THE ALASKAN ADVENTURE Day 71 July 25, 2009 Juneau, AK Mt. Roberts Tram

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. We arose to the sun shining, the birds singing, the glacier cracking and we had to do chores. The laundry needed doing and a few other things so we got to them as quickly as we could, had breakfast and headed downtown.

We wanted to take advantage of the sunshine and take the Tram up Mt. Roberts.

We spent a little time at the top hiking the loop trail, watching a film on the Tlinkit Native People, had a bite to eat and took some fabulous shots of Juneau and surrounding water.

Curved Trees: Made as snow sliding down the mountain bends saplings

Shot of Kathy's goats. You can't see them but they are there.

Tlinkit totem carvings into tree

One goal of Kathy’s was accomplished during our hike on the mountain. We saw mountain goats all though it was hard to tell as they were quite a distance away. After seeing everything we wanted to on the top of the mountain we got back on the tram and headed down.

We took a drive back to the Sheep Creek Hatchery so see if anything had changed as the tide was in. However when we got there it looked the same as yesterday with the fish struggling to get up stream. The tide must not have an effect as far inland as we were. I had never see a tide come in and learned that it came in on waves and these waves are called tide lines. You could actually see these lines from quite a distance.

We left Sheep Creek and headed over to Douglas Island which you can get to by crossing a short bridge. We went over simply to have a look around and to drive to the end of the road. Douglas Island is part of Juneau and approximately 10% of Juneau’s 31,000 residents live there.

While on the island we were able to get a nice shot of Mendenhall Glacier and a real nice picture of the sunset.

Upon leaving the island we headed back up to the glacier to see if we could catch any of the late night calving. Again no luck, it was pretty quiet when we were there. We watched for awhile, kind of like watching paint dry, and then walked over to see if any bears were out. Kathy spotted one and we watched it for awhile before heading home and calling it a night.