Category: Travel Stories

Last post (I promise!) regarding our post-Oshkosh trip to Chicago.

Traffic was everywhere and always horrific. Sunday afternoon, 4:12 PM and Tuesday morning 9:05 am outbound (supposedly opposite the commute) to O’Hare:

This is what keeps me from loving big American cities in the age of Indian/Chinese population levels for the Lower 48. Cities offer a lot of great resources, but if reaching events, stores, activities, etc. requires 1-2 hours round-trip in traffic then only those who are extremely patient will be able to access city amenities beyond their own neighborhoods. The U.S. broke when we crossed the 250 million point (we’re at around 350 million right now, though Yale says nobody knows the true number). Public transit cannot be the answer because no matter how jammed the roads were, Google Maps always estimated the public transit time as 1.5-2X. Check out all of the red and yellow on a Sunday afternoon at 3 pm and just imagine how bad it will get during weekday rush hours:

Chicago has tremendous wealth compared to the typical city or region within the U.S. The majority of voters chose a candidate for mayor who promised, four years ago, to reduce homelessness:

Everyone in Chicago deserves to have a roof over their head. That’s not just the right thing to do morally, it’s a smart approach to keeping our neighborhoods safe and strong. … It is a moral crisis that on freezing January nights, we have 1,500 Chicagoans sleeping out in the cold. … it is an injustice that one-in-four Black students in Chicago Public Schools experience homelessness at least once during their lives … The status quo is unacceptable, and the people of our city deserve better. … We need a City Hall that will “Bring Chicago Home,” delivering real funding to house the unhoused and combat homelessness.

(It was a “moral crisis”, but he didn’t explicitly promise to stop being immoral and end homelessness? Maybe just reduce the immorality a bit?)

Here’s an unhoused Chicagoan enjoying the warmth of collectivism, directly in front of Neiman Marcus on the Magnificent Mile:

The demographic future of Chicago is solidly Islamic. Women without hijabs walk around with no kids. Women in hijabs and burqas always have at least 1-3 children in tow. Examples:

As the city becomes more Islamic, though, it curiously also becomes more passionate at Rainbow Flagism, which is mostly haram. Here, for example, the Intercontinental Hotel flying the sacred Biden-style trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag at the same height as the American flag (July 27, almost a month after the end of Pride):

Not everyone observes the state religion, however. The haters at the Trump Hotel fly only the American flag:

We stayed in Streeterville and enjoyed 360 Chicago, 1030′ above the street level:

Like New York City, Chicago has gone “Full Hamas” in its support for liberating Palestine by destroying Israel. Example:

The above-mentioned mayor wears Palestinian garb:

He characterized Israel’s counterattack against the noble peaceful Gazans as “genocidal” in a 2024 interview (Mother Jones).

What do Chicago’s Jews do in response to this? Take the obvious step of following Ken Griffin, formerly the richest resident of Illinois, to Jew-friendly Miami? No. They put up billboards on the highway telling Democrats and immigrants from all of the world’s most anti-Jewish societies to stop hating Jews:

What happens at the airport? People wear masks. My favorite is the lady in the center who (a) is traveling with an unmasked family member, (b) wears her mask comfortably as a chin diaper.

The monitor at the gate shows that the IATA code for the West Palm Beach airport won’t update to “DJT” (the FAA moniker) until August 18 and also that chasing frequent flyer status is fool’s errand. Of the at least 12 people whose status rendered them eligible for first class, only 1 was upgraded:

Full post, including comments

Due to the magic of the Jones Act, it would be illegal for a German-built ship such as the magnificent Norwegian Joy to do an Alaska cruise from Seattle and stop only at U.S. ports, even if operated by a U.S.-based cruise line and staffed with an American crew. One perverse consequence of the Act is, therefore, that U.S. law requires all of the passengers to be unloaded at a Canadian port and spend their money in Canada rather than in the U.S. for at least one day. This turns the trip into an international one, which can legally be run in a foreign-made ship.

Victoria, British Columbia, is getting enormously rich as a conseqeunce of this 1920 law. We stopped there at the end of May 2026.

