Juneau, Alaska

After such an amazing few weeks in this part of Alaska, it was time to get to civilization so we could get provisions and fuel to continue our journey south to Vancouver Island.

Juneau is the capital city of Alaska. Located in the Gastineau Channel and the Alaskan panhandle, it is a unified municipality and the second largest city in the United States by area.

The harbor is run by the municipality and is in excellent shape.  The only drawback is there are no reservations and it is a free for all, first come, first served craziness that leaves no one sure there will be a place to stay....  That and the 50+ whale watching cattle boats that come and go every day, leaves this place sometimes quite frustrating.

We lucked out that our new friends, Dewey and Debbie arrived in their boat a few minutes before us and scouted out a spot big enough to accommodate Blowin' Bubbles.

An hour or so after we settled in Dewey and his grandson, took us all the way to Costco for our much needed supplies...  It just keeps happening that people are so amazingly kind and generous here!

Shelley quickly became new "best friends" with Alison, one of the harbor staff when it was discovered they both liked wine...  (who knew).  On our second night, Alison, and her partner Steve visited us and invited Shelley and I to check their crab pots the next day...

As you might know, our freezer has been on the blink for almost a month now and getting the part up here has become an exercise in futility.  While it still works (sort of) we have to keep turning it on and off every few hours...  It turned out that Steve had a freezer he could no longer use so just GAVE it to us!!!  WOW!  Not only does it work great, it is actually a better model than the one we had and is bigger so we can store more food.  We took a day and installed it where the old one lived, but to do that we had to take a part of the wall out to get it in!  It is in now and looks and works GREAT!  Thank you Steve...

Everyone we speak to tells us a cruising guide is imperative when you travel the inside passage.  Finding one turned out to be a nightmare.  We did not have time to order one online so scavenged every local place we could think of to find one...  In the end, it was local people who rescued us.  Bob and Patrick from MV Alaskan Legend let us take one of theirs and we just had to order a replacement from Amazon, which they should get in a week or two...

On our last morning we fueled the boat and began our journey south.  We will arrive in Petersburg, AK tomorrow and expect to take a month or so to reach the south end of Vancouver Island.