Day 5 - Bike ‘n Brew in Juneau - August 11, 2021

 Our ship came into the land-locked State Capital of Alaska this morning, where Karen and I had booked an early morning bicycle ride. Due to the ongoing weather advisory for southeastern Alaska, we were still experiencing cool and rainy conditions as we met our bicycling guides on the dock.

We piled into a van hooked to a trailer full of bicycles and drove out of town into the Mendenhall Valley. After putting on our helmets and rain gear, we biked out to Mendenhall Lake, where we caught our first glimpse of the Mendenhall Glacier.

From there, we rode along gravel paths and power line access roads to the other side of the valley up into the entrance of the glacier observatory parking lot. Due to time constraints, we did not get too close to the glacier. 

After a couple of photos, we met up with the van and drove back to town for the second half of our ‘Bike and Brew’ excursion, where a local fish and chips place hosted a beer tasting session for us thirsty bikers.

Although there was not much ‘biking’ on this outing, there was definitely lots of ‘brew’ (at least for me). Our server had several large pitchers of Alaska Brewing Company beer prepared for our tasting flight of five different beer styles. There were ten bikers in our group, but only about half of us were beer drinkers. Karen grabbed a quick bowl of salmon chowder and stuck around for a few sips of beer before leaving to catch a shuttle back to the ship.

Meanwhile, several full tasting cups were beginning to pile up around those of us who remained. I visited with two young newlywed couples in our group as we all did our best to leave no beer behind. After doing my best with the amber, alt, IPA, porter and brown ale, I decided I’d try to clear my head by walking a mile back to the ship.

By this time, the wind had picked up and it was beginning to rain more heavily. When I got back to the ship I realized I was somehow still a little thirsty.

As I got on board, Jim was standing just outside the ‘District Brewery’ (our onboard beer headquarters), waving goodbye to Carla, Jenny, Eileen and Gary, who were all down below on a small boat leaving for a glacier watching excursion.

After Jim and I had a couple of beers (just what I needed?), we went back to our respective cabins to rest up for the afternoon. 

Later on, Karen and I met up with Ted on the observation deck to watch the icebergs and glacier as our large ship followed the smaller excursion boat (the one with the rest of our group on board) into an inlet. Ted had taken the smaller excursion boat a couple of years earlier and he described the experience of hearing and seeing the ice ‘calve’ from the main body of the glacier. He also explained that their earlier cruise ship was smaller than the ‘Encore’ and could therefore get closer to the glacier than we could today.

Before long, our ship stopped to allow the smaller excursion boat to come close enough to unload its passengers onto the ship. A short while later, we all met up for our afternoon trivia game, and had dinner. Afterward, some of us went to bed, while others attended a Beatles tribute band show in the main auditorium.

NEXT:  Ketchikan