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Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau On our way back to town from Perseverance, we visited the Flume trail. This was a nice area to visit. With lots of warning signs.

We were thinking porcupines and beavers…could be bears. I fall into the anti-bear bell school of thought which posits the theory that bears get habituated to their uniform sound. I do have a whistle at the ready at all times. If I’m by myself I might hook my keychain onto myself to jangle or I’d sing. A well placed “Hey bear, hey bear” is fitting when crossing their habitat. And if I'm not cruising, I’d have bear spray (where I live, it’s more for protection from moose than bears but it works on both). (I should have tried to bring some on board so that I could complain on John Heald’s FB page when it got confiscated). That said, with two people, we tend to talk a lot. And this was a very well traveled trail with lots of humans and dogs. The bear was actually in the parking lot and not even on the trail. Special Someone thought I was hilarious because I grabbed a giant branch and carried it for a good while (to wave and make myself look bigger if the bear looked interested). This was my first time in 15 years of living in Alaska to see a bear while I was on foot, so I have done a pretty job avoiding them while hiking. Reminds me! When we encountered Andy and the Fun Squad hiking in Skagway, they’d all been singing at the top of their lungs. This is often an effective bear deterrent. After Juneau, we did catch up with Andy later and give him our hiking tips and made him jealous with our bear pictures. Hopefully he gets to enjoy some of Juneau’s trails soon, too!

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau Back at the trailhead parking lot, we saw someone. IMG_6449.MOV IMG_6446.MOV

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau This was the end of the line for us on the Perseverance Trail in Juneau. Old road bed evidence. We were so curious about the damage to these trees.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau Perseverance trail in Juneau…past the turnoff for Mt. Juneau.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau Perseverance Trail in Juneau…endless delights. IMG_6388.MOV IMG_6389.MOV IMG_6394.MOV

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau Continuing our morning meander on the Perseverance Trail in Juneau. IMG_6377.MOV IMG_6384.MOV

