Day 3 – Juneau (& my birthday)

I got up Sunday and quietly, though not quietly enough…still woke Stacey up…darn it all…headed to one of the lounges and did Sunday appropriate studying while watching for whales. I saw the tail of a whale from pretty far off, but it was neat….and almost as much fun as saying “I saw the tail of a whale” which is REALLy fun...try it!!

When I returned to the room, Stacey had some presents for me. She and Melissa and Jenni and Tracy had all sent birthday gifts for me and Stacey gave me one or two each day. They are so sweet. They gave me a bunch of jewelry to help me in my attempts to accessorize a little more.
Up to this point we had had some pretty rough water. Stacey and I both loved the rocking and drunken walking…the way you trudge up the stairs and then float up them as the boat sinks and rises with the swells. However, a good portion of the passengers weren’t enjoying the trip quite as much…patches behind ears could be seen everywhere. Anyway, the captain rerouted the boat during the night and we found we would be arriving in Juneau an hour or more late.

This change in itinerary made it impossible to attend the ward in Juneau at 1:00 we had hoped to catch. So, we had a little Relief Society and Sunday School in our cabin. Stacey was in charge of Relief Society, so it was a lot better than Sunday School. We had a little good news minute and we were both excited to announce that we were on vacation cruising Alaska…it was my birthday…and we were surrounded by good food. Then Stacey gave a lesson she had presented in her ward a few weeks ago on light, how to recognize it and feel it’s influence in our lives. I gave a for Sunday School on a little quote I had heard from President Monson. Good times…until I got a small migraine which I was mostly able to ignore most of the day.

We finally docked at 2:00 and got off the boat a little before 3:00. Because it was my birthday, Stacey was a saint and let us take a special tour bus instead of public transportation which was a lot cheaper. But we jumped on the bus and headed to the Mendenhall Glacier. Our bus driver had the most unique cadence to the tour information he gave while we made the 20 minute drive.

At the Glacier we took a 3.5 mile hike up above the hillside. It was so pretty. Here are some pictures. There was so much greenery and lots of little waterfalls. It was just fantastic!

Toward the end of the hike there were just a whole bunch of stairs and we were very glad we were hiking down them, instead of up them. There was also the cutest couple hiking behind us. We would smile and say hi each time we’d pass while going to an outlook. At one point I told them we were so glad they were behind us in case some bears snuck up behind us. They responded that they were glad we were in front of them for the same reason. So we are going along, up the switchbacks and I hear this total bear growl…..ya, it was our hiking friend trying to scare us and for a second he really did. I think he felt bad afterward.

After a nap we went to dinner. No one else at our table showed up, but Stacey, being a great friend and ignoring my sincere desire to not have the waiters sing to me….totally told our waiter (Sunny…best guy in the dining room!) it was my birthday. So, sure enough, after our meal all the waiters came and sang to me with a chocolate mousse cake and a little candle. They not only gave us a cake, but a dessert sampler also, which began a little tradition where Sonny would bring us an extra dessert pretty much every night. Unfortunately, it was usually coffee flavored…so we would just pick around it and make it look like we ate it.