Walking toward town, Fishermen’s Wharf:

We summoned an Uber for the 30-minute drive to Butchart Gardens, created circa 1906 by the wife of a cement baron in his former limestone quarry and run today by the family.

There’s something for everyone here, including fountains, totem poles, restaurants, a carousel, etc.

The shocking price of $44/adult ($31 in USD; 10 years of supercharged immigration, more carefully selected for skills and education than immigrants to the U.S., has made the Canadian economy so strong that the exchange rate vs. the USD has collapsed) doesn’t keep the place from being crowded on a sunny Sunday. They sell a membership to locals and the gardens are dog-friendly so maybe that’s part of it, but most of the visitors seemed to be tourists. It was challenging at times to get through the rose garden.

It all started with a Japanese garden in 1906:

Why is it virtually impossible to buy stone lanterns in the U.S.? Here are some beautiful ones, including an unusual one that is made, perhaps, from concrete logs?

I asked ChatGPT “Why aren’t Japanese-style stone lanterns made in China and shipped to U.S. garden stores by container/truck and then sold at a reasonable cost?” Our AI overlord says that the wholesale cost in China might be around $100, but…(1) containers are weight-limited, (2) “Breakage and missing parts are a killer”, (3) the port-to-store or port-to-house shipping is going to be expensive for a heavy object, 4) #tariffs #blameTrump, (5) stone lanterns don’t sell fast enough for a garden center, (6) Americans are tasteless and will accept a cast concrete or “cast stone” substitute.

Japanese Style in North Carolina seems to bring in the real deal for $1,000-$2,500, but they weigh 300-650 lbs. and then shipping is ruinous on top of that.

Maybe Optimus can learn to make stone lanterns?

I don’t dream of the winter that makes these rhododendrons and Japanese maples possible, but they are beautiful in spring!

Inspiration:

What do you get when you mix some of the New Canadians’ food traditions with Legacy Canada? Butter chicken poutine ($26 in fake money):

Artur, an immigrant from Turkey, had taken us out to the gardens. Wasim, an immigrant from northern India, brought us back to downtown Victoria.

The fountain across from the British Columbia Parliament Buildings celebrates the provinces and territories of Canada, which won its independence without a traitorous rebellion, unlike some countries…

We didn’t invest in the guided tour of the provincial parliament since, among other things, the idea of the capital not being in Vancouver seems ridiculous.

The Empress, a railroad-built hotel, is reached by walking past a statute of Emily Carr, a Canadian artist and writer unknown to Americans. She is the perfect inspiration for today’s immigration enthusiasts since she never got married or had children (though she had a dog Billie and a pet monkey Woo). Certainly she’s been replaced many times over!

At the opposite edge of the hotel’s block:

A passion for history required that we visit Rogers’ Chocolates, founded in 1885 by a man born in Massachusetts. This particular store dates to 1903.

Next stop: Munro’s Books.

Readers can perhaps guess that I headed straight for the children’s section.

Back in the adult area:

Of course, the staff was masked as well as allergic to cinnamon (see above):

The historic Chinatown surely has some great food, but we’d already stocked up on poutine at the garden.

Puzzle Lab was our favorite store. Laser cutting the “jigsaw” wooden puzzles enables them to cost a fraction of what a Stave costs (What would I do if Elizabeth Warren would follow through on her promise to steal Elon Musk’s $1 trillion and then give it to me (the second part isn’t included in her promise, but it seems only fair)? Order a bunch of Stave puzzles, which are perhaps $3,500 each.).

As part of an outdoor visitor orientation map, the government-run museum acknowledges that it is on stolen land:

Thanks to the miracle of spectacular immigration-fueled population growth, the city will be approving the replacement of an unsightly light-hogging single-family home with a beautiful 6-story apartment building:

At the extreme western end of the Trans-Canada Highway, there is a Mile 0 sign and a poignant statue of Terry Fox who tried to push through his cancer and run the entire distance. He died at 22. “Dreams are made possible if you try.” Well, I guess that’s true when you consider what happens to those who don’t try.

