Juneau
Day 19 June 17, 2012Juneau
We slept in and I made French Toast for Sunday breakfast. Note to self—making French Toast one piece at a time in a frying pan is SLOW! After breakfast we got things together to do our errands. We stopped by the campground host to ask if we could stay in our spot and found out it was fine until Wednesday when we leave. We don’t know if we’ll stay here Tuesday night or just camp at the ferry terminal because we have to check in at 5 am (ugh). They do open the gates at the campground at 4:30 am since so many of the folks staying here have to catch the early morning ferry so that isn’t an issue (the sign said the gates opened at 7 am but we hadn’t gotten that far yet in planning). He suggested going to Dan’s Hardware for propane and if they weren’t open then the Tesero station by the Safeway. His directions were a little vague but Carmine had located the Safeway so we knew we could find it.
We drove into town and found the Safeway and were driving around and found the Tesero station. Walter got the propane tank filled and while that was happening I found the hardware store on Carmine. We went there and they really didn’t have much of a choice for toilet paper holders. So we punted and went to Home Depot instead. It was in the direction we thought we’d be going later in the day so that made sense. In fact, it’s next door to the Costco! We found the Goo Gone (since they didn’t have the non-industrial form of Goof-off) and a toilet paper holder we liked. But then we needed to find something to drill two holes with. They don’t carry manual drills any more so we ended up buying a small cordless electric screw driver and a couple of drill bits for it.
Next we were going to go to the library to use the Wi-Fi and check the email. I asked Carmine where the nearest library was and she took us back to the Mendenhall Valley across the street from the Tesero station to the library in the little mall there. It wasn't the direction we thought we wanted to go but it turned out just fine.
It was a nice library but the mall was kind of depressing. We checked the email, paid the trash bill over again since I’d entered and number wrong (yes I know it wasn’t secure but the darned bill is due tomorrow and finding a secure internet connection is next to impossible in a situation like this). Windows updated itself and I checked the weather which looks like it will be steadily improving this week.
Walter had noticed an oil sheen in the rain puddles in our campsite last night and decided to check our oil. We were down a quart. There was also a little spot under the truck in the parking lot. Oh joy! So we went back to the Tesero station and he bought a quart of oil which topped things up. We only hope that the problem is that the oil drain plug is a little loose.
By this point it was nearly 2 pm and I was hungry. So we went back to the trailer for lunch. After lunch we took a drive to see where the showers were. We stopped to look at the map and when I went to back up to get out of the parking space I was concentrating on not backing into a low stone wall on my right hand side. As a result I didn’t see the boulders directly behind me and backed right into one. Crunch. I slammed on the breaks and pulled forward to a grinding sound. Walter got out and examined the damage. I’d bent the bumper a bit pulling off of the rock but it didn’t look bad. To make matters even better I’d done this with a Forest Service cop driving by. He backed up to check us out and was kind enough to say I’d done it because I was worried about him driving by. I wish I could blame him, but I can’t.
We found the showers easily and discovered that they really were truly free. And the water is hot too. Yes, the place doesn’t have a whole lot of ambience (steel mirror and concrete floors) but it wasn’t drafty and it wasn’t really cold. We decided to drive over to the day use area to get a view of the glacier and then do our showers. We got lost getting out of the campground loop and ended up going round and round, but we got a nice view of the glacier and the waterfall.
At the day use area, the gravel walk was all strewn with red rose petals. It’s June and clearly someone had had a wedding either yesterday or today. The view from there is even better. There were kayaks out on the lake and a bunch of folks over on the west side with rafts. We followed the West Glacier Trail road to its end and found a group of folks in rain gear and rubber boots getting ready to raft the Mendenhall River back down into town. They get off the boats across the street from Dan’s Hardware!
I took photos of the glacier and the ice bergs and then Walter suggested we go to the Visitor’s Center. We didn’t have Carmine with us but it turned out Walter remembered the way and we got there and got a parking space just fine. There were a number of busses in the parking lot but the place wasn’t overrun with tourists as I’d heard it might be. They charge $3 to enjoy the visitor’s center but Walter’s Golden Age Pass got us both in so all was good. We explored the center, got to touch another hunk of glacier ice that they’d fished out of the lake yesterday and watched the very nice movie.
When I visited the Mendenhall Glacier in 1967, it was right next to the visitor’s center. It has now retreated way up the valley increasing the size of the lake and retreating behind a waterfall that used to come out of the middle of the glacier. You can no longer hike to the glacier from the East Glacier Trail because you can’t cross the waterfall or the creek that feeds it.
