My worst fear was not being eaten by a grizzly bear. Instead the Apple Weather prediction for our time in Juneau looked so grim — temperatures ranging from barely above freezing to the mid-40s, with rain every day — I worried we might not want to venture outside. What fun would that be?
I need not have fretted. True, we emerged from the airport terminal Wednesday afternoon into a chilly, damp world, but we’ve been more than comfortable moving around in it. My gear choices were good! For this trip, I bought a waterproof Norwegian (Helly Hanson) raincoat, and yesterday I wore it over two lightweight thermal tops and a down jacket. On my legs I had rain pants over thermal long-johns. For footwear I dusted off the hiking shoes in which I trekked on New Zealand’s Routeburn Trail 8 years ago.
It all worked so well I got too warm at one point and had to stow the down jacket in my day pack! (It compresses down into a compact stuff sack.) And the rain proved to be only intermittent, never intensifying to much more than a drizzle; often stopping altogether.
We’re in a wonderful exchange home here, just a 10-minute Uber ride from the airport. The expanse of windows in its living room open onto a big deck with sweeping views of Douglas Island across the Gastineau Channel.
Our trading partners are also letting us use their Honda CRV. We drove it yesterday (Thursday) to Juneau’s #1 touristic attraction for the last 150 years: one of the easiest places in North America to see a glacier up close. It took us barely 15 minutes to reach the Mendenhall Glacier parking lot. We had a delightful time exploring the complex.
This is all within the Tongass National Forest — the largest temperate rain forest in the world. The visitor’s center was jammed with cruise-ship passengers, but we met almost no one on the nearby Trail of Time. Its misty pathways led us through a landscape lushly upholstered with mosses and a profusion of other plants.
It felt primordial but to our astonishment, we learned the glacier had covered much of this trail less than 100 years ago. It retreated to leave behind bare rock. All the dense green beauty has developed since then.
After just one day, I felt amazed by Juneau’s scenery. Another feature of that scenery also has been striking. Our hosts in the exchange home left a list of (dumb) tourist questions that they advised (tongue in cheek) against asking. “What elevation are we at?” was one. “Sea level” is the proper answer. (“That water out there, that’s the sea.)
Now that I’m here, I understand why visitors might ask that. The scenery makes me feel I’m deep in some mountain holdfast; dramatic peaks jut skyward in every direction, cut through with deep valleys. For most of my life I’ve only seen scenery like this far, far from the ocean. This place feels different.
At home and abroad 
Oops my last message got sent before I wanted it to go. Enough about my vacati
My father was stationed in Alaska in WW2, and visited the Mendenhall Glacier. He spoke, late in life, of a recent photo he had seen of it, and remaked that the face of the glacer was a massive ice cliff in 1944, and now looked much smaller.
Melting glaciers in other parts of Alaska are creating expanding al fresco lakes, which sometimes spill over with potential or actual disastrous results downstream.