Juneau

Robert, Sunday, June 22

We set off for the Visitor’s Center today to pick up brochures about Juneau. We used the GPS to find it as we didn’t have a very good map of town. The GPS came through in flying colors. The woman at the information booth was great and she gave us directions and brochures on many things to do here. There were several tours we wanted to take. When we were waiting for the ferry in Sitka, we talked to the couple that we had met about taking a boat tour to Tracy Arm. This is a narrow fjord a few miles south of town that is reputed to be spectacular. We said we would try to take the same tour with them. We got information about the tour and walked across the street to the office of the tour company. We got the details about the tour but didn’t book it as we didn’t know which of the two tours to take. The tours are identical but leave an hour apart. We then went to Costco as Leslie was running out of storage for all of the pictures she has been taking. We needed another external disk drive for her pictures. She often takes more than fifty a day. We bought a Bug Zapper for the mosquitoes and went to the grocery store to get supper–fresh fish again. When we got back to the campground, we stopped to talk to the campground hosts. They are a young couple and small child from Utah. They are spending the summer here in a pop-up about the size of the one that we used to own. I can’t imagine spending an entire summer in something so small. We really liked ours but if it rained it got really small, really fast. We wanted to ask about the sign at the entrance that said the gate to the campground gate was locked between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. The earlier tour would require us to be checked in at 7:30 a.m. and it is about a 30 minute drive to the boat dock. Turns out that the sign is to try to keep some of the local teenagers from driving through the campground at night and the gates really are not locked–just closed. When we got to our campsite, the couple we are going on the tour with came over and we talked about which tour to take. Leslie was happy that we are all going on the later tour. We don’t have to be there until 8:30 a.m. Then it was dinner and off to bed.

Settled in Juneau

Leslie Sunday, June 22, 2008

Our campsite in Mendenou National Forest is exquisite. Really, we have never seen a national forest campground that has 50 amp full hook-up sites (and for Golden Age pass holders it costs only $14 per night). We’re very happy campers. We will stay here 6 nights. However, the mosquitoes are killers. Even though firewood is free, we can’t imagine having a campfire tonight.

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Our daily activity was to visit the Information Center and plan our week. We also found a Costco and Safeway. Those finds helped our shopping challenges.
At Costco we bought a really big external hard drive to hold our pictures. I found a 750 gb drive for about $130. Considering that I have filled a 250 gb drive to within 35 gb of its limit, I thought the 750 gb drive was a good addition.

Later some friends we met on the ferries came over for a visit. We’ve chatted with this couple in Wrangel, Petersburg, and Juneau. They are traveling in a truck camper slide-in. I would think that if would get cramped to spend 5 months with no where to sit comfortably. On the ferry to Juneau we had discussed taking the whole day boat trip to Tracy Arm glacier together. We’re now both booked for the Tuesday trip.