We hiked out to the photo point and took more pictures of the glacier and the ice bergs. From here the ice was really blue especially in the ice bergs. The views of the waterfall were really nice too. You couldn’t go down onto the beach there because there are nesting Arctic Terns in the glacier silt. I got a picture of one (I haven’t checked to see if it came out though).
There were a couple of fun flowers in bloom along the trail that I’d never seen before too. There was Ground Cone which looks like a pine cone but is actually a parasite which grows on alder roots (also known as broomrape). There was also a bit of Pink-flowered-Wintergreen which took two tries to document but I got a decent photo at last.
We hiked back to the truck (past more busses) and drove back to the campground with only one missed turn. They don’t mark the turn off to the campground coming down from the glacier like they do going up. Ah well. We took our showers and then were bad kids and went back up the one-way road to the main road so we wouldn’t have to wander around the campground loops to get out.
When we arrived back at the trailer Walter took yet another look at the truck and discovered I’d managed to bend the tailpipe back so that it is now pointed at the right rear tire. Exhaust still comes out but this is not a good thing. Sigh. Some folks who’ve been at several of our campgrounds since Petersburg came by and Walter asked him to consult on the tail pipe. He thought having it bent back like that might reduce performance some but not be serious. He also thought bending it back to straighten it out wouldn’t be a good idea.
We talked about it while Walter made dinner and decided to check in the phone book for muffler shops since they would have the tools and the parts to replace the tailpipe. We drove back up to the registration area because Walter had noticed that there was a phone book hanging there. There are two muffler places in Juneau. That’s not a lot of choices but maybe one of them might have time to at least take a look at it and give us advice as to whether we need to have it fixed pronto and if there’s any other damage to the exhaust system. I’m working on not feeling awful for not seeing where I was going.
So the top priority tomorrow is dealing with the truck. Once that is done we can go back to being tourists and go to the mining museum which Walter wants to see and maybe do a hike or two and drive ‘out the road’.
Day 20 June 18, 2012
Juneau
We were awake before 7 am because Walter wanted to get in to the muffler place early to see if they could work us in. I suggested he call them and he didn’t even get a machine at the place. Then right after 8 am as we were finishing breakfast he got ahold of them. Yes, they were willing to look at it and give us advice and an estimate and yes they could do it right now. So off we went, prepared to camp there for as long as it took to get it done. The shop turned out to be on the side street next door to Don’s Hardware (is everything important in this part of town next to Don’s I wondered).
The owner listened to our story and said that they could handle it right then if we wanted to wait. We did. After checking in a number of other customers (this turned out to be a general all around auto repair place that also does mufflers) he called his muffler guy over and Walter walked out and showed him the damage. They nodded and said it was easy to fix. It would probably be ½ hour shop time. We okayed that and sat back to wait talking to the owner who reminded us a lot of our mechanic back home.
Twenty minutes later, it was done. They cut off the pipe just past the bend and welded on a new section. It cost us $50 (tax included) and they didn’t even charge us for the little section of pipe they put on. The muffler guy said he got 10 or 15 of these a year and he was glad it was a Ford because they use good hangers so there was nothing that needed to be adjusted or replaced in the exhaust system.
We rolled out of their shop at 9 am with a sigh of relief at having dodged yet another bullet. On the way back to the trailer we stopped off at the Forest Service office to get hiking information. They really didn’t have anything for us to take home with us except a very pretty water-proof map of the area for $10 which seemed a bit overkill for what we wanted. But we had a nice conversation with the lady at the desk and ended up talking to a fellow in the parking lot who had been at the muffler place dropping off his car when we were there.
He suggested that we take the hike out at Pt. Bridget Park which is at the at the end of the highway, ‘out the road.’ I found a little information on it in one of my books and we decided that would be as good anything. So we packed and lunch and headed north on Glacier Highway. The weather was much better today with patches of blue off across the bay and hope of clearer weather further north (the locals told us there was a bit of a rain shadow up that way). On the way out of the campground we stopped to tell the folks in the campers that we’d gotten our tailpipe fixed and they said that the Forest Service Ranger they’d talked to yesterday said that you could see black bears along the road in the morning ‘out the road’.
Not that far out there were a cluster of cars stopped along both sides of the road. We slowed down and sure enough there was a black bear in the ditch on the southbound side of the road. I got out to shoot pictures of him with the hood of the car and 2 lanes of road between him and me. Then he decided to cross the road and I jumped back into the car! Black bears really aren’t that big but they still are bears. Eventually the folks in front of us drove off and Walter slowly pulled up next to him so I could get some real up-close and personal shots of him. We were so close I could hear him munching on the dandelions he was eating right outside my window. Needless to say I got some wonderful pictures. According to someone we talked to later in the day, he’s been in that section chowing down for several weeks now. We saw him at about 11 am. When we drove back through that same section at 2:30 he was still in the same place on that side of the road munching on dandelions.
