Juneau Alaska is Picture Perfect

Most people try to leave work at home when on vacation. But I’m a photographer, and sometimes, try as I may, it’s just impossible to leave the camera alone. Perhaps nowhere has this been more true than on my first visit to Juneau, Alaska. Juneau is a place of such unique variety and incomparable beauty that within moments of my arrival, it became clear that it would be impossible to resist happily snapping away.

Juneau Alaska is picture perfect!  Surrounded by mountains and waterfront, Juneau is a delight to the camera lens. The view from the Mount Roberts Tramway is extraordinary. The tram, which leaves right from downtown, took me half way up the 3,819-foot Mount Roberts. I snapped a shot of the city; the buildings looking almost cosmopolitan as they tuck themselves into the Chilkat Mountains. Hiking trails lead up the remaining one to two miles of Mount Roberts, and it is well worth the excursion. Not only are the views even more amazing—glaciers, mountains, icefields and the cities of Juneau and Douglas all sharing one panorama, but the mountaintop is filled with wildlife. As I was taking another shot of Juneau’s cityscape, an unexpected visitor—a brown bear—invited himself into the frame.

Another fun way to take in Juneau’s scenery is the Bike and Brew, a bike tour I took that passes through Auke Bay—a great place for whale-watching—and Mendenhall Glacier, where I snapped a photo that looks almost otherworldly: a thrashing waterfall rushing into an iceberg-filled lake that pools around the bulk of the glacier. It seemed impossible that so much free-flowing water could be falling next to a slab of ice 12-miles long, but I have the photo to prove it! The nine-mile ride ends at Alaska’s largest brewery, the Alaskan Brewing Company, where I sampled several delicious brews, including those not yet released for sale.

Juneau’s downtown is equally intriguing. The streets are lined with hotels and taverns that hearken back to Juneau’s Gold Rush past—many of them are more than 100 years old. There is the famous Red Dog Saloon, where a pianist hammers out ragtime tunes and the walls are decorated with the likes of Wyatt Earp’s gun. The Alaskan Hotel, Juneau’s oldest continuously operating hotel, was once a bordello catering to miners. There is also the Goldstein Building, a former department store which served as the state Capitol three times; and my favorite, the Governor’s House, with a totem pole depicting the origins of the mosquito. The street-scene photos I shot here are what I can only imagine Gold Rush-era postcards would have looked like—except for the modern clothes and the cars parked along the streets, of course.

Juneau’s most fascinating architectural sight is the St. Nicholas Orthodox Church. Built in 1893 in Siberia, disassembled and shipped to Juneau in 1894, its services were originally conducted in both English and the indigenous Tlingit language. It’s an intriguing building, octagonally-shaped and quite small. Even so, it still has a quintessentially Russian gilded onion dome—albeit a shrunken one. In the photo I shot, with the mountains towering behind it, the church looks like a cathedral that has been miniaturized for frontier-town practicality’s sake. It’s a fascinating sort of time capsule, and a perfect image that encapsulates the unique blend of nature and the man-made that makes Juneau so ripe for exploration.

Did you know Alaska has one mile of road for every 42 square miles of land, compared to the US average of one to one?

Juneau is also home to 262.2 miles of hiking trails.  Compare that to just 41 miles of roadways from Thane at the South to Echo Cove at the North, and there are only 22 miles of roads on Douglas Island.

If you go on a hike, please remain on marked trails.  It’s important to tell someone where you plan to go and when you plan to return, to carry along food and water and to have good information and a map along with you.  Check the weather before you leave or better yet travel with a cruise or tour group for safety.  Never approach or feed wild animals or birds.

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