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Tuesday May 31st, Juneau Alaska Bright sunshine on the warm side
Got up real early to meet the shuttle driver at 7:00, who would drive us about 15 minutes into the city of Juneau. We needed to catch the afternoon ferry back to Haines and had only the morning to see the sights of Juneau. It turned out that a morning was plenty of time. We started from the visitor’s center where our driver left us off, and armed with a map and guide, walked a couple blocks along the harbor toward the main streets. Came to the cruise ship dock and noted three huge ones in port. The harbor sits on a fairly narrow estuary behind an island.
Juneau started as a gold mining camp and the mine once went from the mountains down to the edge of the estuary. Another gold mine was on the island. Thousands of men from all over the world worked in these two mines. When the US purchased Alaska, Juneau was the largest settlement and, therefore, the capitol was moved from Sitka to Juneau. The first item of legislature of the new territory was to give women the right to vote.
Unfortunately, there is very little land between the very steep mountains and the harbor for much of a town. The original downtown had a 7 block radius. At the dock, we watched a couple of sea planes take off with tourists wanting an aerial view of the nearby Mendenhall glacier. The glacier is so close to downtown, that if you were so inclined, you could walk up and onto it.
We walked along the main drag , now about two blocks over from the harbor, which was filled in with tailings from the mine. We looked at the quaint old buildings built in the late 1800’s that have been preserved; saloons, hotels, and businesses like a laundry. The street has the old time clock and street lights. This town had electric lights before the lower 48 as they had lots of water power and needed electricity to work the mine equipment. Some shops were open at that early hour so wandered in and looked at the art work. I will say that for the most part the tourist shops that I have entered into in Alaska have promoted Native American Art and art from Alaskan artists and not
“made in China” junk.
We then walked uphill toward the very small, octagonal, blue, wooden, Russian Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas. It was built in 1894 by the initiative of 700 Tlingits and the Slavic miners. We then walked along at that level toward the Alaskan State Capitol. The Capitol building was built when Alaska was a territory and, therefore, hasn’t a dome. We entered the building just as a tour was starting and joined in to see the two houses. Alaska has 700,000 people and this tiny facility reflected it.
After the tour we walked across the street to the city museum and toured it. We then crossed the street the other direction to a building that housed the State Library and other offices and bought a fairly cheap lunch from a vendor. We sat at a table in the atrium that had a huge totem pole on one side and an outside balcony that looked over the city harbor. Took the elevator down and was back at the area we started in.
Directly across the street from the visitor center was the State Museum, which housed a great deal of Native American items: ceremonial costumes,
canoes, fishing equipment, etc., etc. set up by each one of the 9 Native tribes in Alaska. They were having a special showing of hats of Alaska that was very interesting. The show started in historical order with Native hats, then Russian and sea captains hats, then miner’s hats, then military hats, and so on. The museum also had a natural history section and exhibits about the Russian and early American periods. Our time came out just right for seeing what we wanted to see in the time we had.
Caught the motel shuttle back to the ferry and the ferry to Haines. Picked up Rosie II at the terminal and drove to an RV Park we had previously selected to spend the night. Plugged in, had dinner and called it a night.
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