When you start researching Juneau, the primary excursions people tell you to do are Mendenhall Glacier or Whale Watching. I did Mendenhall Glacier here last year. I did Whale Watching in Icy Strait Point last year as well.

Another popular excursion is the dog sledding on Mendenhall Glacier. Both walking on a glacier and riding a dog sled sound interesting to me. I’m not interested in taking the helicopter to the glacier which is how you have to do it. Instead of doing that I did the Matanuska Glacier Hike from Anchorage and I’m doing the sled dog musher camp here. Neither of those require a helicopter ride.

The excursion location was easy to find but the bus was not. The driver was late. The helicopter dog sled excursion was canceled and they pushed them on to my tour without having space for them on my tour. Some people got bumped to a later time. All I know is a NCL guy I talked to when I first got here had my back and made sure I got a seat on this bus.

You can hear the dogs before you even get to them. They start barking as soon as they hear a bus.

We broke up into several groups. Six of us were on each sled.

We made one loop around the camp. With one stop in the middle. It wasn’t that long. Less than 10 minutes.

Then the dogs came back to their water dishes.

At this point we had time to pet the dogs and take pictures.

As soon as we walked away the dogs started barking because they heard another bus coming.

Next we had a few minutes break if anyone needed to go to the bathroom or we could check out the suspension bridge which is what I did.

Then we sat down and had a presentation about dog sledding and the iditarod.

This red sled was used in the iditarod and a couple of the mushers in the camp have participated. One of the mushers is the grandson of the man who started the race and his brother won it.

After that we were taking over by the puppies. A few of them were passed around for us to hold.

The mother stays with the puppies for eight weeks. These are five weeks old.

These dogs are older.

After that we had time to wash our hands and have coffee, tea, or hot chocolate.

I got some hot chocolate.

We had an opportunity to use the bathroom before leaving.

After the tour we had the option of getting dropped off downtown or at the ship. I got off downtown. If you pick that option there is a shuttle that takes you back to the ship.