Alaska- Day 3

Our third day of the cruise was our first port of call – Juneau! Juneau was an interesting town for several reasons:
1) it really consists of one primary long street that runs through town and has some bars, shops, and the tramway
2) the fact that it’s the capital of the state is really odd because it’s a) so small and b) only accessible by air or sea – there are no roads going into it!
3) These tiny little houses in town are a minimum of $250K. What do people do that earns them enough to afford this?

Several people in our group had excursions in town (the Wolf’s went rafting, the Sacks went on a gold mine tour, Mom and Greg went up the tram, Mary Ann did the trolley) so Dad, Dale, Jim and I set out on our own to make a good time. We decided on a 1.5 hour gold panning tour which didn’t allow us to do anything else but shop the strip before we had to go. I did pick up our Christmas ornament and got my free sapphire at one of the partner jewelry stores (how much am I going to spend to set this free diamond in a necklace is another question…).

Panning for gold consisted of a 20 minute trip up the mountain to the riverbed over a road that at some points had 30 degree inclines. We got a casual talking tour of the area as we drove by the bus driver who lives there year round. Maybe because he got more gold flakes than anyone else, but Jim liked panning quite a bit. We had a pan full of sand that we used to sift through the water and debris. The gold we found was about the size of a flea but there were about 2 dozen of them in my pan when I was done. It was quite tedious using an eye dropper to suck them out of the pan and put them in my plastic vile to take home. We got quite a laugh when we found bottles of really large flakes of gold (think a little larger than the eraser of a pencil) selling for $4.99 in the gift shops! Using that to compare I’d say I have about four cents worth of gold that I can claim to have found.

I think it was around this time that Dale met Allison and her family. I don’t know where she came from other than she was a woman our age and therefore was being sought out by Dale, Bryan, Greg, etc. in general. There was also another family that the group rode the bus with to the ship that kept popping up everywhere we went. They were from Texas and thought our group was a trip. By the end of the week Dad had mapped out their family tree and how the 12 of them were related. These two families popped up continuously throughout and we spent quite a bit of time with them at shows, excursions, and some meals.

Up Next – Skagway!