Juneau

Juneau is the state capital of Alaska and as the local radio station advertises, the prettiest state capital.  It also advertises itself as the second largest city in the USA.  This made us check this fact via Google and sure enough Juneau is second with a land area of just over 2700 square miles.  Interestingly enough the top 4 cities are all Alaskan.  In order, they are Sitka, Juneau, Wrangell, and Anchorage.  Anchorage is just over 1700 square miles.  Number five is Jacksonville at less than 750 square miles or well less than half of Anchorage.  The thing that surprised us was how small the population of Juneau is at roughly 30,000.  But we packed our stay here with activities.  We rented a car Saturday so we could start provisioning and checked out the local Costco and Fred Meyers, had a great lunch at the Sand Bar and then headed to the downtown area.  After walking around down town we visited the local Tlingit Museum.  Sunday we did some more provisioning and then went to Kate and Rob's house for dinner.  We met Kate and Rob when they sailed through Guam.  They were also trying to go to Kamchatka so we had kept in touch (neither of us were successful but we stayed in touch anyway).  We had to leave their house early as Kate had to get up early for a flight to Arizona for a conference for her job that she would be starting soon.  We also had to pick up our guest who was arriving from Seward via Anchorage.

Our guest is our local priest, Dick Tero, whom we have said in previous posts, is a sailor.  He was able to take a couple of weeks off and join us on this leg to Sitka.  But first he wanted to take us to do some more sightseeing.  So Monday morning after pancakes we were off downtown again to ride the tram up Mount Roberts.  After seeing some of the sights on Mt Roberts and walk some trails we headed back down, had a great Mexican lunch, then we walked up to the Russian Orthodox Church.  When we got there we were invited in.  A pilgrimage was happening that day and was being lead by a Russian Orthodox priest whom Father Tero knows.  We got to talking and were invited for the whole ceremony which included a very interesting talk on the church, the native Alaskans and the history of Alaska.

cruise ship docks in downtown Juneau

Mt. Roberts Tramway

there were 3 cruise ships tied up with another coming in to dock

St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church

inside the church

After that we went and visited the smallest Roman Catholic Cathedral in the US if not the world.  Then we walked back down the hill to the State Museum, armed with the information we had learned from the talk by Fr Michael, the exhibits were a lot more interesting.

On the way back from town it was one more stop at Costco to get the perishables and the frozen foods.  After storing them and making a quick picnic we headed out to the shrine of St Therese and have a picnic under the setting sun.  We were so tired after our day of running around we decided to delay our departure by one day.  This way we could do our last provisioning in the morning then lounge around as it will be a long day tomorrow heading for Taku Bay.

the shrine of St. Therese

the Chapel

inside the Chapel