Our Great Alaskan Adventure: Tracy Arm Fjord and Juneau

After we left Ketchikan, we headed to the Tracy Arm Fjord to do a little scenic cruising and see the Sawyer Glacier.

This part of the trip totally blew me away. I must have taken a few hundred photos because everything was just so freaking gorgeous.

The Tracy Arm Fjord basically dead ends into the Sawyer Glacier so our cruise ship went all the way down and then turned around at the glacier and headed back to open water. When we booked, we decided to splurge for a room with a balcony (this was our anniversary present to each other this year after all) and I am SO glad we did! It was nice to be able to just roll out of bed, bundle up, and lounge on our balcony while taking in the scenery. This is the only part of the trip that was really cold.

Once we got to the glacier, we tried to go get a better view at the top of the ship but honestly we probably could have just stayed in our room. Here are a few more photos from the scenic cruise back out of the Fjord.

Later that afternoon, we docked in Juneau!

We booked an excursion for this port so we went straight from the ship to a bus which took us to a cooking demo, the Mendenhall Glacier, and Alaskan Brewing Co. Our bus driver’s name was Cody and he was awesome. He was incredibly friendly and told us tons of stories and fun facts about Juneau as well as himself. He had also just gotten engaged (Congrats again, Cody!).

The cooking demo was our first stop. The food was amazing and the complimentary wine didn’t hurt.

Our next stop was the Mendenhall Glacier.

We didn’t have very long here but we did have just enough time to make the easy hike to the falls near the glacier and then back to the bus.

Our last stop of the day was Alaskan Brewing Co.

We got a guided tasting here but I didn’t actually try any of the beer. Kyle did though and he really enjoyed it. There were a couple of tour groups in the tasting room at the same time so I opted to spend most of the time in the hallway right outside. At this point, I wasn’t feeling very well at all. I think it’s because I hadn’t had very much to eat up to that point and it was starting to get to me so I would definitely recommend keeping snacks in your bag (I’ll do a separate post about tips on packing for a trip like this).

After the brewery, Cody dropped us off downtown and we spent a little time exploring. We didn’t have time to do much in town since we had a dinner reservation at one of the ship’s specialty restaurants that evening but we hit some of the most popular spots.

I think next time, we’ll opt to skip excursions and just explore Juneau instead. We loved the excursion we did but it would have been nice to have a little more time in the day to wander around. Juneau is also the only port where we didn’t in town at all (other than the snack at the cooking demo).

Next stop: Skagway!

Psssssst! We’ve made a little bit of progress on the bathroom project. Here’s a little look at where we’re at. Drywall work is done, the first coats of paint are up, and we put the new light fixture in. Crappy night time camera phone photo alert.