September 11th, 2003
Thursday

Page 1

We arrived in Juneau at 7:00 am.  We were on the bus at 7:35 ready to go on our Helicopter ride when the tour came on the bus and informed us that the flight had been cancelled because of bad weather.  She rescheduled us for 10:15 and went her merry way.  We went back on the ship, ate breakfast, and hung out til' 10:00.  At 10:15 we were back on the bus and cruising to the airport.  We put on these cool boots that went completely over our regular shoes, watched a short video, and then headed outside.  I got to sit up front with the pilot and Sara sat behind me with another couple.  We lifted off and flied over part of the city and up and over the Mendenhall glacier.  It's hard to tell in the pictures on page 3 but the crags that you see are about 50 feet high.  The ice has been formed under such great pressure that it reflects most light in the spectrum except for blue.  We fly over a lot of the glacier and then landed.  There were tour guides there that gave us a brief tour.  The tour was cut short because the weather started getting bad and the pilots wanted us to leave early for safety reasons.  Apparently people have been stuck out on the glacier for hours waiting for the weather to clear.  It was awesome out on the glacier but it was also really, really, really, really cold.  Did I mention that it was cold?  We flew back and disembarked at their hanger.  There was another group of people with their boots already on waiting for the next tour.  While we were waiting for the bus to pick us up all the rest of the tours for the day got cancelled.  They had to take everything back off and ride with us back to the ship.  I'm glad that we were able to make it on the helicopters.  We went back to town and walked around for a few hours.  We also stopped at fisherman's wharf and I ate some of the best Fish & Chips that I have ever had.  We got back on the ship and it left around 7:00 pm.