Wow, another beautiful day in Alaska.. ok well not really a beautiful day weather wise, but still a beautiful day. Early this morning the cruise ship arrived in our second stop, the port of Juneau in Alaska. Juneau is the capital city of Alaska, and is actually the second biggest city in the world.. based on land space.. but one of the smallest cities in the world based on usable space. Juneau has over 262 miles of hiking trails, but it only has 41 miles of roads! There is no access to Juneau via the road, only accessible via air and ship, which makes the cost of living incredibly high compared to the lower 48 (what they call the rest of America)
So this morning was a very wet and cold morning, and we had booked a helicopter tour, it was the four glacier helicopter adventure, and it was amazing. It included a 65 mile helicopter trip (45 minutes) and we landed on one of the glaciers. The ice fields of Juneau are MASSIVE with over 20 major glaciers around the Juneau ice fields. We had the chance to visit 4 of these amazing sights, the Norris Glacier, Hole in the Wall glacier, floating dead branch glacier and also the Taku Glacier.
The Taku Glacier is the only advancing glacier (out of the 20) in Juneau, and has advanced 7.5km since 1890 (it might be a really long time, but 7.5km of ice is really large), and is now only 1.5km from Taku point, if the glacier continues to advance, it will block the river again, it is currently advancing at 17m per year. Taku glacier is currently 92km long, and covers an area of 428 square kilometres). This is the glacier that the helicopter landed on, and then we got to walk around on the glacier for a couple of minutes. Its an amazing experience to be able to walk on this breathtaking work of mother nature. It was incredibly slippery due to the amount of rain that we had today, but it was still an amazing experience.
Once our helicopter took us back to the heliport, we walked around the city of Juneau for about an hour and did some shopping. The city is very beautiful and clean, with bald headed eagles flying around the city (I was lucky enough to see one fly above, but not quick enough to capture it on camera). It was just a pity it rained so much, which made it very cold, so we ended up back on the boat a little early.
Tomorrow morning we will be arriving in Ketchikan, our last stop in Alaska, and 2nd last stop of the cruise. But more on Ketchikan tomorrow 
We have just left the enclosed waters, and we having a bumpy night on the big ocean, which I enjoy, its kinda like rock-a-bye baby in the bed, with the motion of the waves!
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