sitka and stay at a marina there.

v  Sunday we’ll explore Sitka.  There’s a Lutheran church here, too, so we’ll go to service on Sunday.

v  Monday we’re off again!  We’ll backtrack through Serguis Narrows and eventually explore the east side of Baranof Island.

Of course the itinerary is subject to change at a moment’s notice!  Beth flies out of Petersburg on 7/21, so we’ll be tied up in the Petersburg on 7/20.  Lots of beautiful country to see and so little time!

We continue to love our travels and wish you could join us.  After Beth leaves, we have no company coming at all.  Lots of room for you!!