NNs On the Wind

There isn’t much to Juneau. It’s got about 35,000 residents and we saw 4 mid-sized cruise ships in port. The tourists clog up the small downtown area and take the tram to the top of Mt Roberts. They also ride buses to see the Mendenhall Glacier and the old mining museum.

We went to the glacier with the hope that at around 4pm, it wouldn’t be too crowded. There were still a bunch of buses on the lot. We went to the visitor’s center and saw a great video of the glacier’s history and saw a time lapse of the last 25 years. It’s receding. We saw a small “calved” iceberg floating. When Gerry moved here 30+ years ago, the glacier extended to the waterfall on the right. It won’t be long before it recedes away from the glacier lake that formed centuries ago.

Fishing has been a staple occupation here for centuries. Today there’s still a lot of salmon and crab fishing.  Tourism is now a big thing as well. I was disheartened to learn that the many little shops that benefit from the cruise ship visitors, thousands of them at a time, are actually owned by the cruise ship companies. So the profits are not benefitting the native people here. And on top of that, everywhere you go are the “free” coupon books for savings all over town.  If a shop owner doesn’t give into the cruise companies for them to reap the profits, there won’t be a coupon for the shop.