Juneau

We debated long and hard about whether or not we wanted to go whale watching on the cruise. We watched some videos where it looked amazing and some videos where it looked boring. I did not want to go out on the water for 3+ hours just to see a fluke or two off in the distance. Also, I really wanted to go to Mendenhall Glacier, but the joint tours only gave you 1.5 hours at the glacier, which did not seem long enough. So, we did not book any whale watching. After all the talks about whales and Luke and Anna's interest in whale watching, I did regret the decision. But, it was too late to change it, so there was no whale watching for us on this trip. Instead, we rented a minivan. We first drove to Mendenhall Glacier. We walked to Nugget Falls and then the glacier photo spot. We watched the short film in the visitor's center and got our National Park's passport stamped. We took lots and lots of beautiful pictures. It was stunning, amazing, hard to describe in words--the waterfall, the glacier, the rocks, the snow-capped mountains! We were all in awe. Juneau gets its own post just because we took so many great pictures.

After that we drove to the Shrine of St. Therese. It was also very beautiful. We enjoyed the drive and the views. The two pictures below are both from the shrine. Then, we went to Eagle Beach. That one felt like a bit of a misnomer, as we did not see any eagles and it wasn't a walkable beach. From there, we went to a Fred Meyers for some snacks. Thomas remembered Fred Meyers from when he lived in Alaska and wanted to see whether it was how he remembered (sort of like a Walmart). It was bigger than he remembered, but otherwise the same. Prices were high, but not that different from Seattle. Seattle was more expensive than Vancouver, which is more expensive than Orlando. From there, our plan was to walk around the downtown area. But, when we got back, the skies looked rough and a few of us had headaches. So, we went back to the ship. We almost made it onboard before the rain started, but not quite. It came in fast and cold and we were glad we got onboard when we did. 

We had a very late lunch (snack?). Then, Anna, Kevin and I went to trivia. We got 16/20, which we were pretty proud of (at least Anna and I, not sure about Kevin). After trivia, Anna, Thomas and I went off the ship to look at souvenirs. We spent a while walking around and got some t-shirts. Then, we came back onboard and went to the pizza restaurant, which was delicious. After dinner, Thomas and I checked out one of the production shows, but we didn't love it (just singing and dancing, no story), so we left. Jack hurt his ankle jumping off a rock at Mendenhall Glacier and he and Luke just hung out in their room for most of the night (they went to the buffet at some point for dinner). Kara was off at the teen club. Anna was mostly with us, but decided to call it an early night. Unfortunately, she caught a cold at some point on this trip and has been fighting it for a couple of days. We also did laundry, which was very nice. We knew that everywhere we stayed this trip had laundry facilities, which made packing a lot easier.