Fifteen minutes later we had to stop for a construction project for about 20 minutes. Walter talked to the flagger and I got out and took pictures of the view (which included a smaller cruise ship going north) and wild flowers along the road. When the pilot car came we were still the only car in line—clearly driving ‘out the road’ on a week day is not a big thing in Juneau. The construction project involved blasting out huge quantities of rock along both sides of the road. The flagger said they were hauling it out for fill under a new section of the airport which is built out in a meadow on fill. Once we finally made it through the construction zone we drove slowly along looking for trail heads and pull outs. In the end we ended up at Echo Cove State Park which was a very gloomy odd place with not trailhead signs or information and a few folks camping deep in the trees. It had a nice boat launch though and the cove itself was pretty. It was time for lunch at this point and we opted to drive back hoping to find the trailhead for Pt. Bridget where we were supposed to hike. We found we thought might be the trailhead but it was unsigned and since we’d figured out it was 7 miles round trip to the point where you might see whales we decided to bag it.
Instead, we drove on to Sunshine Cove where there was a nice turnout with a great view and SUNSHINE! After lunch we took the path down to the beach and around the shoreline of the cove and out to the point. The flagger had said that this was a fairly easy hike and that it was a good place to see whales. We weren’t out to bag whales today and weren’t disappointed when we didn’t see any. But it was an interesting hike. The gravel beach gave way to rocks that got to be a bit of a pain to hop through so we made our way up into the trees where there was a faint trail. We followed it until it gave out and then went back out onto the rocks and made it out to the point. There were a bunch of white gulls on the far side of the point and some diving birds with a pair of white stripes on each side of their heads. I took pictures and we sat and watched the fishing boats trying to figure out what they were doing. After a while we were joined by a couple from Maryland who were out looking for whales. They were very sure-footed and I followed them back across the rocks stepping in their footsteps which made it very easy for me. Walter lagged a bit but made it through okay.
Not much further south we came to the construction zone again. This time we had to wait nearly 45 minutes because of something to do with a cement truck. But we got to talk to a nice local lady for a few minutes who had accidently met up with a friend who was up at the front of the line. We also had a cell phone signal out here in the middle of nowhere so Walter called his brother in California to check in and see how he was doing. I find it fascinating that there was cell service out there where there were basically no houses or people but there are times when we’re further in there is no signal. Ah the wonders of cell service.
After we finally got through the construction zone I pulled into the first viewpoint because at long last one of the large mountains to the west had gotten its head out of the clouds. The sun was out and it was 61 outside. WOW a gorgeous day in Juneau. But by the time we got down to the turnoff for Mendenhall Lake the clouds were back and the temperature had dropped back to 57. So I guess we really were in the rain shadow. I stopped at the Skaters Cabin again (the day use area next to the campground) to take another photo of the glacier because it looked like more of the mountains behind the glacier were out and then we came home and had a nap.
Now I'm caught up on my computer chores and have made my grocery list for tomorrow. We plan to drive to the Last Chance Mining Museum in the morning and go for a hike on the Perserverance Trail after that. And then stop at Fred Meyer (wonders of wonders) to shop on the way home. Then we get to get up at 4 am the next day to check in at the ferry dock at 5 am for our last ferry ride up to Haines.
Day 21 June 19, 2012
Juneau
We had hoped for a partly sunny non-rainy day today. No luck. But it wasn’t bad and it didn’t rain much and it was warmer than it’s been (60 degrees for a high) so count it as good. We got things together including a grocery list and a lunch and headed into town to visit the Last Chance Mining Museum. Thank goodness for Carmine the Garmin. She took us down Main Street in downtown Juneau, right past the Capitol Building and the Legislative Offices and then twisted and turned us until we were on Basin Rd headed out of town.
Juneau climbs up the sides of the mountains with old houses clinging to the very narrow streets like limpets. There isn’t much to downtown and the streets are really narrow but I’m really glad we had an excuse to drive through it. There were 4 big cruise ships in town (one smaller than the others) but hardly any tourists roaming around, certainly nothing like in Ketchikan. They seem more focused on outings here like riding the tramway up the mountain (not likely today since I’m sure the top was socked in), taking helicopters to the Juneau Ice Field (we heard them buzzing over us all morning at the campground and saw them on our way back) and lots of bus trips. We bought a paper later in the day and its port report said that there were 4 boats in a 7 am and 8 am and a 5th one due in at 2 pm with a total capacity (passengers and crew) of 14, 937. That’s a whole lot of people in a town of 30,000.
