Juneau - Capitol

Luckily the cruise stopped in Juneau, so I could visit another state capitol!


View of Juneau from the cruise boat:

Walking to the capitol:

Probably the most plain looking capitol (sorry Alaska):

It was the Territorial Building and then they just kept it as the capitol when AK became a state

Former Federal Court Room, it's now the Finance Committee Room:

State flag:

Liberty Bell (every state and territory was given one as part of a promotional campaign for U.S. Savings Bonds):

On our walk from the capitol to the Governor's mansion...found a Little Library:

Governor's mansion:

Downtown Juneau:

More pics of Hubbard Glacier

Up early and caught the late end of the sunrise.

This was the glacier right next to Hubbard, not as pretty blue.

Hubbard was so unbelievably blue, with so many different hues.

The face of the glacier was so long, that we couldn't see the end of it.

The tail end of the glacier calving.

Again, the blues were amazing.

 The boat moved in closer, so we could see further up the inlet.

While this looks like a lot of people on the helipad, I was surprised it wasn't more.

 It is hard to tell how large these icebergs really are...

...until they sent a boat out to pick one up for the ice carving later.

The surrounding scenery was beautiful too!

 With every 'dark blob' in the distance, I tried to take pictures and zoom in to see if it was a seal on an iceberg. And I didn't think I caught one until I took a closer look at this photo, and that's definitely a seal on the far rock.  Questionable whether the blob in the middle is one, and that's definitely not one in the foreground.

Check out a video of the ice calving:

As the boat started heading back out the inlet, the sun came out and we had amazing views of the glacier.

Alaska - my 50th State

Yes, I have finally made it to all 50 states now!! (plus the District of Columbia of course, and Puerto Rico...so I still have a few territories left to visit)

Here I am setting foot on land in Alaska for the first time:

It was quite chilly and rainy - welcome to Ketchikan!  With an average of 153 inches of rain a year, it's no wonder it was raining almost the ENTIRE time we were there.  Their driest year ever was *only* 88 inches of rain, which is over twice as much as D.C. gets on average in a year.

"Liquid sunshine" as they call it.

In case you need more proof that I actually made it to Alaska...

And it finally did stop raining, just in time to get back on the boat...so I thought I'd do a redo of my "first picture on land in Alaska" without the umbrella :-)

Wildlife!

Hard to believe I've been home over a week already!  The question folks have been asking the most is "did you see any wildlife?"  And yes I did!  Here are a few pics...

Deer walking down the street in Ketchikan

 Orca!  We saw a whole bunch as we left Ketchikan (didn't get any great photos of them though)

Missed humpback whale picture...only saw 2 the whole trip, which kinda surprised me

Bald eagles were everywhere in Icy Strait Point/Hoonah 

Soaring with the kayakers 

Younger bald eagle that hasn't fully molted yet

I'm pretty sure this one was a golden eagle, because it was huge (and must have been used to people because we were able to get pretty close!)

Every time you looked up you would see an eagle...or 12

Tried to capture how many were flying around at any given point...only got 3 in this pic (one is in the tree)

On to the Mendenhall Glacier outside Juneau...we didn't see bear, but evidently they were nearby...recently

Saw lots of arctic birds here 

And if you look hard enough, there were mountain goats near the glacier too (look in the middle, toward the top 1/3 of the photo - okay, yeah they're tiny, but I saw them through a telescope, they are there!) 

If you can't see the ones above, maybe you can see these white dots - this was during the train ride from Skagway, there were a bunch of mountain goats on the other side of the river valley 

It was so cool to see so many!  As I had never seen them anywhere before.

 And then we saw a black bear and a grizzly!

(Okay, so we were at a wildlife sanctuary between Seward and Anchorage...) 

That had baby moose too - so cute!

 But then I actually did see 2 moose in the wild...or suburbs of Anchorage at least (see downtown in the distance)

 Last stop in Alaska, a little park with a lake, on my way back to Anchorage from Denali State Park