Amanda's Senior Trip (Juneau to Whittier)

06/23/2008 We spent the day traveling around Juneau seeing different sites. We headed off to the downtown area. There appears to be two different downtown areas, the local’s area and the area for the cruise ships. There were four cruise ships in the town at one time. The two or so blocks next to the cruise ship docks were all new building with lots of lights. It was all furriers, jewelry stores and t-shirt shops. We tried to go sea kayaking, but the weather was against us. We then walked around town and headed out to the Alaskan Brewery and a stop at the local WalMart. We traveled using the public bus transport (another form of transportation for the adventure). That evening we checked into the youth hostel. The fee was only $10.00 a night and you had to perform a chore. I had to clean out a shower stall and Amanda was given the favorite duty of cleaning a toilet. She was not a happy camper. I was also able to do our laundry there.
06/24/2008 We had the morning to hang out before getting onto our next ferry. Amanda and I went to the local history museum. It was a great museum with displays of the local Eskimo life styles, gold mining and the acquisition of the territory from Russia. We then met back at the hostel and shared a cab with two others out to the ferry dock and boarded the M/V Kennicott. On the way heading out of Juneau we had a great show from a pod of whales. From here we headed out into open water through the Gulf of Alaska. We had am all night cruise to Yakutat. From there it was a 24 hour ride to Whittier.
On this part of the cruise we made some additional friends that we spent quite a bit of time with. Kellie was one of the people we rode the taxi with to the ferry from town. She introduced us to John and Tom. The then introduced us to Steve and Nick. This was an interesting crew. Kellie is from Seattle and had finished her Master’s degree the year before and just finished her first year of teaching high school. She was traveling by herself to Alaska and then hooking up with her cousin to backpack for a week before a family wedding. John and Tom are from England and traveling around the world primarily by bicycle. John and Tom’s adventures can be viewed at http://bishandjohn.com/. Nick is a kiwi flying around the world on an around the world airline pass and stopping off for different adventures. Steve was traveling by himself and looking forward to driving around Alaska as much as possible in a week and a half. We played many card games and swapped stories of different adventures.
We arrived Thursday morning 06/26 into Whittier. Most of our new friends departed here for other points they were heading off to. Amanda and I stayed on for a trip to Kodiak Island and Homer as our final point. A special point about Whittier is it is where my grandfather landed into Alaska when he was deployed there for WW II.