Winter Fun in Juneau

I drove "out the road" the other day all the way to the end only to discover that the last 6 or 8 miles are barely maintained and I was driving on about 1-2 inches of ice. The parking lot at Point Bridget State Park wasn't plowed and had about 4 feet or more of snow so everyone had parked on the road. I snowshoed in a few miles and met some folks who were on the way out from one of the cabins you can rent. They were skiing but were towing lots of gear on sleds which looked like fun but a lot of work. It was a rare sunny three day weekend. On the way back down the road I came upon a beautiful sunset that began at about 3:30 PM and lasted for almost an hour. I took a bunch of photos since I'm still getting used to my camera. I played around with the cameras exposure settings in an attempt to keep the sunset from looking burned out. As I was finally getting the hang of it the sun had dropped down enough to send more horizontal light across the canal. It was too pretty to do justice with photos but I made a pretty good attempt I think.


This one is "downtown" Juneau a few miles from where I live. I stopped in for groceries after taking advantage of the sunshine and doing some photography. It was about 4:00 PM and the sun was still shining with blue sky and the moon was out over the mountains. I decided to take a few quick photos. I'm beginning to gain a lot more respect for professional photographers.

January in Juneau

Well it's good to be home again after about two days in airports a week ago and weather delays, etc. I finally made it to Juneau Airport with a snow storm. Everyone keeps asking me for photos of where I live so I thought I'd finally take one with snow instead of rain. The picture doesn't do the driveway justice. It's so steep we don't park the cars there during winter and I often have to wear creepers(spikes) on the bottom of my boots to keep from breaking my neck on the way down to the house.

This photo is looking out the sliding glass door in the back of the house. The woods do a good job of hiding the "highway." We had all this snow when I took the photos and then after I rested for two days due to jet lag it was rained quite a bit turning the whole place into a slushy ice festival. It's interesting driving on inch thick ice almost made me feel like I was back on the ALCAN last winter.lol












After the slush fest the following weekend was bright and sunny and Monday was overcast but cold enough to avoid any possibility of rain. I found out there was still some snow out tby the glacier and lots more "out the road" so here's one photo I took while attempting to learn how to use the new camera(Nikon D40). I'll have more photos in my next post. Since everyone has been asking me for pictures I wanted to add this quick update.