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Capital City

My trip to Juneau was surprisingly enjoyable. I met approximately 3million people, 2.96 million of whom I already can't remember which names were attached to which faces. I was able to tour most of the facilities down there, giving me a much better understanding of one aspect of the job.

It also somehow happened to be a tour of facility bathrooms, which isn't as exciting as it may sound. But if you ever need to know which bathrooms are the nicest (there's one on Douglas Island that is decorated nicely with flowers and distressed wood furniture) and the worst, just ask.

The rain let up for a few hours on Thursday, and I was able to walk around downtown with my camera. I was surprised at the number of jewelry stores, none of which are locally owned and all of which board up their windows when the last cruise ship leaves for the winter. Is there really that big of a demand on diamonds when on an Alaskan cruise?

But once I got away from Shiny Tourist Trap Hell, I quickly became enamored with all of the moss-covered rust. Giant, crumbling buildings against a backdrop of mountains and fog? Beautiful.

I was starting to think I could live there and be happy until I visited the Foodland Market. Uh, yeah. I thought selection and prices in Anchorage were bad.

On Friday I drove out to Mendenhall Glacier and amused a handful of cruise ship tourists by taking self portraits with my gorillapod. It didn't even occur to me to ask for their photo until I was leaving.

But I did overhear one child ask his father why the glacier was so dirty. And the father couldn't find an answer. I wanted to interject with the only answer: it's called Nature, kid.