Basin Rd is barely 2 lanes and goes over an old wood trestle that feels much more like a bridge hanging on the side of the hill than anything. Then it finally just takes you out into the woods. The town’s water supply comes from out here and there is also a hydro plant in the area. There was another black bear munching on dandelions in the ditch on the far side of the road. He wasn’t as cooperative in terms of photo taking as our bear yesterday. There were quite a few folks who made the walk out of town (the tour book calls it a 45 minute stroll) and he was ignoring them entirely which was good news. He had an ear tag which means he’s gotten in trouble with people before.
The road ends at the museum parking lot which it shares with the trail head for the Perseverance Trail. I’m sure that most of the few cars that were there belonged to hikers. There are display signs in the parking lot and then you follow some signs down a trail to a lower parking lot full of tour buses. I couldn’t imagine that the museum was big enough for 3 jitney sized buses worth of people. Not to worry. They weren’t in the museum. They were in the creek panning for gold. We crossed the bridge and got to watch them working away, some even using shovels to dig in the gravel. Ah, to be a tourist in SE Alaska! The setting is gorgeous. The mountains go straight up in the canyon and there are ribbon waterfalls coming down both sides and a big avalanche chute full of snow straight ahead.
You get to scramble up a fairly steep path and there was a VERY big white dog standing at the top of it barking his head off. I decided he wasn’t barking at us and we carried on. He ignored us and just kept on barking. He may have been barking at the bear. When we left later he was just snoozing on the stpes. He belongs to the resident caretaker whose wife runs the museum. She is a real character. Her husband is the port engineer and has been the caretaker of the place for 30 years. Clearly they simply love living out there because they aren't doing it for the money.
The museum is a classic historical museum put together by volunteers who love their subject but don’t know much about organizing a museum. They have all this cool old junk including manual typewriters and adding machines for the 30’s plus all the deep rock mining apparatus including the largest compressor ever build by Ingersol Rand. The thing fills up a huge space in the building. It provided compressed air for all the compressed air drills and other tools in the mine which has 100 miles of tunnels. Want to see the first aid kit for a mine? They've got it. How about an old gas mask? They've got one hanging ont he wall.
There’s a cool glass model of the tunnel system. It consists of a piece glass for each level of the mine. The tunnels are drawn on each pane of glass and then they’re stacked up spaced apart by an inch or so. That way you can look down through the mine from above and see how the windges (vertical tunnels) connect the levels. The lady who was running the museum used to give tours of the tunnels complete with train rides and a meal below but there aren’t enough safety volunteers to do it anymore. It took 20 volunteers to make a tour for 40 people happen.
She was a kick and great fun to ask questions of and listen to. She’s been doing it for so long she knows the answers to all the questions and has a story to go with each one. She left us to roam around on our own while she took some folks with a grandpa and grandma along back down to the bridge in some kind of vehicle because she was concerned about them making the steep walk down. Her black cat, Julie, guarded the place while she hunted mice. She was very pretty and only about a year old.
After a while, we wandered back on down the hill and across the bridge in the heavy mist. We were supposed to hike a portion of the Perseverance Trail but neither of us was really interested. It looked pretty steep and didn’t look like major fun in the rain. So we sat in the truck and regrouped deciding to bag hiking in that part of the world and go do our grocery shopping and then figure it out.
So we asked Carmine to take us to Fred Meyer out in the Mendenhall Valley and she helpfully took us through the twists and turns of downtown and back out onto the highway and on to Fred Meyer. We did our shopping and who should we see in the produce section? The fellow from the Forest Service Office who we had met at the Muffler shop! He was getting his supplies for his week-long trip to Tracy Arm. He asked how our trip ‘out the road’ had gone and I told him we hadn’t managed to find the trailhead to Pt. Bridget but that we had found Sunshine Cove and done that hike instead. He said the trail signs tended to be hard to find and bullet riddled but he lit up when I said we’d found Sunshine Cove.
The Fred Meyer was laid out differently from ours at home but it had everything we were looking for which was nice. When we were done we decided to go home, unload the groceries and have lunch. I was tired and so was Walter. So that’s what we did. After lunch I processed some photos and Walter took a nap. After a while I joined him and really conked out so I guess I really was tired. At this point Walter is finishing installing the new toilet paper holder which is an interesting task in such close quarters and I’ve updated this blog. After that we may take a walk or take the bikes out for a spin since its only 5 pm. Then again we may just hang since tomorrow is another big day.
To continue following our trip click here to go to Part V of my blog.