5/14/2013 Wait...

Weren't we just at the equator?

We still have fog shrouded mountains rising majestically out of the water, but what is all this other stuff?  And, WHY IS IT SO COLD?!

You can see here that Sarah and Michael put on their game faces for this one. We're cold, but we are still happy picture posing.  Max, on the other hand, says no way.  It is COLD out here. 

So, yesterday we were in Juneau.  What do you do in Juneau?  Glad you asked.  If you are the Adventure Nickel clan, you look around...

WE get some coffee, good coffee - not ship coffee, and hot chocolate for the kids.  Then we wander around where Sarah says she saw a park listed on a map.  Of course, what is that in the background?  A mountain.  Is that a waterfall cascading thousands of feet down the side?  Yep.  So we wander some more, conspicuously up the slope and closer to the waterfall until we find a staircase leading...somewhere.

You can tell by the grin that this was Sarah's cunning plan all along.  The staircase led down to a soggy, muddy, baseball field.  We crossed it, lured by the sound of a rushing river and found...a rushing river.  With a trail alongside.  We walked the trail a bit until we found a river crossing.  It was very pretty. 

So we...uhhh...crossed it.  We continued the trail until we found a stream running across that was too rough to try to walk through.  Above we spied another trail and we hiked cross country until we made it.  Did I mention it was raining?  It was raining.  And slippery too. 

No matter, we hiked on until we again reached the slightly intimidating stream.  Then we turned around and hiked back out and into Juneau to return to the ship for dinner.  A few pictures:

Today was scenic cruising.  We sailed up Stephen's passage and saw Norris Glacier.

Hard to understand without a sense of perspective, but that glacier is much taller than the ship.  We obviously couldn't get very close to that one, so we got close instead to Marjorie glacier.  Which was featured prominently in teh opening montage, waaaayyyy up there on top. 


So, I'll show this picture.  I had just walked out on the deck and found a young woman had fallen.  Just as I determined she was OK, I heard sharp craking noises like tremendous Rice Crispies accompanied by several people shouting, "Look!"  So I turned and hipshot this picture.  You can see the snow fall after a large piece broke off and fell. 

We were close enough to hear the popping and the groaning as the glacier moved.  You could feel the cold radiating off the 200 foot high walls.  It was pretty cool.  As we sailed around, scenic cruising, we would occasionally pass an iceberg the size of a school bus. 

OK, so maybe a Volkswagon bus.  There were bigger ones too. 

And in case you are wondering why this is such an awesome and exceptionally well done blog post, it is because I am up standing watch with one of the two disembarks tomorrow in Sitka.  So, I had time. 


Welcome to Alaska.