Then a walk back to the ship with views of the Olympic Mountains across the water, most famously traversed by enricher Ahmed Ressam in 1999.

Was ChatGPT helpful in planning this stop?

With 8 AM–6 PM, don’t burn the day on Butchart Gardens unless you particularly want gardens; it is farther from the cruise port. For your family, I’d walk from Ogden Point along the breakwater/Dallas Road waterfront to Beacon Hill Park, then continue to the Inner Harbour, Parliament buildings, and back. Victoria Trails describes Ogden Point Breakwater as a walk near the cruise terminal with harbor and Strait views. Independent cruise guides estimate the Empress/Inner Harbour area at about 1.5 miles from the cruise dock, so this is very doable as a half-day walk.

No. Butchart Gardens is a work of genius. Downtown Victoria is reasonably nice, but crowded with tourists and not filled with important architecture. Buying 3 lbs. of chocolate at Rogers’ and then reading through a stack of 2SLGBTQQIA+ books at Munro’s would be delightful, but doesn’t fill an entire day. ChatGPT frightened us further in a follow-up by saying that we wouldn’t be able to get an Uber back from Butchart. We got one within about 3 minutes (Wasim was dropping someone else off).

Related:

• a tale of my 1993 visit to Victoria

Full post, including comments

We stopped into Ketchikan, Alaska, our last port in the Great Land. The first thing I found was the MV Malaspina, an Alaska Marine Highway ferry launched in 1963 that I took in 1993. She’s a Jones Act survivor that remained in service through 2022. Her sister ship, MV Matanuska, was launched in 1962 and remains in service! Malaspina is used as seasonal housing now:

A former paper mill at the Ward Cove cruise facility has been turned into a massive souvenir mall:

Downtown was mobbed, as you might expect from 19,000 cruise ship passengers being unloaded into a town of about 8,000.

What used to happen on Creek Street (above right)?

Tired of cruise ship food? Here’s the line for lunch at 11:17 am. Keep in mind that all 19,000 tourists have been on unlimited 6 meals per day plus 24-hour room service.

Commercial fishing boats with the real money-makers behind them:

Walking for 20 minutes to the Totem Heritage Center, run by the city, gets one away from most of the cuise ship crowd. The museum reminds us that Native Americans are natural stewards and protectors of the environment from the rapacious white man. Curiously, when I was in Alaska in 1993 the clearcut forests on Native Corporation land was pointed out as a contrast to the National Forest, in which white administrators wouldn’t permit clearcutting.

There was quite a bit of fragmentation in the “late nineteenth century”:

White do-gooders today want young Native Alaskans to invest a huge amount of time and energy in learning their ancestral languages, now of no practical value:

I asked a local native what he thought about this. “It would be a lot better to learn Spanish or Chinese,” he said, “after learning English. Or maybe Arabic.” He pointed out that things were simpler in his youth when the white man wanted Indians to learn English and white culture. “There are so many immigrants from India, China, Vietnam, Latin America, the Middle East, and God knows where else that, in addition to our native culture we have to learn about languages, religions, and cultures from 10 or 15 different countries just to get through a day in the U.S.”

Speaking of keeping traditions alive, the local salmon hatchery is still closed for coronapanic:

A short walk down a creek passes by the Trail of Tears, updated for the 21st century: Married Man’s Trail.

The second facility for the city museum welcomes visitors with a land acknowledgement and pilots with an E6-B.

The local bookstore is next door and is ready in case a Black or indigenous (Palestinian?) 2SLGBTQQIA+ customer comes in:

Meanwhile, the store features a work by John Muir, a renowned racist (“advocated for white supremacy and promoting the race through eugenics, which called for forced sterilization of Black people and other minority groups”) who founded an anti-immigrant organization (“From 1989 – 1996, the Sierra Club had a national policy to greatly limit immigration”).

The kindness section of town: “Saving one cat will not change the world, but for that one cat … the world will change forever.” (Mindy the Crippler, our golden retriever, might adjust this slightly…)

The main shopping drag isn’t a bad place to prepare for Christmas:

It also works for hunting and gun nuts:

Back to our ship for the 1.5-day trip to Victoria, British Columbia:

What had ChatGPT recommended?

