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Jim
 
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Default juneau alaska, trip report

Hope you don't mind, I did a little rewrite.

It sounds like a place I'd like to visit.

purple_stars wrote:

hi folks,

just got back from juneau alaska and thought i would mention some


Hi folks,

I just got back from Juneau, Alaska. I thought I would mention some
things about it related to sailing.

I was on land, not boat, but I did stop at one of the marinas, talked to
someone at the harbor office and picked up some materials.

There was a large dock with a fair number of sailboats there, and also
fishing vessels, and some others. The way Juneau is away from the ocean
behind some sizable islands, so big in fact it's easier to imagine land
being honeycombed by a lot of channels creating islands. The landscape
is very tall mountains that have been worn vertical and tall by glacier
action.

Juneau itself is divided by one of these channels, half on the mainland,
the other half on Douglas Island, the two halves connected by a bridge.
There was information about sailboats going under the bridge, height
restrictions, etc, so it is an issue for sailors. The channel is
dredged up to the bridge and that large cruise ships come through the
channel to get to downtown
Juneau.

The tourists spend a day on their journey along the coast of Alaska.
The tide in this channel is amazing and ranges approximately 20 feet in
height through a single day! There was information provided
about using this large tide to land your boat for repair. I paid
attention to the tide. It left large areas of the channel dry at low
tide and rising up to fill the channel at high tide. This was during a
new moon.

The cruise ships will start coming into Juneau this coming week. The
entire character of the place changes, nearly doubling the population.
The town transforms from a sleepy little place into a carnival of
activity.

Among the things to see are glaciers that you can see by
boat. The channel bottom at low tide seemed to be a mixture of rocks
and mud. I didn't see any sand. The scenery was amazing.

Juneau is not connected to the rest of the world by roads so there's
really nowhere to drive to since you just reach a dead-end no matter
which direction you go. If you have a vehicle there are places worth
going to such as the Eagle's Crest ski area and other sights. Food in
Juneau was fantastic.

People were helpful and friendly.