Day 3 - Juneau, Mendenhall Glacier: sashura

sashura

Day 3 - Juneau, Mendenhall Glacier

Jul 15, 2023 15:55

The plan was to hike by the Mendenhall Glacier. Trails start from the visitor center, which is 15 min ride from the port. Google said that cab is $35 plus the park entrance is $5 per person. And tourist buses wanted $45 per person to get you there. So, I figured we will just grab a cab at the pier. Good plan, only one problem - there are no cab stands in Juneau! There are cabs, but all cars you see are already going somewhere and the only way to get a cab is to call one. Oops! Our phones don't work in Alaska outside of WiFi, so we couldn't call anybody. There was a cab waiting for his passengers and I tried to ask him to call his dispatcher and get another car to the ship, but he couldn't understand what I wanted from him. Either my Englis, or the whole concept of a person with a non-working phone in her hand did not make much sense to him.

Next, we tried the tour kiosks that are selling tickets to the busses. It was around 9 am, the guy at a kiosk told us that the next bus is at 2 pm and we should get tickets right away because they will sell out. Em... No, thank you. The idea of charging us $5 for calling the cab did not occur to him as he was sure that no sane person will walk away from him. Wel, we did just that.

So, we just went along the street looking at one diamond store after another. Found a hotel. Great! There should be a front desk and they will call us a cab. Nope, no such luck - hotel was locked, the only way to get in is to have a pass key.

Next to the hotel was a boutique store, I tried my luck there and it worked! The girl offered to call a cab for us and succeeded on the third try - the first company hung up on her, the second one didn't want to go where we needed to go, the third one sent a car.

The thing with cabs in Juneau is that are prohibited to enter this park. Busses can, but cabs have to drop off their passengers about 20 min walking distance away from the park's parking lot. Ok, got out there, paid, made an arrangement for him to pick us up in 2.5 hours. The walk there is quite nice - a paved wide sidewalk that is going along an almost empty highway.

At the park I made an attempt to find a place to pay the entry fee,but failed. And figured that if they don't make this part easy, it's their problem.

The glacier. There are no trails that go right to it, the best view is from the Visitor Center and a small paved road next to it.

(the map is clickable, will take you to the park's site)
We did the Trail of Time with all of it's sidetracks as that one took us closer to the meeting point.

Along the path to the visitor center they have plans and small explanations with what is what. These were very useful as everything is in bloom right now, so it was easy to figure out which plant they are talking about.