Mendenhall Glacier

Robert, Monday, June 23

We went to see the Mendenhall Glacier today, As I suspected it is only about 2 miles from where we are camping. There is a visitor’s center located on a high point about a half of a mile from the face of the glacier. As the glacier sits on the edge of Mendenhall Lake you can’t get very close to it, Our campground is at the other end of Mendenhall Lake. There is a trail that leads to a large waterfall on one side but we didn’t hike that as we had other things we wanted to do–maybe we’ll go back for that as it leads right to the foot of the falls. One of the other things I wanted to do was to buy some shirts. The shirts I was looking for look like normal, long sleeve shirts except they are made of synthetic material that dries out very quickly. You would think that around a place where it rains so much that shirts like this would be available almost anywhere. I have seen them at outfitters as they are useful when camping. I had no luck. We went to the Visitor’s Center for the Wifi hot spot. As it is across the street from the office for the glacier tour, it was also a handy place to park to go get the boarding pass for tomorrow’s trip. We then walked around downtown a bit. There were four, very large cruise ships at the dock and the streets were packed with people. Not to say downtown was much more than jewelry stores, T-shirt shops, and tacky gift stores. Many of the stores had signs in the windows that said something like, “Owned and operated by local Alaskans.” The cruise ships have people onboard who advise those on the cruise where to get the “best shopping deals” in town. The places with the “best shopping deals” just happen to be owned by the cruise ship company. I saw little in the downtown area that would entice me back. We had to head back to the trailer as we had supper cooking in a crock pot and we needed to get back before it cooked into mush.