Norwegian uses Ward Cove, not the downtown Ketchikan docks. Ward Cove says the complimentary shuttle runs between Ward Cove and downtown Berth IV and takes about 20 minutes each way.

Do not assume Rainbird Trail is available. The Ketchikan Gateway Borough says Rainbird Trail is indefinitely closed because of the August 2024 landslide.

For a forest walk, I’d look at Ward Lake / Frog Pond instead. Ward Lake Trail is described as a mostly flat lake-circumference trail, wide gravel, with bridges over Ward Creek. AllTrails lists Ward Lake as a 1.5-mile loop near Ward Cove, generally easy, about 44 minutes. That means you could combine: Ward Cove → Ward Lake/Frog Pond area → shuttle downtown → Creek Street/totems → ship

This was useless advice. The trailhead suggested by ChatGPT is a 3-mile walk from the cruise dock along a main road and there aren’t rental cars available at Ward Cove. As it happens, the rest of the family enjoyed a fishing excursion in a 6-passenger boat (plus the captain’s two Australian shepherds). It was too early for salmon, but they caught some rockfish and then had a bbq on an island. I didn’t join because it would have been much sitting in an uncomfortable boat (spoiled by the Norwegian Joy!).

Full post, including comments

Where did the Huna Tlingit Indians forced by Climate Change to evacuate Glacier Bay circa 1800 end up? Just across Icy Strait in Hoonah. Right next to their town, after salmon canning became unprofitable, they set up a theme park for cruise ships called “Icy Strait Point”:

What did our AI cruise director suggest?

Icy Strait Point has a built-for-cruise feel, but it is also one of the better places for whale watching or kayaking because the tour boats don’t have to spend a lot of time just reaching wildlife areas. The port’s official site emphasizes the old salmon cannery setting and excursions tied to the natural setting and local history.

For a no-excursion plan, do the Icy Strait Point Nature Trail, beach, cannery area, and maybe walk/ride into Hoonah. The Nature Trail is short—about 1.1 miles, easy, roughly 0.5–1 hour—so it won’t satisfy your “couple of hours in forest” goal by itself. If you want a more substantial activity here, this is a good port for a guided wilderness hike, kayak, or whale-watch rather than improvising deep woods, partly because Chichagof Island is serious bear country.

Here’s the overview map:

We bought tickets from the ship for the Sky Peak gondola, which rises 1,600′, and arrived in the middle of a cloud for a bilingual talk by a tribal elder (not Elizabeth Warren):

Was waiting in line for the gondola worth it? 100 percent! Where better to practice outdoor masking than on top of a mountain in Alaska?

Remember to have your coffee before getting off the ship. The line for the shack at the top of the gondola wasn’t pretty:

The trail to a long boardwalk carried some warnings:

Who wouldn’t be happy to be out in the fresh air with a 12-gauge shotgun? One of these guys was from Indiana(!) and now makes his year-round home in Hoonah:

Were the guns necessary? The guides/guards said that the bears were all down closer to the water because there was an ample food supply down there during the late May time of our visit. The bear-free boardwalk:

The weather cleared when we got back to the top of the gondola:

There was a 30-minute line to get onto a free gondola that saves a 20-minute walk into Hoonah:

Hoonah with multiple ships in port is at least as crowded as Manhattan and with comparable restaurant waiting times.

Instead of waiting in the line, we hoofed it back to our ship and ate lunch on board.

I enjoyed seeing Serenade of the Seas, the Royal Caribbean ship that was home for me and mom on my very first ocean cruise (Baltic 2016). She’s also a product of Meyer Werft.

For fans of the costs of government regulation, a Jones Act Alaskan Marine Highway ferry, M/V Hubbard. She was built in Alaska and took 17 years from being “envisioned” to completion, i.e., enough time for the Chinese to build a few cities and associated shipyards for Neopanamax container carriers. The cost might have been as high as $100 million, including crew quarters that were added, for this Ketchikan-built 5,000-ton vessel that carries 53 cars. With her sister ship, in other words, the cost was higher than what our Chinese brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters charge to build a Neopanamax container ship of 15,000 TEU capacity and 135,000 gross tons. Do the Chinese need 17 years? ChatGPT says closer to 1 year, though this can stretch to 3-4 years depending on the shipyard’s backlog.

