TripTracker.net - Alaska and the Pacific Northwest 2010, Juneau, Alaska

New York, United States Almost ready ...A stop in Indiana Bismarck, ND in 2 days Calgary, Alberta Banff National Park of Canada Jasper, Alberta Dawson Creek, British Columbia Liard River Hot Springs Park, Canada Whitehorse, Yukon Territory Vehicles Seen on the Alaska Highway Fairbanks, Alaska Denali National Park Driving through Denali Denali Girdwood, United States, Alaska Anchorage, United States, Alaska Portage and Seward Girdwood, United States, Alaska Tok, Alaska Haines, Alaska Juneau, Alaska Sitka, Alaska Ketchikan, Alaska Prince Rupert, British Columbia Vancouver Island Back in the Lower 48!Olympic National Park Seattle, Washington Mount Ranier National Park Mount St. Helens Portland, Oregon Oregon Coast Ashland, Oregon Oregon Caves National Monument, United States, Oregon Mitch and Brenda's wedding Crater Lake, United States, Oregon Bruneau Dunes State Park, Idaho Idaho Yellowstone Badlands National Park, South Dakota Great Wolf Lodge One last stop We're home!

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Alaska and the Pacific...

Juneau, Alaska

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Aug 8 2010, 01:00 PM

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Location

Juneau City and Borough, United States, Alaska

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From Haines, we began our trip through Southeast Alaska on the Alaska Marine Highway System which is the state-operated ferry system. The ferry is the only way to travel with a car to most of this area. You can take a ferry all the way down from Haines to Bellingham, Washington which takes about 3 and a half days. We, however, had decided to take a bunch of different ferries and stop over at some of the cities along the way. We started by taking the M/V Malaspina from Haines to Juneau which took about 4 1/2 hours and got us into Juneau in time to spend the afternoon and night there. You drive your car right into the car deck of the boat. The vehicles going on these boats range from the biggest RVs to motorcycles, bikes, and kayaks. The passengers include locals who take their pickup trucks loaded up with stuff they're bringing home from a nearby town (we saw a hospital bed on one pickup), retirees touring in their RVs, and young people backpacking around Alaska. These boats are not the cruise ships that also travel to this area, but they do have lots of nice observation lounges, dining areas and snack bars, small movie theaters, and small kids' play areas. There are cabins that you can pay extra to rent out for the trip. Since this first trip was from 9 am to 1:30 pm, few cabins had been taken. We found that there were plenty of comfortable places for all of us to sit and walk around. The kids went to watch a movie for a while, and Doug and I had the most relaxing couple of hours we'd had in weeks. Since the entire Southeast Alaska region is contained within the Tongass National Forest, there is forest ranger aboard most of the ferries who has lots of information about the area and gives ranger talks about various topics.

In addition to being geographically separated, Southeast Alaska is totally different than the rest of the state. There are tons of wooded islands covered in fog. It rains all the time. It is a lot like the Oregon/Washington coast except that there are also lots of glaciers. We were surprised that the city of Juneau reminded us of a small version of San Francisco. Like SF, it is also a gold rush town. It just had its gold rush about 50 years later. We actually decided that Juneau is our favorite Alaskan city.

In Juneau, we went to see the Mendenhall glacier. We also saw more salmon spawning and a black bear just hanging out for the tourists. There were also bald eagles flying all over the place. Next we went to the Macauley Salmon Hatchery where we learned lots about the life cycles of the salmon and saw in amazement as thousands of salmon fought like crazy to swim up the hatchery's salmon ladder to get to the top and spawn. It was one of the most interesting things we'd seen on the trip, and I'd recommend it to anyone who goes to Juneau. Juneau was also the first place where we encountered the cruise ship crowds.

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	44. We're home! Sep 3 2010, 07:30 PMNew York, United States, New York We made it home just in time to watch the world premeire of Camp Rock 2 on the Disney Channel and beat Hurricane Earl. We were gone for 46 and a half days and drove 11,763 miles. It was an amazing trip, but it's also great to be home.

	43. One last stop Sep 2 2010, 08:13 PMElkhart, United States, Indiana One last overnight stop in Elkhart, Indiana. It's Mindy's hometown. More importantly, it's a town on I-80 with lots of motels.

	42. Great Wolf Lodge Sep 2 2010, 12:23 AMWisconsin Dells, United States, Wisconsin After another long day of driving, we have stopped for the night at one of the Great Wolf Lodge chain's hotels with an indoor water park. This one is in Wisconsin Dells, which seems to be an area full of indoor water parks. We're going to spend some time playing here before moving on...

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