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau A lovely spot for the next installment of breakfast. Mixed berry pastry from The Rookery.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau Perseverance Trail I don’t think I have ever seen so many warning signs on a trail. Progress was slow because I took so many pictures. Quartz vein.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau An old mine shaft. Lovely spring growth. This plant is called Putchki or Cow Parsnip and it’s one of my favorites because everyone will tell you it’s a major skin irritant, (it can be) but it’s delicious. You can harvest and peel the spring stems and use it just like celery. You can eat it raw or cook it or freeze it. Aleuts I know joked that only white people are allergic to it; if so the rash usually requires some sun exposure to activate it. When I harvested it out on the island, I wore gloves and picked on cloud days as a precaution. My favorite ways to eat it were stuffed with cream cheese or peanut butter as ants on a log, pickled, or sliced and frozen and then I would use it in soups and everything. The leaves are also very flavorful and can be used to wrap fish to steam. You can see the fine prickles under the leaves and all along the stems. I think the map is showing that we are making some progress.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau We were not expecting all of the mechanically-minded history. Since Special Someone is a mechanically minded person, he was able to bring all of this alive for me. Special Someone pointed out the Ingersoll Rand brand and how they’re still around today.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau Basin road is an easy walk that leads to many trails and is a worthy destination in and of itself. We saw lots of dog walkers and lunch break fast walkers and it was clearly being used plentifully by locals. I wanted to go down here. I love foot bridges. Trail signs are also plentiful and the You are Here dots helped. The turnoffs for the Flume Trail and the Mount Roberts trail are close to each other on opposite sides of the street. Here is the map scale. We’d originally planned to do Mount Roberts but I couldn’t find the downward tram ride price online and started to get the hunch that the Perseverance trail was going to be a great destination. Mount Roberts tram schedule. A downward only ticket is $15 Views everywhere beckoned to us.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau The masons are everywhere. At least in Alaska. This is our state’s capitol. I was trying to figure out if there’s a body buried here.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau This was an architect’s office and I found it fascinating. The relief map of the mountains shows a proposed location for a municipal-owned gondola, which is a hot topic in local government currently. The city & borough of Juneau operate a ski area that is not financially self-sustaining (but helping locals recreate outdoors is critical to physical and mental health in Alaska) and the idea is to be able to generate some revenue in the summer. The counter debate is that the city would be operating a tourism business competing with local businesses and the age old debate of what is the role of the government and what is the role of the local business community? A small dog park.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau Welcome to Juneau! On our way to the gangway we ran into cruise director Andy and asked how his hike in Skagway. He said they made it all the way to the top! Good job Andy! Good job Fun Squad! As we were setting off for more hiking, he said to be sure to let him know how it went as he was looking for hiking ideas for Juneau. Chicken on a Stick was our first stop. We’d read an article about how the owners of this food stand also run a business in Juneau that caters to crew needs and they’d suffered during the shutdown and were not sure what was going to happen this year because they made 6,000 sticks of chicken and the crew from the Norwegian Bliss hadn’t appeared. The chicken is delicious and we definitely recommend it. Juneau has the best food options of the usual Southeast Alaska cruise ship ports thanks to the politicians, lobbyists, support staff, and all the wining and dining that goes on. We hadn’t planned this in advance, but after the chicken on a stick success we kind of decided to do our own food tour of Juneau as we made our way around. After a brief reconnaissance walk around downtown Juneau, I initially selected The Rookery Cafe, but once we got inside I saw that they use beans from Stumptown. I decided to all out coffee snob and reject them for using beans from Oregon when we could walk across the street to Heritage and drink locally roasted. Besides, even our local stores stock Stumptown! Life is short! I did notice that The Rookery had excellent-looking pastries so we got a mixed berry one and saved it for later in our hike. Then we did indeed walk across the street to Heritage. Their special of the day was a Forget-Me-Not latter and as we know by now, I am a sucker for a daily special and Alaskan-themed coffee specials are a rare breed, so I was all set. For those of you who are sailing with Carnival to Alaska later this summer, please remember the official state flower of Alaska. 🙃 We also got their drop of the day and it was good but what we call crunchy coffee as quite a few grounds found their way into it. We were sufficiently caffeinated and began walking uphill towards basin road, which leads to several trailheads in Juneau.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 7 / Cruise Day 5 Second Port Day / Juneau This is what happens when you (or your traveling companion) order a coffee cup full of peanut butter from room service. We also got more beautiful fruit plates and ridiculously sugar cereal and this was the morning that when I went out for my morning walk routine I also got pancakes, ham, cold cuts, toast, and cheese from the buffet for DIY breakfast sandwiches. I did learn to poke the toast with the tongs before selecting because the first piece I grabbed was hard as a rock and could be used as a percussion instrument. The pancakes, ham, and cold cuts were all perfectly sized to make half moon sandwiches and were delicious. We made it off the ship around 7:30.

This early season itinerary was perfect hiking weather for me. The southeast was already full blooming in spring, which it’s not at home further north where we live. I can’t stand hot weather so it was wonderful to have nature pretty much take care of the heat built up from exertion. And if Skagway seemed perfect, Juneau was even better. Special Someone and I met during what I would consider the heat of the pandemic for Alaska and while the parts of Alaska we lived in (I lived 90 minutes farther south at first) had very few restrictions, both of our jobs had very stringent requirements that included our non-at-work behavior and had the ability to impact us negatively if we didn’t follow their rules, which we both did, so focusing on outdoors activities was just about the thing we could do. We met at a time where I was determined to learn how to do more “Alaskan things” and he was new here and wanted to try everything so we launched into it all with loads of enthusiasm. I am very sorry to hear about Cuddles but glad that she and all of these other incredible kitties have you. My cat sitter said my babies got pretty stressed out the last few days and unleashed Poop-Aggeadon on us, but aside from one “I’m mad at you mommy” poop WHILE I WAS AT HOME from my Tiger with the most feelings, they’ve adjusted and have been happy to have me back. My house (condo) came with a little tiny fenced in back yard and since the 3 feet of snow melted while I was cruising, they got to explore the yard for the first time this spring. My tiniest baby, Dandelion, true to her name nibbled the weed buds immediately. It’s so precious to see them explore and love it, although the mama cat howled a lot. While I was swimming, Special went and bought a truckload of soil that we shoveled and leveled and then planted grass into in the hopes of having a more pleasing looking area than a scruffy torn up lot where dogs were left unattended. Peanut butter update coming soon!

