To the Capital!

Not many people (and certainly very few people outside of the United States) know that the capital of Alaska is not Anchorage, but Juneau. Well, now you know.


Juneau is an odd place to have a capital city. It's inaccessible by road from the rest of the country. It's also inaccessible by road from the rest of the world. There are no roads that go there. The only way you can get your car there is by taking the ferry. You can also fly there too, but the airport ain't really that big. It's also odd because the governor whose official residence is in this tiny little place is running for vice president of the United States, but I think that's a matter for a much more serious blog.


Sarah Palin's official house.
We got here via the ferry from Whittier (which we were very happy to leave behind thank you). It's small, dirty and a little menacing. The people we met there were nice enough, but it has the look of a small port town with not much going for it. I caught myself thinking that it will be a lot nicer once (or maybe if) the cruise ship companies do a bit of development here which is a shame because it will lose its local feel, but then it will also be a good thing because it will (hopefully) lose its local feel. We stayed in the only hotel in town who return phonecalls, June's B&B which was a little expensive, but much better than the rough and tumble(down) Anchor Inn.


On the ferry we didn't really get to look out for much wildlife - although even if we had, our trip through the gulf of Alaska was pretty rough and rainy and foggy so we wouldn't really have seen much even if we had been looking. We slept for most of the trip both from the steady rocking motion of the boat and the lack of much else to do. At one point, when we were in the middle of the gulf, I spotted a bird circling the boat which didn't really look much like a gull. It came a little closer and I was able to make out the distinctive hood and spotty belly of a peregrine falcon. I can only surmise that the poor thing had built a nest on the ferry and was more than a little surprised to find itself miles out to sea! Conversely it's also possible that the enterprising bird was quite happy to travel from one end of the Alaskan coastline to the other, terrorising rodent populations from Ketchikan to the Aleutian chain and everywhere in between.

So we arrived in Juneau at 3:15am - an uncivilised hour to arrive anywhere in my opinion. Luckily we'd arranged with a hotel to pick us up (which they dutifully did) and we were finally installed in our room by 4:15am. We had 3 days to explore the city of Juneau and so we had to get moving!