Our next stop was Juneau.  This is the capital city of Alaska.  We actually took two excursions in Juneau.  We started off with a city tour.  This was a bus tour through Juneau.  It also stopped at the first of many glaciers to come - Mendenhall Glacier.  We took a walk through the forest and had homemade blueberry muffins.  We also stopped at a salmon hatchery.  It was kind of cool.  They made a system of switch backs to trick the salmon into thinking they are swimming upstream.  They release a ton of salmon every year, but only a tiny percent make it back.  From those that return, they capture them at the top of the water ladders, take their eggs, and make new salmon for release.

This is Lisa with our cruise ship behind her.  There is a mine on the mountain behind Lisa, but its too hard to
see from this picture.  There are also tram cables that go to the top of this mountain which we will visit later!






This is our first glacier.  It's called the Mendenhall Glacier.  Check out the reflection in the water.  There is also
a little water fall to the right in the picture.






Mendenhall Glacier and lake behind Brad






Forest walk






This is the start of our next excursion.  We took a glacier tour via helicopter.  They made us put on these funny
life preservers and glacier walking boots.  You can see our helicopter right behind us.

Check out the glacier with the rainbow above it.  The blue part is where the ice has broken off fairly recently.  All the dirt on the top of the glacier has been dragged from its course through the mountains.  They say a rounded mountain has been carved by a glacier and a jagged mountain has not been touched by a glacier.

Juneau continued...