Mendenhall Glacier, and departing Juneau

We did a short excursion from Juneau to the Mendenhall Glacier, only about 20 minutes outside of downtown.

It was still raining on the bus ride there, so didn't get too many good photos out the window.

But luckily the rain stopped by the time we got there.

Here we are at the glacier.

The icebergs were so blue! (that's because glacial ice absorbs all colors of the visible light spectrum except blue, which it transmits)

We didn't see any bear, but evidently they were frequent visitors to the park.

Out the window on the bus ride back to Juneau.

Douglas, the town across from Juneau.

Sunset as we departed Juneau...it was 9:00 at night.

Tailgators!

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 :-)