Birthday Weekend in Juneau

I can't believe that my birthday has already come and gone. My birthday signifies the fact that we have less than a month left here in Alaska. But we are making the most of it. Over my birthday weekend Ian took me to Juneau. We have been planning our trip since we first arrived in May.

We came over on the FX II (our boat) when it made it's Friday night trip to Juneau. After checking in to our hotel, The Driftwood, we went in search of some seafood. It wasn't hard to find. We ended up eating at Doc on the Water, which is located on the docks. 

Our first full day we were off to Mendenall Glacier, Alaska's most famous Glacier. But it was off to a a rocky start. We decided to take the city bus. But the bus drops you off a mile and a half from the visitor's center. We step off the bus and was meet by pouring rain. We had our rain jackets but we had not brought our rain pants. So after only a few minutes in the rain our jeans were soaking wet. By the time we reached the visitor's center, I wanted nothing more that to get dry. After a little time indoors the rain let up and we decide to give it another try and ventured back outdoors to walk around. It was beautiful, even though it was cloudy and a bit foggy. All that just helped to enhanced it beauty.

For my birthday dinner we took a recommendation from a guest that Ian had waited on at the lodge. We at at the Twisted Fish, in downtown Juneau. It was amazing. Ian had a little too much fun with his king crab legs, while I thoroughly enjoyed my seafood pesto pasta.

 

On Sunday we decided to hike Mt. Roberts. It is the mountain that is behind the city of Juneau. The map that you follow actually takes you though the residential area of Juneau, where you follow a maze of stairs before actually hitting the trail. Then thing that really stood out to me was the fact that a lot of the houses in Juneau are all brightly colored. The hillside is covered in house of blue, red and yellow. Maybe that is to help lighten the mood of a place that can seem dreary at times because of all the rain. Once you are on the trail, you are instantly engulfed in trees. On this particular day it was foggy in the mountains, so we could not see a lot beyond the trees but the forest itself was amazing. 

The took us a little over an hour to reach the visitor's center. The visitor's center is not at the top of the mountain. Ian wanted to continue on to the top which would have taken us another couple of hours to hike but we didn't have that kind of time. Instead we decide to hike to Father Brown's Cross (only a mile round trip), which was dedicated to him, because of his involvement of created the visitor's center.

If you send $5 in the gift shop the ride down on the Tramway is free. The Mt. Roberts Tramway is a big attraction that people ride from downtown Juneau to the VC which is sit sat 1800 feet. 

Afterwards, it was time to head back to meet the ferry. I wish that we could of had a few more days to spend Juneau, because there was more that I wanted to do, but we did quite a lot in the short time that we had.