Juneau

Our first stop was the the state capital of Alaska - Juneau - and a modest affair it was at that.

US states often have relatively small places as state capitals and here it was the case again as Anchorage and Fairbanks are much bigger than Juneau.

We did have a private excursion booked to do a city tour of Juneau and then travel about 15 miles to the Mendenhall Glacier.

The problem was that Cunard's itinerary mean that we didn't arrive there until after 11am and all the quayside berths had been taken, leaving us to anchor nearby.

Now tendering off the ship is always a nuisance as it takes so long to get off to land and then back again.  We got ourselves to the front of the queue for tender tickets for private excursions - the ship's excursions were first, then private ones and last of all were tenders for those just getting off for a look around.

Mike knew that time was tight but he was in contact with the excursion company and we looked to be just about making it.  Then, as we walked off the tender and on to the shore came the dreaded message from them - that they could wait no longer and that a refund would be coming to us instead!  Arrrgh!

Instead we made our way to the cable car station to go up to Mount Roberts for a cool US$90 between us, but the views were great and we had an unexpected bonus - more later.  After that we had a wander around town, scouring the souvenir shops for whatever and ending up in The Red Dog saloon

This is Lady Baltimore, a bald eagle who was rescued after being shot at. In that incident she lost the sight of one eye and also had her beak damaged.  He beak was repaired, but with only one eye, she is unable to hunt in the wild.  She has been here for many years, cared for by the same man who has almost grown up with her. She is in her mid-twenties now but they can live until they are 40-60 years old. She needs a cataract operation on her left eye and they are fund-raising for that. Her carer does get her out for exercise and he can persuade her to call out with her raptor song. I do have video of this but it won't load it here as the file size is too big. I'll upload it to Youtube when we get back and put a link in.  For more on this magnificent bird, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Baltimore_(bald_eagle)

There was honky-tonk music!

There was sawdust but I didn't see any spit!

Serenade of the Seas, our very first cruise ship

We're near the Arctic Circle, so the sun sets very late