If we returned to Icy Strait Point we’d book a whale watch.

Full post, including comments

Previously in this space… Sitka, Alaska Public Library

Here’s a report on the rest of our late May 2026 visit, planned by ChatGPT:

Take the free shuttle from the Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal into downtown; the terminal says its complimentary shuttle runs during port hours and averages about 10–15 minutes.

Then walk to Sitka National Historical Park. The NPS describes the park’s Totem Trail and Russian Memorial Loop as 1.6 miles total, through Sitka spruce/western hemlock rainforest, with vistas of Sitka Sound and the intertidal zone. Travel Alaska describes the Totem Trail as a mile-long path with 18 Tlingit and Haida totems, connected to the Battle of Sitka/Russian history.

This is the port where I would not book a standard bus tour. You can make an excellent day from shuttle + walking: downtown Sitka, St. Michael’s Cathedral exterior/interior if open, Totem Trail, beach/intertidal stops, and maybe the Alaska Raptor Center if the boys are interested.

Arrival:

Here’s Eurodam, capable of holding 2,000 passengers and looking like a personal yacht compared to Norwegian Joy:

Downtown includes a working marina:

As we walked toward ChatGPT’s suggested totem trial, it began to pour. We took shelter at a cost of $40 in the Sitka Sound Science Center, a one-room aquarium.

The aquarium maintains a full COVID-19 sub-site. Here’s my favorite page within the sub-site, “Thank you to the Sitka Assembly for supporting science” (September 28, 2021, a year after Ron DeSantis cruelly prevented local governments in Florida from enforcing mask orders (by banning fines)):

The page links to a bunch of papers, but not “Unmasking the surgeons: the evidence base behind the use of facemasks in surgery” (2015): “overall there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that facemasks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination”.

After the rain subsided, it was on to the National Historical Park.

It’s a beautiful forest, even with the totem poles:

The visitor center is crammed with humans, many likely infected with respiratory viruses. The ranger, however, is protected:

Next stop was the ChatGPT-suggested Raptor Center:

On the way back to town, we passed a public school building. Their COVID-19 war never ended:

We walked by a lot of humble houses with beautiful flower gardens. This one made me nostalgic for Maskachusetts:

It apparently is possible to grow tulips in Florida. The bulbs, about $1 each, need to be refrigerated for a few months and then planted as annuals in December or January. Everyone who holds stock in any company valued at more than 100X earnings should be required to plant tulips!

(It looks like tulipworld.com, fireflyfarmandmercantile.com, and menagerieflower.com sell pre-cooled bulbs for Floridians who lack extra fridge space due to (a) no basements, and (b) the spectacular inefficiency of high-cost built-in refrigerators.)

Sitka was the principal town of New Arkhangelsk, the site of the transfer of Alaska after Seward’s Folly, and then the capital of the Department of Alaska/District of Alaska until Juneau took over in 1906. The Russian heritage lives on in a beautiful cathedral:

The gift shops that branded themselves “Russian” are now tempering that with public support for Ukraine:

If you need to decorate a corner of your living room…

My favorite local business? Flipside Arcade. Here’s my Google review:

Perfect spot to spend a couple of hours if it is raining (i.e., more or less any time in Sitka). The owner, Scott, is plainly passionate about preserving America’s pinball legacy. Machines are generally priced at whatever they might have cost when new, e.g., 50 cents/game for 90s microprocessor-based machines. Maintenance is excellent. Photo below is of a new Stern SPIKE 3 Pokemon machine being delivered.

(Remarkably quiet inside, at least if you’ve been accustomed to cruise ship crowds!)

How did ChatGPT do? Poorly, in my opinion. I’ve asked it a bunch of pinball questions. It should have suggested the arcade as a rainy-day possibility. ChatGPT’s ideas were similar to the overview one might find in a paper guidebook.

