Alaskan cruise: Juneau/Tracy Arm

So in Juneau, we decided to take a bus and go see Mendenhall Glacier, which apparently is one of the only glaciers you can actually drive to. So we find the rickety old bus that goes there and get on. The first thing we saw when we got off the bus was a baby black bear!

It was so cool! It was up in a tree and really close. I was a little afraid because where a baby bear is there's gotta be a mama bear close by. But there was a forest ranger there, so I felt mostly ok. The glacier itself was AMAZING! I seriously have never seen anything like it before.

I was just so amazed by how huge it was and the blue ice. Plus, there were chunks of ice that were floating down the river below the glacier that were just huge. They had a visitors center where we learned a lot about the formation of glaciers and the wildlife in the area. They even had a chunk of the glacier in there that we could touch. They said it was probably about 200 years old!

Then we went on a little hike down to a waterfall that was near the glacier. We had an even better (and wetter) view of it.

And here's the waterfall.

I really loved seeing the glacier. I think that was probably my favorite part of the whole trip.

Then we went on the boat up to Tracy Arm to see another glacier (Sawyer Glacier). Tracy Arm was really beautiful. There were steep cliffs and tall waterfalls around every corner.

I think this was was even bigger. We saw several other glaciers on our trip, but these two were the closest ones we were able to see. Pretty incredible.

And I loved how blue the ice was. It was so pretty.

Seriously, I had never seen anything like this before and it was just so incredible.