THE ALASKAN ADVENTURE Day 74,75 & 76 July 28,29 & 30 2009 Sitka to Juneau, AK

Tuesday is the last day in Juneau so we headed down to the State Museum to have a look around. We had seen just about everything there is to see in Juneau where you can drive. The only thing else is flights over anything you want, glaciers, ice fields, or the tongass forest. We headed down to the state museum and spent a few hours in there as it was quite interesting. They go into depth in three areas, Alaska Natives, Natural History and Alaska History.

The Alaska Natives section, is as it states, it’s about Alaska’s indigenous people. We saw displays of clothing, regalia, tools and weapons as these people were dependent on a subsistence lifestyle of hunting, fishing and gathering. Many choose to continue subsistence living today.

The Natural History was well done but it is not nearly as much fun as seeing and running from the animals in real life. If you don’t believe me, just ask Kathy. Kathy was able to get a good shot of an Eagles nest and just how big they can get. They come back to the same nest every year and just keep adding to it. They can get huge.

The Alaska History section was broken down into four segments. 1) Early Exploration and Russian America 2) American Period 3) Mining and Minerals 4) Maritime History
All the areas were interesting and really showed with great clarity how Alaska progressed during each time. Some of it I knew but there was a lot I didn’t. It was a fun afternoon.

We headed back to the campsite to pack up as we had an early morning ferry. It is scheduled to leave at 8AM so we have to be there by 6AM. We had just about finished getting everything ready when the owner of the RV camp came over and let us know that the ferry had broken down and was cancelled. The only good part of that news is that we didn’t have to get up at 5AM.

Wednesday didn’t start off too well as we had no power to our fridge. After checking all the obvious things, fuses, is it plugged in, we started trying to find a repairman. The fridge is built specially for boats and RV and there are no authorized repair services in Juneau. After a few calls we found an appliance repair shop who would take a look at it if we could bring it in right away. We told him our fridge was on wheels and we would be right over. To make a long story short they finally found an interior thermal fuse that was causing all the problems. We got away with a $70.00 charge and considered ourselves lucky as no food was lost and the situation could have been a lot worse.

When we were finished with the fridge we headed over to Donna’s for one more feed of eggs and pancakes. The next stop was the ferry terminal to find out what was going on and to change tickets. They were pretty sure that the ferry would go the next morning, so we changed our tickets based on that information. We then headed up to the glacier for one last look before leaving Juneau.

While we were there we decided to hike to the top of the falls, well Kathy did. I went about three quarters of the way before my knee gave out. It was the best excuse I could come up with on short notice. Kathy took some photos to show me what I had missed.

We returned to the campsite and shortly after getting back we had a visitor. A large black bear was eating blueberries at the edge of the camp. There was a youth group camping out in tents and they were pretty excited when I pointed out the bear to them. I might add they were nervously exited as most of them had never seen a bear before. We watched him until he had his fill and wandered off. We called it a night.

Thursday morning I exited the camper about 5AM to get ready to move. Some of the kids that we camping near us were up and a couple of them were very scared. The bear was back and had walked through their campsite to get to the blueberries. I assured them they were in no danger and in fact our voices and the noise we made scared him off. They will definitely have something to talk about when they get back home.

We headed down to the ferry dock hoping the ferry would actually go today and leave on time. We were in luck and everything went well. The sun was shining and it was a lovely ride to Sitka. I took a lot of pictures on the way and hopefully was able to capture some of the beauty that we saw the entire way here.

We left the ferry and drove around for awhile to get out bearings. The entire main road is 15 miles long so it didn’t take that long. We stopped at a couple of places with Whale Park being one. Whale Park overlooks Silver Bay which is at the end of Sitka Sound. In the early spring and fall the humpback whales make this bay home and there can be as many as 80 whales in here at one time. Today there was none.

View of Silver Bay from Whale Park

View of Silver Bay from Whale Park

We decided on a campsite that we had passed earlier and headed that way via the information centre. We got the information on the things we want to do and see and then headed to the campsite. Checked in, had supper and called it a night.

Tomorrow we take Sitka by storm.