| The nice part about having a balcony on a cruise ship are the beautiful views. This is what I woke up to on Tuesday morning. Literally. I took this photo from bed at about 5:00 a.m. |
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| There are a lot of thin streams down the sides of the mountains caused by the melting snow. |
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| Juneau, the state capital and second largest city in Alaska, is a flipping
metropolis compared to most towns in the state. The population is roughly
the same as Smyrna or Brentwood. Click here for 32 thrilling seconds of a seaplane taking off. |
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| On the way to the rafting trip there were more mountains to see. Most of this part of southeast Alaska is park of the Tongass National Forest. There were other excursions that took cruisers on a helicopter trip over the mountains and glaciers located in the park. That must be pretty incredible. |
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| Before getting into the raft, I took a nice photo of Mendenhall Lake, the glacier and mountains in the background. |
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| That's not our raft. |
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| One thing about Mendenhall Glacier is that it is so accessible. It's right there on the lake. It has receded quite a bit over the past few years, but it's still pretty impressive, especially up close. |
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| The view from the back of the raft. Our raft guide just graduated from college (I think from Gonzaga) and hasn't found a real job yet. |
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| There are the other rafts heading toward the river and the mild rapids. |
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| And now we approach the little rapids. This was not one of those river rapids trips where the raft goes over huge waves and everyone get all wet, which is good considering I had my camera handy at all times. |
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| A look back at where we'd been. This was about as rough as the trip got. Bumpy but not treacherous. |
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| This bend of the river was lined with the remains of old cars. Many years ago when the river was flooding, people reinforced the banks by pushing in old cars. Ordinarily this would look trashy, but since there is a story behind it it's interesting. |
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| There were lots of dead trees in the river. |
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| We got stuck on a submerged rock and could free ourselves, so one of the other guides got out of his raft and rescued us. |
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| He threw a rope from the shore and... |
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| ...pulled us off the rock. Hooray! |
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| One of the few photos of me on a vacation. I just wanted a picture of all the stuff we had to wear on the raft trip. |
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