{Aug 9} Juneau, AK

Monday we sailed to Juneau. Juneau is the capital of Alaska, but not the biggest city. And like most cities in Alaska, it is accessible only via sea or air.

Here's at sea before we reached Juneau. So calm.

We arrived around noon. My parents and I went our separate ways, though funny enough we ended up doing almost the same things, just at different times.

My madre and me.

JUNEAU!

Adam immediately started snuggling up to the natives. Little did we know how close we would get to a bear just a couple hours later.

So Adam and I took a shuttle to Medenhall Glacier. First we took a walk around and low and behold:

A black bear with her two cubs. There were signs all over the place, exclaiming, "You could have a VERY close encounter with a bear. Stay on trails, make lots of noise. . . yadda, yadda, yadda." I didn't believe the signs for one second. But we did have a close encounter with a bear. How close?

That close! In all my excitement, I failed to take the time to focus. This mama bear walked right under a railing I was standing on. I could of literally reached out and touched her. Probably not the brightest of ideas, but still could of been done.

So after the bear excitement, we walked over to Medenhall Glacier. Very cool. Literally.

Here I am, in shall I say a "casual" pose. Just in my defense, Adam made me stand and look like that. Wait, I mean, isn't that how we all stand and take in the beauty of nature? Fixed stare off into the infinite distance? No?? Just me???

{crickets chirping}

Ok, moving on.

This was called "Nugget Falls." It's located right off the side of the glacier. Adam and I hiked to it. It was very loud and oh so amazing.

Can I get a thumbs up?

Thanks Adam.

Here's an actual chunk of glacial ice. I made Adam touch it, because that's what tourists do.

After Medenhall Glacier, we had a shore excursion for night whale watching. And look at the excitement on our faces:

Not enough excitement? Ok, how about this?

That's the face of raw excitement and frostbite all in one.

So the first thing you saw when a whale would come up is it exhaling air explosively through their blowhole. Then all of the sudden people would be yelling, "Thar she blows!" and all of us crazy whale watchers would quickly walk (as running was NOT allowed) to one side of the boat or the other and start taking pictures as fast as we could.

Though we never saw a whale jump, we saw many whales come up and then dive back down. There is just something so graceful about these mighty mammals.

That whale waved goodbye to us. I swear it.