We’re on Day 3 (or 4?) of our Alaskan cruise, so I knew this morning that we must be in Juneau. But we opted to get a windowless inside cabin on the ship, so I didn’t have any idea how it would look.

Turns out it looks like this:

It’s very pretty in a Great Northwest way that I haven’t gotten enough chance to see up close. It would be very interesting to know more about the people that opt to live here year-round. A person could look at the established village, the tourist shops and all that, and assume that the Alaskan state capital is just like anywhere else.

But then, Juneau is the only state capital with no roads going in or out. It can only be reached by air or sea. That gives you a little something to think about. And then there’s the weather. It’s still mild out today — we’ve caught good weather every day so far, so you might be inclined to think it wouldn’t take that much to get used to life here. But you hear from the shopkeeper that last year was a bad snow year in which they got 200 (that’s two-hundred) inches of snow. And you think okay, maybe it would.

Besides, there’s something about the look of those mountains right up against the developed land that looks like they might carelessly squash the whole city like a giant rolling over in bed.

The Russian connection I was looking for is here at least in a commercial sense. There were multiple opportunities to buy matryoshka dolls and painted wooden eggs.

When Greg and I braved the San Francisco-like hills, we eventually made it to St. Nicholas Orthodox Church. It was built in 1893 and it’s struggling for both funds and members (a situation familiar to a lot of churches right now, I think). It’s the only Orthodox Church in town and one of only two in the whole southwest part of Alaska. Our group is coming tonight for Vespers, and I look forward to taking a break from cruise activities to do something a little more meaningful.

It makes me a little sad to think that this area hasn’t held onto the Russian Orthodox heritage more, but it’s hard to know how things went once the Klondike gold rush came sweeping in and then out like a rushing wave.

For all its natural beauty — you can look over the rooftops to the mountain behind it and see a thin waterfall cascading hundreds of feet down — there’s something solemn about the wilderness. The only birdlife we’ve seen are ravens, but they’re everywhere, cawing like barking dogs, competing over scraps, swooping down the alleys on strafing runs looking for garbage.

You’d have to deal with a different kind of loneliness here. Everyone is friendly, but then it may be one of those cases when the cruise-boat tourists are a welcome source of income. But when the season ends and the tourists leave, how quiet the nights must get!
Still, I think I understand why there are so many people that just get smitten with Alaska once they see it.