Full post, including comments

ChatGPT’s first cut at a day off the cruise ship in Skagway, Alaska (6:30 am-7 pm):

This is probably your most natural hiking day. Do Lower Dewey Lake in the morning; it’s a real forest/lake hike close to town and cruise piers, and multiple Alaska cruise hiking guides recommend it as one of the best port hikes in Skagway.

Then do the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park museum/historic district. The NPS says its Skagway historic-district walking tour is a 0.64-mile self-guided tour, and the visitor center/museum and restored Mascot Saloon are part of the park experience. This gives the boys context for the gold rush without sacrificing the active day.

Again, ChatGPT shied away from “overtouristing” by giving us a lightweight schedule. Pressed, it also recommended riding the White Pass railroad, which, as it happens, was a pioneer in containerization.

We ended up not doing the Lower Dewey Lake hike because the only time available for the railroad was mid-day, it took us a while to get organized in the morning, and the train ride took longer than expected due to a locomotive failure.

Walking towards downtown from the cruise pier:

Crossing the railroad tracks:

I remembered the town as sleepy when I visited in 1993. Here’s a photo from the absolute peak of the tourist season in 1993, July 25:

For comparison, May 2026 (well before peak tourism; looks like the weather improved, at least, thanks to Climate Change!):

Quite a few of the sidewalks were covered to Times Square densities:

Because it was Memorial Day, we used Google Maps to navigate to the “young men who left home and community to answer the call to help preserve peace and freedom in the world” plaque:

These men fought and died so that we could have Rainbow-first Retail and so that people could preferentially shop at stores that proclaim “women-owned” (because “Women have always been the primary victims of war.” (Hillary Clinton)):

If they hadn’t been killed in wars they could have come home to drink at a brewery under the sacred flag:

The National Park Service explains the alternatives facing the “Sourdoughs” prior to the railroad’s construction:

The gold rusher had to bring a minimum of one ton of supplies up these trails in order to get through Canadian immigration. Unlike today, where being helpless and in need of four generations of welfare enhances one’s admissibility as an immigrant to Canada or the U.S. (as a “refugee” or “asylum-seeker”), the Canadians at the time didn’t want anyone who was likely to become a dependent. Therefore, they inspect a miner’s luggage to make sure that he had at least one year of food.

The railroad promised to change all that, but it wasn’t finished until the gold rush was over (Wikipedia), but the investors still made money because there were other resources, including copper, silver, and lead, to be pulled out of the Yukon. Uncle Sam stepped in to save the railroad from the Depression by taking over the system during the construction of the Alaska Highway in WWII.

Passengers in the uncrowded Alaskan wilderness ready to get on…

The trip starts fairly flat.

At a few points it is possible to see Skagway and any cruise ships docked there:

We sat next to a Mexican real estate developer. He and his wife were big Trump supporters because they believe that Trump will help quash the cartels that compromise safety within Mexico. They do not like their progressive president, Claudia Sheinbaum, due to inefficiency, cronyism, and failure to deal with organized crime. Although not Jewish, they dislike Sheinbaum’s support for Hamas and frequent condemndation’s of Israel for “genocide” (exacerbated in Gaza by rapid population growth). “Even if she were right about Israel,” the Mexicans pointed out, “what does the Gaza war, or any war in the Middle East, have to do with Mexico and Mexico’s problems?”

Here’s a reconstructed border shack where the Canadian government used to try to make sure that immigrants could be self-sufficient:

After one of our locomotives failed, a train in front of us sent back one of its two to help us up the final steep ascent. Then we used our own single locomotive for the trip back down to Skagway. Have faith in timber:

The term “Gold Diggers” has a different meaning here than in the lower 48. From the downtown bookstore:

We decided that the kids weren’t ready for this:

A fun souvenir:

How did ChatGPT do? Fair. The railroad trip is more or less essential, in my opinion, despite the extra sitting time. It’s the only way to experience the reason that Skagway exists, i.e., getting through the pass. Furthermore, it has to be booked well in advance because the trains fill up. There isn’t enough to do in downtown Skagway, even with a hike, to fill up a whole day.

