The second city that 7 of us (3 of my sisters' friends, 4 of us sisters including mom) visited during Alaska cruise was the state capital, Juneau as one of the most beautiful cities in Alaska. Downtown Juneau hugs the side of Mount Juneau and Mount Roberts and is a maze of narrow streets running past a mix of new structures, old storefronts and quaint houses featuring early 19th century architecture left over from the town’s early gold mining days.
We agreed to select the most famous Juneau Ice Field, Mendenhall Glacier optional tour offering by the cruise. It is named for Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, who served on the Alaska Boundary Commission that surveyed the international boundary between Canada and Alaska. Juneau is a thriving city offering a great blend of city amenities and small-town hospitality, all in the heart of Alaska's majestic mountains, rivers, glaciers, and forests. Nearly 31,000 people (Tlingit tribe is the most numerous) live in Juneau - many of them working in government, tourism, mining, and fishing, and all of them instilled with a deep love for this place. Such a mix of personalities makes Juneau unique. Unfortunately we didn't have time to explore the downtown, although it's only 10 minutes from Mendenhall Glacier.
A big bus brought us from the pier to the glacier for around half an hour. Welcome by drizzling raining when we went down from the bus, it's quite cold. We're only given an hour and a half to explore the place. Just around 10 minutes walking distance, we already could see the glacier from distance. Located at the head of the valley is Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska’s famous drive-up glacier. Some pictures were taken to capture the light blue glacier. Many visitors also arrived with big buses, it made us difficult to take the picture with clean scenery from people.
We continue walking to reach the edge of the lake, where we could see the glacier closer and watch icebergs calve off its frozen face and float away on Mendenhall Lake. My mom loved knitting, so she worked for a few weeks to prepare the handmade hat for all of us, it made us easier to find each other among the crowd. We took a group picture at the edge of the lake with great view of Mendenhall Glacier. Unfortunately the glacier was not too obvious seen because it's cloudy and still raining.
The Mendenhall is one of the 38 major glaciers that extend from the 1500 square-mile Juneau Icefield. More glaciers can be seen from Glacier Highway or from the air as part of a flightseeing tour. Most helicopter tours offer glacier landings, glacier treks and dog sled rides. The Mendenhall Glacier is a tongue of ice stretching 12 miles from the Juneau Icefield to Mendenhall Lake. At its widest point, the glacier is more than a half mile wide, with ice 300 to 1,800 feet deep. Given that average yearly temperatures are currently increasing, this interesting phenomenon will fade away melting.
The path to the Nugget Creek waterfall took around 45 minutes, we didn't have enough time for it, so my sister and I selected the path to the small hill to see the glacier from higher place while my mom and my youngest sister went to the visitor center, as it's raining harder and the path became slippery. Both of us went through a bridge, passing through some beautiful stone cliffs.
After taking some pictures, we returned to the visitor center. If you don't mind queing, an elevator could bring us to the visitor center, or you could just go to the upper entrance by stairs to the top floor where souvenir shops available. There was an observatory room where you could see the glacier panorama. In the middle of the room, there's a big chunk of glacier that you could touch. It's like a big ice cube.
There's a small theater that played movie about process how the Mendenhall Glacier moves and shapes the valley ecosystem. It contains many good pictures also full of education, I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately our time was not enough to finish watching the movies, we had to go back to the bus unless they'll leave us to find our own transportation returned to the cruise. We were running to the bus, we're the last passengers arrive, lucky that we could reach the bus on time, right before they left :-)
I'm really satisfied with this optional tour that made us possible to see the glacier with its beautiful scenery. Today Juneau is thriving not only as the state capital, but as one of the Inside Passage’s top visitor destinations and the departure point to several wilderness attractions, including Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness Area and Admiralty Island National Monument.
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