9 June 2022
Matanuska arrived in Juneau 0400 as promised. Bigfoot and Elkhorn were still pretty tired so we drove to the Costco parking lot opened up our slides and tried to get some sleep until the store opens at 10 AM.
To clarify the context of the title of this blog, The Alaskan Brewing Company which is located here in Juneau is my Mecca for beer. It is made from glacier water, in the capital of Alaska and IMHO they make the best beer. “Alaskan Amber” is my all time favorite beer! (p.s. please don’t tell the Canadians, because I do really like “Yukon Gold” as well, but it is not available unless in the … well you know, The Yukon).
While waiting for the store to open we called the US forest service and asked for some guidance on maps campgrounds and fishing locations.
In our first uh oh of our trip, we found out that Juneau has no US Forest Service roads and boondocking is not authorized. As explained to me, the only reason for US Forest Service roads to exist is because of logging, and Juneau’s forest has never been logged. Hmmm, good to know. There are two USFS campgrounds, one State Park, and one commercial campground. All of which must be reserved online… So much for being in the middle of nowhere.
Okay we are staying at the USFS campground by the Mendenhall Glacier. No hookups, $5 per night, just a bear proof box to put food in, a fire ring, and a picnic table that weighs about 675 lbs. Nice campground and we have cell service! Basically this campground sits in suburbia. Adjacent to the park are subdivisions of houses with a glacier view! Who knew? It feels like we are in the middle of nowhere, till we drive out the park and there are houses everywhere. Hey, no worries, nothing wrong with having internet!
Virgil and Delores have been to Mendenhall glacier back in 2016 when they took their travel trailer up here to Alaska. Ann Marie and I were in Mendenhall in 2017 with our Cedar Creek. It will be interesting to see how much the glacier has grown since we have been gone.
The next day Bigfoot and Elkhorn trotted a whole 4 miles to the Mendenhall Glacier. Easy ride. From the looks of things the glacier has receded some over the past five years.
The four of us walk through the visitor center and we reacquainted ourselves with everything glacier.
Then we decided to hike to Nugget Falls which is a 1 mile one-way hike on a pretty good path with a few up and down hills but not bad. We got to the base of the falls and it’s like holy cow ! This is amazing and of course it was pictures and selfies as we were having a good old time looking around.
After some time hiking around the rocky shore of the milky colored silty glacier water we watched a few icebergs float by and some the seagulls swooping into the cold glacier water after minnows.
On our way out of the park Elkhorn was leading the way and announced on the radio,” bear on the left”. And sure enough there was a black bear standing there eating a bunch of greens till his heart was content, pretty cool our first black bear of this trip!
