Juneau

Today we headed toward Juneau. We arrived and docked in Juneau around 12:00 noon. We had a leisure lunch and went to get in line so we could disembark from the ship. Once we were off the ship, we had some time to do some shopping before our first tour. We picked up a few things and went to meet our group. The first tour we went on was the Historical Gold Panning tour. We were met by Bryce, our prospector guide. As we drove out to the river, he gave us a brief history of the state capitol city and interesting tid-bits. Once we got to the river, Bryce demonstrated the way to correctly pan for gold. We spent an hour or so panning for gold.
While no one found a huge nugget of gold, we did all find flecks of gold. You could see lots of gold dust in the river but they were too minute to actually gather. We did put all of flecks of gold into a vial and brought it back to the ship. Prospector Bryce drove us back to Juneau so we could meet up with the next tour of the day.
The next excursion we went on was the Mendenhall River float. They drove us out to the Mendenhall Glacier. It was so large and beautiful. We got dressed in waterproof bibs, boots, and life jackets. We got into the raft with 9 other people and our guide. We floated down the Glacier River for about 2 hours. During that time, we went through grade 3 rapids, saw wildlife such as a bald eagle, and visited with the others in our group. We got stuck on a rock at one point and had to rock back and forth to become dislodged. At the end of the excursion, we were driven back to the port and we boarded the ship. We were very tired from a full day and retired early.