Day Four: Juneau, AK

We got to sleep in some today (woo hoo - slept til 7:30!) as we didn't have any port adventures scheduled. When we did the trip planning, it looked like we could probably handle Juneau on our own, so that's what we did. After breakfast, we headed down to the dock and caught the shuttle to town as we were parked at the farther pier. Our first order of business was getting tickets on a shuttle to the Mendenhall Glacier. Handily there was one just getting ready to leave and as it's the end of the season, folks are ready to deal a bit to get your business, so the doodle was free and Tim and I got $3 off each of our round trips.

The drive to the glacier is about a half hour and you see a reasonable bit of the town as you drive through. It had been sprinkling some when we got off the ship, by the time we reached the glacier it had turned into a steady drizzle. Hoods up, we hopped off the bus and went to the stream overlook to see the Sockeye salmon that were there swimming upstream to spawn. It was really kind of cool to see - though I don't think any of the photos turned out. From there we took a more scenic path up to the visitor's center where the first item of business was to buy rain ponchos.

Armed for the weather, we toured the glacier exhibit at the visitor center then headed back out into the weather to walk the ~1 mile to a really beautiful waterfall that also took you about as close as you could get to the glacier without using a boat. We got lots of great photos here and really enjoyed the majesty of the waterfall close up. We tromped around a little more and then headed back to catch the shuttle back to town.

We had thought we might then go see the glacier gardens, but it was nearing lunch and the kiddo was hungry, so we figured we'd cruise the shopping area and find something to nibble and then see where things were. Well, by the time we'd had a snack and seen what shops were of interest, we were all pretty much soaked completely through (despite the ponchos). Tim was still game for the gardens, but I was soggy and miserable, so we called it a day and headed back to the ship at about 2 (all aboard was 4:30, so it wasn't super early, but we probably could have made the gardens if I wasn't a wuss.) The boys napped while I did some school work, then we got up and changed for our second formal dinner.

Dinner tonight was back in the Animator's Palate, though they didn't do the show as it was a Captain's Dinner theme. I had the spiced sauteed shrimp (Yum!), wild mushroom soup (double yum!), and breaded chicken with fettucini (good but not amazing). Tim had a fruit cup, the mushroom soup, and venison, which he enjoyed quite a bit. I opted for no dessert tonight as none of the options spoke to me, Tim enjoyed a lava cake.

After dinner we headed down for a few more character photos and then went off to the theater for Toy Story the Musical. This was cute, though there were some miking issues that were distracting to me (probably only to me). The costumes and technical aspects of the production were really very cool (speaks the one-time drama tech nerd) - so that was fun to notice. The doodle seemed to enjoy himself (he sat there in rapt attention the whole time), and really that's the most important thing. Then it was off to bed - and now that the kiddo is snoring quietly behind his curtain, I think it's probably time for our light to go off as well.