Day 4 Juneau

On the fourth day of our voyage we got to Juneau in the morning at 7am. We quickly got into town and did some exploring before our 9am Helicopter flight to Taku Glacier. It was raining harder today then in Ketchikan. We liked the city of about 14,000 it was very clean and well put together.

Our excursion this day was to fly by Helicopter to the top of Taku Glacier where we would put down and walk out onto the Glacier and explore some of its wonders up close. I was quite surprised that Dorothy did not balk at this from the very start. She does not like flying at all, and 7 people in a small helicopter was really pushing it. The tour people were very good about getting you in and up very quickly eliminating the time to think about it. The flight to the glacier was about an hour and we passed over several other glaciers en route. We passed this leading edge of one of the glaciers that the pilot informed us that the glacier had calved during the night reveling the crushed packed ice that makes up the glacier. The color of this ice is unbelievable. It is so blue you cannot imagine. Note that in the photo above the green area in front of the glacier is a forest of trees so the face is about 50-100 feet in height.

When we returned to Juneau (the video attached) we spend that rest of the visit checking out the shops, and doing a little shopping. I felt I owed Dorothy at least this for dealing with the helicopter which she will tell you was wonderful, but terrifying. When we left that afternoon we proceeded up a fjord to an active glacier that was calving so heavily it filled the fjord with ice. We saw whales on this part of the voyage and seals on the icebergs. I really enjoyed seeing icebergs which are beautiful and scary.

The good news was as the day passed the rain let up and by the early evening while cold and cloudy it was not raining any more.