Alaska #4: Juneau

Sorry for the delay in finishing my Alaska posts!  Life has been crazy busy since we got back.  So, back to Alaska:

Our first port stop was Juneau!  We were so excited!!  My parents spent the day exploring the city of Juneau, but Kevin and I had signed up with a tour company called ABAK to go explore Mendenhall Glacier!  If you're going to Juneau, I TOTALLY recommend ABAK!!  They have a bunch of options, but the one we signed up for was a canoe trip over to the glacier, and then hiking around on the glacier!  The canoe trip was one hour each way, so that's a lot of paddling! Our arms were pretty tired by the end of the day, but it was a really beautiful way to approach a glacier!  There were 6 of us on the tour, so that was the perfect number!  It was enough people to help paddle the canoe, but a low enough company that it still felt like a personal tour. 

Mendenhall Glacier!!  

Our tour guide telling us about the glacier, and showing us where the glacier was the year prior, and years prior to that. 

 When we got to the glacier, we put on our crampons (these metal spikes that hook onto your boots) and got our helmets and harnesses on, and then we were ready to start exploring the glacier!  Our tour guide was AMAZING, and she was able to scope out some of the best areas of the glacier for us to explore, and was able to explain all of the cool formations.  We were also able to see the drastic levels of glacier melt that have been going on over recent years, and we learned that the AMAZING blue ice caves that you've probably seen pictures of before (just Google it if you haven't seen pictures - they're beautiful) have completely melted and disappeared over the past year or so.  So, no more ice caves at the Mendenhall Glacier!  It's so sad.  Seriously, watch the movie "Chasing Ice" on Netflix - it's SO informative and interesting.

Here are a bunch of pictures from when Kevin and I were hiking around on the glacier!  Any of the bright blue that you see is actually ice... Some of it kinda looks like water, and some other parts kinda look like snow, but trust me that everything is ice.  It's amazing and beautiful, and we had SO much fun!!! 

A close-up of the ice! 

Me!  It was seriously such a fun day!! 

These formations (and the big holes caused by rocks, like the one just beyond the white-ish rock) are called moulins (like Moulin Rouge), and they happen because rocks absorb heat and then cause the ice below them to melt at a more rapid pace. 

After we had thoroughly explored the glacier for a few hours, we got back in the canoe and paddled the 1 hour back to the car to take us back to the downtown area of Juneau!  Kevin and I spent a little time exploring Juneau, but we were pretty exhausted so we went back to the ship in time for dinner.   It was such a fun day!!  

Some cool artwork on the side of a building in Juneau!

Alaska #3: Hubbard Glacier

The first day of our cruise we were just cruising at sea all day (no ports), but they did take the ship over to Hubbard Glacier!  We got really close to the glacier (less than 1/2 mile away), and they spent a lot of time there so all of the passengers could really enjoy the scenery. Also, the glacier was doing a TON of calving while we were there!  It was SO loud, and huge chunks of the glacier were breaking off.  You could definitely see it happen long before you could hear it.  We took a ton of pictures, so I'll post them below.  Other than Hubbard Glacier, we just spent the day resting, getting settled in our rooms, and hanging out with each other!  It was a great way to spend the first day of the cruise!! 

Here's a close-up view of the water by our ship when we were pretty close to the glacier!  So many chunks of ice! 

On a related note, if you want to see an AMAZING documentary on glaciers, you should watch "Chasing Ice" on Netflix.  It's seriously so well done, and you get to see lots of amazing glaciers and learn about them, and you also get to see (and hear) a lot of glacier calving!  A few Alaska glaciers are featured in the documentary too (including Mendenhall Glacier, which is in Juneau, which will be Alaska post #4!). 

Alaska: Seward and Kenai Fjords National Park

After we left Denali National Park, we drove to Seward!  It was about a 6 hour drive, and it was BEAUTIFUL!!  The last few hours of the drive are all along the coast, and it's spectacular. We arrived in Seward around 6pm and met up with my parents!  I hadn't seen my parents since Christmas!!  It was so awesome that we were all going to get to hang out on the cruise together and see Alaska.  They had already checked-in at the hotel, so we checked-in and then we had to drop-off our rental car.  Then we all went out to dinner at Seward Brewery and spent the evening hanging out!  We also saw the sea otter that likes to hang out in Seward Harbor!

Here's a cute little sea otter bench!!  I thought it was adorable. 

The next morning we had breakfast, walked around the adorable little town of Seward, and then we boarded our tour boat to see Kenai Fjords National Park!!  It was a 6 hour tour that was led by a Park Ranger, and it was really amazing.  It was a fairly small boat and the waters were pretty choppy for parts of it, so I was definitely pretty seasick for portions of it.  I made sure to be outside in the freezing cold for as much of it as I could handle, because the views were amazing and the cold fresh air really helped me feel better!  On our tour we saw humpback whales, orcas, dolphins, mountain goats, puffins (I love puffins!!!!!!!!!), sea otters, and Steller sea lions. It was AMAZING. 

Our tour boat!  The Spirit of Adventure (just like in Up!!)

Mom and Dad boarding the tour boat!

Me and Kevin on the tour boat! 

This looks like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean or something, but it's Alaska! 

Kevin!!  He looks a little chilly :) 

Me and my pops!! 

An amazing glacier!!  And there's another tour boat for scale.  

 We were back from the Kenai Fjords National Park tour by about 5:30pm, and then we had to board the cruise ship by 6:30pm!  It ended up being the perfect amount of time.  I'll post more this week about our cruise around Alaska!!  We saw Hubbard Glacier, Juneau (Mendenhall Glacier), Skagway, Icy Strait Point, and then Ketchikan!