Backpacking in Juneau Part 1: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
The long-awaited return trip to Alaska was finally happening. The previous July I had the chance to visit Em for a week where I got to work right along side her on the glacier and explore Juneau briefly. I was absolutely hooked on Alaska after that. Even now I think about Alaska at least once a week, but this trip wasn’t just a return to satisfy my craving of Juneau Juice IPA, Salmon Tots from Deckhand Daves, and getting to see pines and eagles every direction you look. After 4 months of working as a dog handler for a Dog Sledding tourism company, her time there was coming to an end and we would be reunited at last!
Rather than just packing her bags and waving goodbye to the 49th state, we decided to make a trip out of those final hours. Emily, her dad Scott, and I planned on taking a 2-night backpacking trip out to the Cowee Meadows Cabin, just north of Juneau.
Since Emily and I never do anything halfway, this backpacking trip was just the launch point for a 6 day trip to Utah. We would be flying to Salt Lake City to see our friends Castle and Erin in Ogden, and go on another backpacking trip to summit the tallest mountain in Utah (another post about this trip coming soon). To accommodate the laundry list of adventure ahead, my bags contained all of Emily and I’s gear for both trips, gear used this trip will be covered in a later post!
I typically avoid checked bags when I travel for the minor inconvenience of waiting at baggage claim, but there was no way around it for this trip. Maybe I jinxed myself but boy did I feel validated about hating checked bags after what was to come.
My flight from Boston departed at 7:51 a.m. with an expected arrival in Seattle at 11:04 a.m., with my flight from Seattle to Juneau leaving at 11:34 a.m. Now you’re probably thinking “that’s a really short connection time Grafton, a single delay and you’re gonna miss your flight!”. Well you are exactly right. The flight departing Boston was delayed 45 minutes due to a malfunction with the bathroom onboard. This resulted in a dead sprint to the next terminal once I landed in Seattle.
Little did I know the traverse between terminals required an underground tram to the N terminal, which sits on an island away from the rest of the terminals at SeaTac. As I was on this tram, I got the dreaded email that I was already rebooked for the next flight that departed a whole 9 hours later. Absolute nightmare situation considering I was supposed to get in at 1:10 p.m. in Juneau, and we were planning to hike to the cabin the same night.
By a stroke of luck, on that flight from Boston I had struck up a conversation with the woman and her toddler sitting next to me on the flight who was originally from New England and had moved out to Seattle. We had exchanged contact information since she wanted to get more details about what Emily had been doing for work all summer, but now she was also an unexpected lifeline.
I texted her asking for recommendations of places to check out in Seattle to pass the time rather than sitting in an airport for 9 hours. I had never been to Washington before, let alone Seattle, and since you can’t count being in a state unless you leave the airport, I wanted to capitalize on this opportunity. My new acquaintance not only offered suggestions but also offered to pick me up with her car and drop me off at a good launch point to explore. A 30-minute drive later, we arrived at a hamburger joint called Dick’s Drive-In, where I bought hamburgers and a milkshake for her and her daughter in exchange for the ride, and I set off!
My first stop was to Gas Works Park, a former Coal Gasification Plant owned by Seattle Gas Light Company that was retired and turned into a park. This offered a pretty cool view of Lake Union, and I even got to see a paraglider taking off which was absolutely wild.
I continued northwest towards the Fremont area and played into my consumerist tendencies by visiting a Black Diamond storefront. I had been indoor climbing on a weekly basis all year to help prepare for our first outdoor climbing excursion planned in Utah the following week. Seeing all the climbing equipment on display was an espresso-sized shot of dopamine for me, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to climb outdoors on REAL rock instead of scaling neon colored Plastic in the gym.
The next stop on my agenda was a trip to the Space Needle once I had figured out how to navigate the Seattle public transportation system. The extent of my use of public transportation is hopping on the T in Boston, which is extremely straightforward, but busses were new to me. Apple Maps does make life easy by showing the bus stop departures, but a little user error caused me to almost get on the bus going the opposite direction I intended on going. Whoops.
Another short walk, a $40 ticket, and a quick elevator ride later, and I was up in the Space Needle! Knowing absolutely nothing about this attraction other than the name, it was a fun experience. The outer portion of the needle’s floor slowly spins continuously, allowing you to stand in one spot and see the entire sweeping view of the city if your patience will let you stand still that long. There are also multiple glass floors you can stand on and peer down at the ground below you. The entertainment of seeing people afraid of heights realize they were suddenly peering at the ground well below them was almost as much fun as the attraction itself.
I didn’t stay too long since I wanted to visit Pike Place Market before my return to the airport. I got to see the infamous flying fish tossed by the market workers, stopped into a local brewery and chatted with the bartender about the area and comparing Seattle to Portland over a beer, and finally hunted down some chowder. As a New England resident, I have to stand firm on our superiority of clam chowder, but Seattle can take first place with their fish chowder if it all tastes anything like what I had at the market.
With my impromptu checklist of Seattle now complete and 2 hours until takeoff, it was time to head back to the terminal. Now that I had become an expert in Seattle’s public transportation system, I took the train that went all the way to SeaTac, breezed through security (shout out to TSA pre-check), and verified the gate actually existed before going to grab my 5th coffee of the day since I had now been awake for 18 hours and had a bit more traveling left to go.
I wish I could tell you about the flight to Juneau, but I was in and out of sleep the entire time, but on my arrival I was happy to be greeted by a familiar face, the taxidermy of a polar bear in the Juneau airport. This poor fellow also served as a reminder that Alaska is bear country, very relevant since our trip would be taking us away from the cruise ship crowds of downtown Juneau and into the forest.
Funny thing about backpacking trips is that you need a fair amount of gear to do them successfully and safely. As I waited in the baggage claim watching the number of bags on the carousel dwindle to zero, I realized the checked bags that hung out in the airport as I explored Seattle had decided to stay at the airport after I finally departed. Our backpacks, sleeping pads, food, you name it, all 900 miles away. This predicament very quickly became a tomorrow problem because waiting for me outside was my fiancée! After a long-awaited bear hug, we jumped into the rental car and were off to the hotel Emily and her dad booked last minute after learning about my delay.
From a malfunctioning aircraft, long delays, befriending strangers, paying for a ride with a hamburger, exploring a new city, and finally arriving in Alaska without any of the gear we needed, what was supposed to be a simple day of travel turned into a full-blown adventure of its own. Little did I know these series of events were only an appetizer for what happened during the trip to the cabin, but I’ll leave that for the next post. Stay tuned!