Juneau

Our first port was in Juneau. My first move was to quickly shuffle past the tourist area and up above the town. The mountain behind the town looked awesome.

Amy had heard that Alaskans had a habit of building their houses in places that they couldn't drive to, and we confirmed it in Juneau. We walked up stairs by a bunch of houses. Amy posed for a picture halfway up.

Once we were past the stairs and houses, someone mentioned that there was a river and trail, so we went right for it. After another trip down a long set of stairs and across a mini-park, we found a creek and trail.

The water was essentially fresh glacial melt and was freezing cold, but also perfectly clear and blue, even after travelling down the rocky bed.

I would have preferred hiking more, but we had a whale watching trip to catch, so we had to cut the trip short and went back through town to catch our tour bus.

Whale watching kind of sucked. We did see whales nearly right away, but after you've seen a couple rolling, that's pretty much it. No breaching, no posing for the tourists, whales have no concern for what people think. They just sink underwater for 20 minutes at a time and laugh at all the idiots who paid several hundred dollars to catch a fleeting glimpse of them. Next time, more hiking, less whales.