Returning to Juneau, Alaska 2019/Carlos Pueblo

Returning to Juneau, Alaska 2019/Carlos Pueblo

The ship left Skagway exit the Taiya Inlet into the night and through another Chilkoot Inlet according the map of the Glacier Bay National Park and then, enter the Lynn Canal and before reaching the Icy Straight, turned eastbound to the Gastineau Channel to reach Juneau, the Capital City of Alaska. Look at the words of inlet, canal, straight, channel, harbor, bay, and inside passage, etc. are all the vocabulary to describe the water before becoming the gulf, the sea, and the ocean, etc. Juneau is about the same latitude with Hoonah on the east with 30,000 population, named after a prosperous prospector during the gold rush era, Joe Juneau of Quebec, Canada. I made another march to one of his property outside of the downtown, the Last Chance Mine Museum by a small rapid creek.

Instead of marching 30 minutes plus from the pier to the downtown, I took a shuttle bus skipping the wild flowers on the road side directly to the city center. I passed by Liv's store to check on to see if she was at her shop, the House of Russia, if not, I would drop by on the way back in the afternoon. Following to the Main Street toward the Old Orthodox Church, I could see a small sign to the Last Chance 3 miles. The residential neighborhood houses around the church are all with nicely placed front yard gardens with spring blooming flowers. A catholic church is next to the Old Church with nuns doing charity work to the local needed. I made a turn uphill to a small park and turn again out of the civilization.

There are signs of hiking points along the highway to the Museum and Creek. I watched carefully to the entrance of a wood board path along with the down stream of the same Creek by the Museum to go back to the city Center on my way back. Unfortunately, it was under repairing at that time and closed, otherwise, I could short cut some hilly roads and passing through the luxury Governor's Mansion and the pretty houses in the neighborhood
with nice gardens in the front yards.

I was early to arrive in that morning and the museum keeper invited me to chat at the front of the old mine office. She mentioned her last visit to Hua-Lien Taroco Gorge in 2016 and ran into an election of Taiwan. The current President Tsai was campaigning for another lady Hsiao for a congressional seat from that area. She was at that crowd campaign party and very impressed. I tried to call Houston to refresh my memory of Hsiao's name and later came back to my brain like usual. A group of land excursion group were trying their luck by the rapid creek water with pans at their hands to see if they could find the gold. It would be very limited to find gold from the creek due to the cold climate and the fact was that the mine company used modern equipment to mine gold into the mountain. The equipment and the rail engine are now kept inside the Museum.

The rhododendrons were withered away; however, the wild State Flower, Forget me not, were still lovely on the fields. It was not as hard as up hill road, I came back to the city center and got my cola drink to make up my body sugar from a Filipino food stand. My adopted daughters like to have their home style foods from the stands, actually two of them available at the same spot. Additional established restaurants are also available in downtown to provide Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese cuisines for the cruise staff.