My Favorite A — Z Travel Destinations — Juneau

No one has ever driven to this state capitol.

Did you know that you can’t drive to one of our state capitols? Yes, the third largest city in Alaska has no no roads at all leading to it.

I’m talking about Juneau, the capital of Alaska. Juneau has an airport and a port that can accommodate many kinds of boats and ships. But don’t even think about driving to Juneau!

We arrived by boat one day in the spring of 2002. A great big boat: The Holland-America Amsterdam.

One day in the fall of 2001 my wife and I dined with my old friend Roy and his wife Mary. They informed us that they were planning to go on an Alaska cruise the following year. Hmm, we had never been on a cruise before and now that both of us were retired — well, why not join Roy and Mary and Mary’s sister and her husband!

And so we flew to Seattle one day in April and boarded our home for the next seven days.

It took us two days of traveling on the high seas outside the Inside Passage to reach Juneau.

Juneau is the second largest city by area in the US — more than 2700 square miles. That’s larger than either Rhode Island or Delaware!

There are 32,000 people living in Juneau. Those who aren’t making up laws or governing the state are probably fishing for a living. And they welcome about six thousand tourists a day from cruise ships during the summer months.

Juneau became a popular spot for those people who headed for the goldfields near the end of the 19th century. The city was named for one of these prospectors, a guy from Quebec named Joe Juneau. Joe and his friend Richard Harris founded the city in 1881.

So what does one do in Juneau? Well, you can go look for bald eagles. Lots of them around. Lots of bears, too. Some people prefer to watch whales. Also lots of them.

Or you can explore one of the several glaciers in the area, some of which are within the city limits. Juneau is surrounded by mountains and on top and behind these mountains is the Juneau Icefield. There are over a thousand glaciers in this icefield that stretches for more than 1500 square miles, making it the fifth largest icefield in North America.

Now you know why there are no roads to Juneau!

Only a couple of these glaciers are really large. One of these is the huge Mendenhall Glacier which is only 13 minutes from downtown Juneau.

We were given a choice to either sign up for a rather pricey Holland America-sponsored excursion or just go exploring on our own. We chose the latter and grabbed a shuttle to Mendenhall.

Mendenhall Glacier begins in the Juneau Icefield and winds its way over and around mountains for 13.6 miles. In these days of climate change it is a retreating glacier and the calving and retreating have formed Mendenhall Lake.

This is as close as we came to the glacier.

On the way back from the Mendenhall glacier the shuttle brought us to Douglas Island and an overlook of downtown Juneau.

Roy was a good man. We worked together at Kaiser for more than thirty years. In the 60s he was my boss. In the 80s I was his boss. Those things happen when you work for the same company for decades.

Roy grew up in concentration camps in Tule Lake and Manzanar, California and Topaz, Utah. The US government called them War Relocation Centers or Japanese internment camps. Manzanar was just over the mountains from his family home in Fresno. When the family returned to their farm after the war they found their house vandalized and all their belongings stolen. Our government said “sorry” and that was that.

After high school Roy joined the Navy and served for a couple of years to protect the country that was so cruel to him and his family.

My portrait of Roy at the Juneau Overlook was the last picture I took on the cruise. My camera broke right after I took the picture. I jokingly told our Kaiser friends that Roy’s image must have broken the camera!

It was my first digital camera, a Canon Powershot G9, and I purchased it primarily for our big five-week vacation in Ireland that was coming up in less than two months. Those were stressful times when I had to mail the camera to the Canon repair center in Tennessee and then wait every day for its return. But Canon came through and I received my working camera in the mail about a week before we flew to Ireland. Whew!

After Juneau we toured the huge Hubbard Glacier one day and then turned around and cruised inside the Inside Passage, stopping along the way at Sitka, Ketchikan and Victoria before finally returning to Seattle. Sitka, by the way, is the only city in the US that is larger in area than Juneau!

Holland America was a tad too formal for our lifestyle. We had to dress up and dine at our assigned table every evening. We went on two more ocean going cruises in the next few years, choosing the much more informal Norwegian Cruise Line. The Avalon Rhine River cruise we went on in 2012 was also more to our liking: only a hundred or so passengers compared to two or three thousand on the ocean-going cruise ships.

Looking back at our first cruise twenty years ago I think it is fitting that my last pictorial record of that adventure is the photo of my friend Roy at the Juneau Overlook. If it wasn’t for Roy we would never have gone on that cruise. And we would never have gone to Juneau.

Remember that there are only two ways to get to Juneau. Those who are on government business will most likely fly and touch down at the Juneau International Airport. And those who aren’t on government business have most likely signed up for an Alaska Cruise. They will disembark at Juneau Port’s Cruise Ship Terminal.

And do not even think about ever driving to Juneau!

Sam Millichap started this A to Z Favorite Destinations challenge and has completed her final Z story. Adrienne Beaumont has published her V story. Check out what letters the following writers have published: Michael Rhodes, Anne Bonfert, Jillian Amatt - Artistic Voyages, Darren Weir, Nishan Fuard, Dan Carlson | Meandering Naturist, Robert G. Longpré - [he/him] - Canadian métis, and Ronald Smit.

Note: The facts in this story about Juneau, the Juneau Icefields, Mendenhall Glacier and Sitka were obtained from various Wikipedia articles I found on the Internet.