June 6, 2007 - Day 11 in Alaska - Fishing and Mendenhall Glacier

6 June 2007

June 6, 2007 - Day 11 in Alaska - Fishing and Mendenhall Glacier

Posted by Darrell under: Alaska; My Journal .

My pictures from our 11th day in Alaska.

We started the day with breakfast at DocWaters Pub, which is in The Wharf building, directly across from our hotel (Goldbelt Hotel in Downtown Juneau). The food was OK. They ‘didn’t have’ the first couple things I ordered so I kept trying until ‘the cook’ wanted to make what I asked for. ‘The cook’ was one of the waiters, I think they drew straws to decide who would cook for us!

We just happened to see a truck with Taxidermy sign on the back glass. It was the taxidermist I’ve been trying to call for 2 days. I waved him down and he rolled down his window. I told him I’ve been trying to call him for 2 days and tried to get him to pull over to talk to me. He yelled something at me and drove on. I guess he made my decision for me. I’ll be shipping my bear hide back to Springfield, frozen.

I suggested that we charter a boat and do some fishing today, but Caleb didn’t like the idea. He wanted to fish on our own. So, after breakfast we headed to the Western Auto. Western Auto is THE PLACE in Juneau to purchase sporting goods. Caleb and I decided we needed some fishing gear, besides what Keegan and Chad had loaned us. After we purchased what we needed (which still saved us several hundred dollars vs chartering a boat) we headed to the end of Egan road.

There is ONE major road on Juneau and it goes out about 30 miles from Juneau and ends at Echo Cove. We decided that Echo Cove was our destination. We finally managed to escape people. There weren’t any tourist out at Echo. In fact, there wasn’t anyone. Just one vandalized car, a couple trucks (with boat trailers) parked, and no people.

Echo Cove was really peaceful but the fish weren’t biting. So we decided to head back to Amalga Harbor. We liked fishing Amalga. It is a beautiful spot. We fished at Amalga, right at the point where the lake empties into the Channel, for several hours. Caleb and I both caught several Dollies. They were all small, though. No other fishermen showed up, so we had the place to ourselves, except a boat that was anchored up and had a couple of people scuba diving.

We had some Bald Eagles fly down and perch close to us while we were fishing. It was nice. On the negative side, I was carrying a heavy pack with our rain gear and boots and cameras, etc and I ended up falling into the stream. The rocks on the shoreline are really slick and I wasn’t wearing my xtratuff boots like I should have been. So, down I went and I spent most of the day completely soaked.

Before heading back into town for dinner, we drove out to the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center. It is a beautiful place to visit and I highly recommend that if you are going to be in Juneau that you plan on spending a couple hours there. On our way to Mendenhall, we saw a Sitka Blacktail deer, which was neat. It was the third deer we’ve seen during the trip. We also saw a beaver, which was pretty cool.

We had dinner at Zen, which is the oriental restaurant located in the Goldbelt Hotel. It was OK, neither bad nor terrific. It seemed a little stuffy to not have any better food than it did. After dinner, we had time to make it to the ice cream parlor in The Wharf building before it closed. Caleb got his second chocolate malt of the day.

Tomorrow, we may try to hitch a plane to Skagway.

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