We had a great weekend! We finally got the opportunity to really start exploring Juneau. Last weekend Eric was sick and then most of the week it rained. One night it cleared up, so we went on a hike near our house, right behind Costco. It's kind of funny, sounding, but after 10 minutes on this trail you feel like you're completely in the middle of nowhere. It was great though, because we started our hike at 9pm. You can't say that in Chicago! We hiked for about 40 min, and stopped when the trail started getting a little too muddy. This is the Lemon Creek Trail, we'll definitely go back and spend the time to hike to the creek.
On Saturday, the weather finally started getting gorgeous again. Before hiking, we had some furniture shopping to do. We had found a coffee table and end table we had liked last weekend, but were having a hard time with our dining room table. We have a very limited space for our dining room table and it's been tough finding one the size we need that we like. But this weekend was a success! We purchased our dining room table, coffee and end table! They'll get delivered in the next couple weeks! That was exciting... now we just need nightstands and to get all the stuff the movers broke fixed.
We then headed to Mendenhall Glacier to hike on some of the trails around it. We decided to take the East Glacier Trail, a 3.5 mile hike in the park. It was great! We saw lakes, streams, waterfalls, icebergs, the glacier, and a hoary marmot. What I love about Juneau, is once you start a hike, you feel like you're somewhere tropical. Juneau is filled with rain forests and everything is so lush and green. The trees are as tall as the sky and you can really find peacefulness just about anywhere. Here's one of my favorite pictures from that hike.
You can really see how tall the trees are, and did you notice Eric in the bottom left corner? He almost blends in. We will definitely do this trail again!
That night we went to one of the restaurants we visited back in March and loved, Hangar on the Wharf. It's downtown, right on the channel, so it has beautiful views. This was a delayed birthday dinner celebration for me. Sadly, their prices and menu change from the off-season and so we were not as pleased as we were back in March. Eric got snow crab legs, though, and those were pretty tasty. But I think this place may only be an off-season favorite.
On Sunday, we had planned to head downtown to take the tram up to Mt. Roberts. We had wanted to spend the morning doing some things around the house - as there are things I can't do without Eric. Those chores lasted longer than expected and then we headed to our first condo board meeting to get to know some of our other neighbors. We can't say that was much fun, but it was nice to meet other unit owners. And, the building that we were in, eagles like to fly and land right on the roof. So we got to see a couple bald eagles flying directly at us until they landed right above us. That was pretty cool! By 4pm we finally left to go to the tram. We headed downtown and found out that there were 3 cruise boats in and the town was just loaded with tourists. Here's the tram on the way up:
The weather was just gorgeous! Warm, sunny, blue skies = a perfect day to go up high. Once we got off the tourist track and onto some trails, the views were just stunning. Welcome to Juneau!
...and their ugly cruise boats. That's Gastineau Channel, and across it is Douglas Island. We considered purchasing a place on Douglas Island, but were told it was dark, cold and windy. There's only one bridge connecting Juneau to Douglas Island and no large boats can go under it, meaning the cruise boats have to go out the same way they came in. There's also a pretty nice looking beach on Douglas that we'll go to on the next nice day. We got a season pass for the tram, which is open from May - September, so we'll be heading up there often and next will try to make it to Gastineau Peak. While up there, we also saw a Mama eagle and her 2 babies about 2 weeks old, through a scope of the Rangers. That was pretty cool too!
We learned some things this weekend:
1. We both, desperately, need hiking boats.
2. People in Juneau are nice, really nice.. almost too nice! But we love it. :)
3. We officially live at Costco and need a bigger pantry to make up for all the bulk we're purchasing. While Costco saves a little in Chicago, it saves almost 50% here when compared to other grocery stores. An example of some of the ridiculousness, a 40 oz bottle of ranch at the grocery store is about $9. Two 40 oz bottles of Ranch at Costco is about $8. Or 1 lb. of carrots is $2, or 5 lbs. of carrots is $5
4. We will no longer eat fresh fruit.. soo expensive.
5. We need a dog. Seeing people bring their dogs on hikes, makes us want one more than ever.
6. There are no dogs available at the shelter. Which is good, since no dogs are being left behind, but bad because we might have to buy one. (We both grew up with adopted dogs from the shelter)
7. Salmon and Halibut are $12.99/lb. How?! You can throw a net in the water to catch them. (But you need a fishing license to do that.) That's more expensive than Chicago!
8. We are going to learn how to do this:
Do you see the little specs? They are para-gliders. They run off a cliff with their parachute and just float around. Can you imagine the views up there? I need to figure out how we learn how to do this..
In other news, we've seen 'Betty' and 'Dallas', a mama bear and her cub. Yes, her CUB! We almost didn't see the cub, because the mama was SO large, and the cub was sooooo tiny. He was adorable!! Again, right from our living room window! They were only out for a short amount of time, so again I didn't get a picture. We've also seen 'Elmo' which may have been Leroy, but I think it was a different bear, so we'll stick with him as 'Elmo'. :) That makes 5 bears and 1 cub from the living room. I love it!
Here's another one of our neighbors, although they usually perch at the top of the trees, but this was on a lamp post when our ferry pulled in to the docks a few weeks ago. (I just unloaded my camera.) These guys are everywhere! You cannot walk outside without seeing one or more.
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