Full post, including comments

Instead of reading guidebooks and working my feeble brain, I let ChatGPT do the planning for our shore time in the various ports that Norwegian Joy brought us to. I cut and pasted the itinerary, said that we preferred to just walk off the ship rather than get into some other form of transport, and that we wanted to be active. ChatGPT’s first idea for a 1:30-10 pm stop:

Option A: Mendenhall Glacier + Nugget Falls. This is the safest family bet: transit/taxi/shuttle to Mendenhall, walk Nugget Falls, then return to town. The Forest Service notes that trails such as Nugget Falls, East Glacier, Trail of Time, Moraine Ecology, and Dredge Lakes do not require a fee just to hike, though some visitor-center areas do.

Option B: Mount Roberts Tram + hike from the top. This is closer to your ideal: the tram is right by the cruise docks, and Travel Juneau describes Mount Roberts Trail as 2 miles/1.5 hours to the Mountain House, 4.5 miles/4 hours to the summit, with the option to ride the tram up and hike from there. For kids, I’d ride up, hike toward Father Brown’s Cross or farther only as conditions allow, then tram down.

A caution: I would not push Mount Roberts hard in fog/rain or near dusk with kids. There were fatal cruise-passenger hiking incidents in the mountains above Juneau in 2025, including hikers who apparently left the actual trail in wet/foggy conditions.

ChatGPT was helpful in clarifying that the Mendenhall Glacier can’t be reached on foot from downtown Juneau and that Ubers aren’t easy to obtain. I ended up manually refining the above to include (1) a rental car from the cruise pier area, (2) eliminating the Mount Roberts Tram, which was down for maintenance, and (3) adding the National Shrine of St. Thérèse (because we had the car).

Some photos as we approached Juneau for our 1:30 pm disembarkation, highlighting the absurd mismatch between the ship’s waterslides and pools and the 50-degree cloudy windy weather.

Approaching the town (note the two other ships already docked):

AVIS has apparently had some issues with previous renters…

We got a Chevy Bolt and suffered zero range anxiety because… Juneau isn’t connected to any road network. AVIS rents nothing but EVs in this location. No need to worry about charging either because they tell you up front that you’ll pay $25 extra to recharge.

Here’s the total:

Quite a few services in Alaska are about 2X the price you’d pay in the Lower 48, so $254 for half a day of car rental isn’t terrible. It would have cost more to book a bus tour for four people out to the glacier and we wouldn’t have had any flexiblity.

First stop, the Mendenhall Glacier. Cropped just right, it looks like an uncrowded wilderness, right?

In reality, the parking lot was overflowing and the trail to Nuggel Falls was about as crowded as a Manhattan sidewalk.

The trail to the falls has some nice rainforest:

The falls per se is where you see that Fred Meyer was having a sale on humans:

If you could tolerate more sitting in a boat, this might be the way to do it:

From the walk back:

On to National Shrine of St. Thérèse (Wikipedia), a 30-minute drive away. Due to a fresh breeze coming off the water, this was much colder than the area around the glacier.

Something you might not see in Massachusetts, “This Memorial is Deduciated to the Victims of Abortion”:

The stations of the cross are depicted:

Note how bundled up against the wind everyone is:

One of the kids had a wardrobe malfunction at the waterfall so we stopped at Fred Meyer and found this awesome shirt:

Prices at the one and only McDonald’s in Southeast Alaska weren’t terrible, but adding a Denali Mac to the cruise ship diet was a sandwich too far.

Back in downtown Juneau…. here’s Seward, the man who made us masters of this domain, looking none too happy about the purchase:

Nice doggie:

The gift shops included my dream Christmas tree and a trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag:

The gift shop that was celebrating our 2SLGBTQQIA+ brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters with the flag out front also displayed quite a few dead animals inside:

Totem poles are everywhere, despite the fact that it was really natives much farther south who were passionate about this art form.

The last photo:

How well did ChatGPT do? In fairness, I didn’t say “I found a rental car” and then ask it to update the plan. I think it was too conservative about how much can be comfortably packed into a 9-hour block.

Full post, including comments