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Today we had a wonderful day in Juneau. We were much more impressed with Juneau than Skagway. The weather was cool, cloudy and a little rainy. But apparently that's fairly typical-they get 120 inches of rain here per year. People say Seattle is rainy-Juneau more than doubles Seattle's annual rainfall. We started by taking a bus tour to the Mendenhall glacier. Maybe there's something to this global warming stuff, maybe there's not, but one thing that is incredible to see here is how much that glacier has receded in just the past few years.They estimate that this glacier is receding 200 feet per year. In the 1970's, it was receding 20 feet per year. It's still a good sized glacier, but instead of growing, it's shrinking.
When we were done there, we went to the salmon hatchery. The other cool thing about Juneau is that we saw tons of bald and golden eagles. In fact, the picture you see on this blog is a picture of a bald eagle flying I took at the hatchery. The hatchery was somewhat interesting, but they have big aquariums inside where you can see the types of sea creatures there are in the area. I didn't realize how many different kinds of octopus and star fish there were this far north.
After that, we went back to the dock to take a different bus to our salmon bake. This is basically an Alaskan Barbeque. If anyone ever goes on one of these trips, this is a must for everyone! We loved the whole experience. You get there and it's set up like a camp. There are beverages of every kind and then everything's all you can eat buffet-style. There was corn bread, baked beans with reindeer sausage, salads, rice pilaf, pasta with alfredo sauce, chicken, and, of course, wood-roasted salmon. Everything was excellent. The salmon is cooked over a wood fire on this huge grill. There was this sugary glaze on it, but quite honestly as good as it was, I would have foregone it so I could taste the flavor of the meat a bit more. After our meal, we walked down this short trail to this waterfall and fast-moving stream. There you can pan for gold. We did for a few seconds just out of curiosity. We didn't find any pieces of gold, but we did see a lot of gold dust in the water and soil on the bottom of the stream. There was also a campfire that we sat by for awhile and roasted marshmallows and had a Blueberry cake.
Afterwards we headed back to the ship and relaxed for awhile and went and played bingo for awhile. We didn't win, but had we won, we would have won a free cruise for 2 to the Caribbean, which we would have given to someone honestly because after doing this cruise, neither of us have any desire to ever do a Caribbean cruise. The water is so calm up here-honestly, the water in Lake Michigan is choppier than it is here, so most of the time your only indication that the boat is moving is that the scenery is moving.
Next, we went to dinner. Now dinner was quite an experience. We went to this place called Sabitini's, which I'm sure you can guess by the name, is the Italian place on board. Dinner took 2 ½ hours-no, we' weren't sitting there for 2 ½ hours, we had a continuous flow of food the entire time! We literally had a 20 course meal. They give you everything on the menu-the only things you choose is your desert and entrée. The meal started with 3 different kinds of focaccia bread and 2 kinds of breadsticks with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette. This was followed by a collection of antipastos-seasoned olives, sautéed red pepper with onion, sautéed mushrooms with elephant garlic, anchovies, sundried tomato and parmesean cheese. This was followed by ham and bricutto with arugula and parmesean cheese and melon. Next came artichoke and shrimp, 3 kinds of pizzas-artichoke and goat cheese, margharita, briscuto with gorgonzola and fig. Next came the appetizers-fried calamari and fried zucchini. That was followed by soup or salad-I had a salad and Chris had the chicken soup. That was followed by 2 different types of pastas-a potato stuffed ravioli with a cream sauce (which was awesome!) and some sautéed fettuccine noodles with vegetables. This was followed by our meal-we both got the stuffed chicken with potatoes. After that was desert. We didn't make it that far-I got a piece of tiramisu to go. The whole experience was like being at an Italian grandmother's house. Not that I would know because I'm not Italian, but it's how I would imagine it. We had to at least try everything, or our waitress (who coincidentally was from Italy) would harass you. If you didn't finish something, you got harassed. It was quite amusing. Afterwards we got back to the room and crashed.
Tomorrow we're in Ketchikan, which should be interesting. It is also our final shore excursion stop of the trip.
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