Mt. Juneau above downtown Juneau

Meeting Phia at the airport in St. Louis after a month of not seeing her...flying First Class to Seattle and drinking Champagne all the way...trying to sleep on the floor of Sea-Tac Airport...Taking off for Juneau and seeing Mt. Rainer poking up through the clouds as we took off...watching the Olympics pass by the plane...the coast off Vancouver Island all covered with trees...coming into Juneau and seeing the snow-covered Chilkats further north, the Mendenhall Glacier and both of us with tears in our eyes because it is so beautiful to see...Catching the bus into downtown Juneau and dragging our stuff up the hill to the Hostel to stow it away for the day until check in...walking around Juneau and being blown away by the mountains surrounding it, the cool weather, the dramatic clouds drapping themselves around the mountains...the Hostel and talking with all these fascinating and interesting people from 20 to 70 years old, from all around the country and the world, hearing their stories...walking up Perseverence Trail to Ebner Falls and gasping at its beauty and power...finding out the Mosquitos are as bad as they say in Alaska...re-filling our water bottles from a mountain stream filled with icy water that was snow only a few hours ago...climbing up Mt. Roberts and coming out above treeline to look back down Gasteneau Channel to the snow covered, glacier laced mountains....climbing Mt. Jumbo on Douglas Island through an amazing temperate rain forest and breaking out into a muskeg meadow at 1500 feet with views of the channel and the mountains and Juneau that again took our breath away...and so quiet up there...only the wind and a few bird calls...walking the Dan Moller trail through another rain forest and coming out on an alpine meadow with views north, finding a shelter and eating lunch up there, sitting for and hour and soaking it in, picking blue berries up there and eating them....taking a charter down to Tracy Arm (a fjord south of Juneau) and seeing Humpback whales, bears on the shore line, mountain goats 'way up there, harbor seals laying on ice floes and finally the Sawyer Glacier....250 feet high and 1/2 a mile wide, blue and white, cracks and thunders of ice splitting, falling into the water, coming up close enough to an iceberg so I could chip some ice off and crunch it...FOUR perfectly beautiful days in a row (Sun-Wed), then rain and cold from late Thursday through Saturday...Mendenhall Glacier and a beaver pond.

Probably one of the nicer things to happen was meeting Pat Costello in Juneau. Pat is a native of Juneau and a photographer. He has a wonderful site Cool Juneau Photos we have been following for over a year. Every other day he adds a new photo of the Juneau area to the site. We had e-mailed one another from time to time and when we were in Juneau we sent Pat an e-mail to thank him for the wonderful weather. Well, he e-mailed us back and offered to show us around if Phia and I would appear on his site. Of course we jumped at the chance and had the best time with Pat and his buddy, Steve. Please take a look at his site. It is wonderful! Cheers!