Today’s activity was renting a car from Juneau Car Rental (local company) and getting out of town! The SUV was conveniently waiting for us near the pier.
Our first stop was Eagle Beach State Park that’s 20 miles north of town. We literally had the place to ourselves! We saw a bunch of birds including 2 bald eagles, and a few salmon. The Fireweed here still has plenty of flowers; they were all already gone up in Denali. When the flowers are gone, it will start snowing in about 6 weeks.
After that, we started heading back to town. The next stop was the Shrine of St. Therese. The main parking lot was full, so we took a different road and ended up at “Mary’s View” trail. Again, we had the place to ourselves. There was even a little covered pavilion where we could look out on the bay. The spruce trees have moss on them that’s called “Witches Brew.”
Our next stop was Mendenhall Glacier. We walked on some of the short trails and saw a bunch of salmon spawning. Our land tour guide said we might see bears, but unfortunately we did not.
The glacier itself was beautiful, although not as impressive as Hubbard Glacier yesterday. Next to it was Nugget Falls.
Since it was raining steadily at that time, we decided not to walk the 1 mile trail to see the falls and glacier up close. The visitor center was very crowded, but Sean did manage to get his lifetime free National Parks Pass.
After all of this activity, we started getting hungry, so we went to the main Alaskan Brewing Company tasting room.
They had a very impressive gift shop, and plenty of beers and seltzers to try. We got a reindeer sausage pizza from a food truck and had a nice lunch.
I unfortunately managed to lose one of my gloves, so we stopped at a huge Fred Meyer store to get a replacement. The main highway has all of the state flags on light poles, and we spotted the Texas flag!
We drove around downtown and saw the State Capitol and many cute little houses.
With 5 ships in port today, downtown was packed!
Our evening activity today is the Gold Creek Salmon Bake. I booked this through the ship simply because it would end so close to our all-aboard time, and the price included transportation. The Salmon Bake was a lot of fun! The area is all under cover for days just like this.
There’s a pretty creek that runs behind the dining area.
It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet featuring Sockeye Salmon cooked over alder wood fire and topped with a maple glaze.
I will admit that I ate three pieces of salmon because it was so good!
After dinner we walked to the beautiful waterfall at the back of the property.
Then we headed back to the ship. What a fun day!
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