Birthday Alaska Cruise!

We flew today from Missoula, MT to Juneau. The Juneau airport reminded me a lot of our hometown airport, small, quaint and fully functional. My mom and I were on one of our many mother-daughter trips that we have taken over the years. We have been to Guatemala, the Galapagos, a this time we were heading to Alaska for a week on the small 21 passenger yacht, the Safari Quest. But this time, we were celebrating big birthdays - my 30th and her 60th. We chose the trip right in between our birthdays, the last week of August. I had heard the weather was generally pretty favorable, and the wildlife abundant. After arriving and taking a taxi to our hotel, we set out to wander the streets of Juneau. It really is a small town, and quite amazing that this was the capital of such a large state. To think, there are no roads connecting Juneau to the rest of the state, and all the official state business takes place here. We covered most of the central part of town in a few hours, including ducking our heads into a couple shops and deciding where we wanted to eat the next day. There were a couple large cruise ships in port so the city was a bustling, but it quickly quieted down as they departed late in the day. We had a delicious crab soup at the crab shack on the pier, and made our way back to our hotel for dinner.