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 6 / Cruise Day 4 First Port Day / Skagway And then it was bedtime. I had made the mistake of wondering aloud what would be the upper limit on servings of peanut butter that room service would bring. Special Someone wrote “coffee cup full” and drew and arrow next to peanut butter on the morning room service card. I sure didn’t sign my name to that!

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 6 / Cruise Day 4 First Port Day / Skagway Thanks to @KmomChicago we knew the broccoli was soup; Special Someone got some. I tried the mango cream (cold soup) but it was room temperature and kind of strange. They did give me a soup spoon this time! After this I decided I was done with the yogurty cold fruit soups. I thought most of the MDR food was comparable to Princess—different but on the whole comparable—but the cold fruit soups is one niche that Princess wins at. Anothee Caesar. We ate a lot of these but didn’t always photograph them. Pulled wild boar. Tasted like pulled pork. Meatballs. Very moist inside. And yum. Red sauces seemed to be a culinary strong point. We crossed our fingers and ordered two tenderloins. They were tender so we ate them up. This is the 50th anniversary salmon couloubiac. The crust was undercooked and the salmon over cooked so I ate the crust and all the veggies and what I could manage of the fish. Special Someone also got linguine with sausage. It was ok IMHO a little sweet. This is the cheese plate. It’s cute so I had high hopes for it. But the cheese was dried out hard as rocks. The pineapple was bomb. I would have eaten another. Special Someone tried the bitter n blanc and found it to be a bland bread pudding. We left satisfied, though! Mostly because of the tenderloins.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 6 / Cruise Day 4 First Port Day / Skagway All aboard means it’s time for dinner! There’s so many photos I’m going to show the food in the next post, but first, in case anyone was wondering what Carnival serves when they put “bacon pan drippings” on the menu, this is it. It was really terrible olive oil with bacon bits and herbs in it. That was the last time we asked for that!

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 6 / Cruise Day 4 First Port Day / Skagway My broken stick was still at the trailhead so we picked it up on our way back to town. I have cell service with an Alaskan company that typically has the best coverage in small towns, but once we got back to town, my phone wouldn’t work. I’d also forgotten to bring the paper map of Skagway, so I did not know how to navigate us towards alcohol, but we needn’t have worried (we didn’t) as we walked right up to Skagway Brewing. I am not really a beer drinker in real life and for that matter I’m not much of a drinker at all but I like to try new things and I love samplers (have I mentioned that lately?) and I’d noticed that most of our ports had locally brewed beer flights so it seemed like a good way to sample our way across Southeast Alaska. We had a glass of the spruce tip blonde and the dark sampler. I liked the spruce tip the best. I love to read menus and noticed the list of house made infusions but kept my mouth shut because we were already drinking on very empty stomachs (and they were not serving food at that time) but Special Someone eventually noticed the specially labeled bottles on the bar. He’d been randomly saying “tequila shots” at inopportune times that had nothing to do with tequila but this time he was in the right place and the bartender heard him and poured us shots. They were really good and made us want to try all of the other infusions, but we had a ship to catch, so we refrained. Next time, however, that strawberry rhubarb bourbon has my name on it. We were running short on time towards the end, but we spotted a boat belonging to friends of friends. When we got to the pier, I made Special Someone slow down so we wouldn’t look like pier runners. We were so curious how far Andy and the Fun Squad had made it on their hike!

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 6 / Cruise Day 4 First Port Day / Skagway We enjoyed ourselves at Sturgill’s landing and then hiked back up to Lower Dewey Lake, finished the circumnavigation of the lake, and then hiked back to town after visiting the friendly trailhead outhouse again.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 6 / Cruise Day 4 First Port Day / Skagway We made it all the way down to Sturgill’s Landing. I love driftwood and it was a feast for my eyes as well as a playground for my feet.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 6 / Cruise Day 4 First Port Day / Skagway And then we began descending in earnest. Please enjoy the ride. And the views. Almost there.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise Trip Day 6 / Cruise Day 4 First Port Day / Skagway Continuing on Lower Dewey Lake towards Sturgill’s landing, we took a short side spur and found a dozen or more of these vines wrapped around trees. We loved the colors of this log. Woodpecker! IMG_6238.MOV Such a magical path to meander. IMG_6240.MOV Truly an enchanted forest.