episode 10 : Alaskan Arrival

In this episode of the Alaska Dove Chronicles, the narrator arrives in Juneau and falls in love with the city. They meet a friend who becomes their tour guide and takes them on a beautiful drive to Eagle Crest. They stay at the Alaskan Hotel, which is a historic place with authentic decor. They have a great meal at a Tex-Mex restaurant called the Armadillo. They enjoy the non-typical week of sunny weather and watch the Fourth of July fireworks from a viewpoint above the city. The narrator also goes on a hike with a cast-iron Dutch oven and a case of beer, which turns out to be a clown move. They later camp at False Outer Point and encounter loud bald eagles. The narrator's road trip buddy meets a girl and moves in with her, while the narrator stays at the hippie house behind the Baronov Hotel. Welcome back to episode 10 of the Alaska Dove Chronicles. Today we are actually going to arrive in Juneau, the moment has arrived. Last episode found us slowly pulling up to the dock of the ferry terminal and like I said it was a beautiful sunny day through this whole first week there was no rain. So, I fell in I definitely fell in love with Juneau and under certain circumstances my nature ends up liking the cold and the wet and maybe the sort of the well too much Sun actually now bothers me and even back then I remember kind of staggering from it but so what I think happened well I know our friend was waiting for us my friend from Kansas and it was also my road trip buddy's friend and you know greeted us there at the ferry terminal I think he had borrowed a van for some reason I want to say there was a white van and we left the car at the ferry terminal and he was our tour guide and I remember straight away he took us over to Eagle Crest on Douglas Island in North Douglas and on a summer sunny summer day early morning that's always a beautiful drive and we were pretty tired by the time I think we probably stayed up all night in anticipation and then you know the exhaustion and the powerful Alaskan green bud had kind of made us sleepy so first he at the time was working at the Alaskan Hotel downtown and what is now apartments on the very very top floor at that time was a just a an open space with a plywood floor and visqueen like thick clear tarps used as walls and that's that's where a handful of employees lived I think there was three three little cots set up and you know with a little patch of carpet and what not I mean you don't you're spending all your time either working to make ends meet or out and out enjoying life as a healthy 20 20-something year old in Juneau Alaska you don't you don't need you don't need too much to lay your head and keep your stuff you know it's a little safe little square so my the first time I laid my head down and slept in Juneau was at the Alaskan Hotel curled up in my sleeping bag and pad on a little patch of carpet there in the roughed out apartment over the years it was a bit prosthetic that that's where that's where I would end up that day so we napped out for a few hours and I want to say early afternoon by the time the time to rise and shine and you know walk down the four flights of stairs and the Alaskan is a like it's on the National Register of Historic Places and it's it's kept back in the decor is kept as authentic as possible back to the gold rush era so anytime I'm talking about the Alaskan you can you can picture you know nice wood and create one of the owners was really dug carving and woodwork so a lot of original work there but down at the bottom of the stairs one of mine a person who would become a friend of mine for to this day was working at the front desk asked him where to go and he told us the Armadillo which was a so my first meal was a Tex-Mex place which ended up being fantastic to this day I crave their garlic treats for like a garlicky sour cream quesadilla kind of thing it's that wonderful treat is no longer available to the restaurants no longer in operation but I want to say his name was Terry the owner and chef met him my first day and I swear for 20 years he wherever we ran into each other he'd greet me and just he is sort of he and the guy at the front desk you know really typify Juno if you could really have a I mean so it's varied as far as personalities but there are especially in the crowd I was with and then there were a lot of unifying traits and they're just really kind welcoming fun people and so the people I met that summer it's there people you want to to stay in touch with and I'm not like super close but I think we each sort of whenever I run into people from that time we can't help that sort of flash back to the times we all that we shared even if our life well all of our lives are so completely different so enjoyed a great meal there so this first this week it was so non-typical that with no rain Juno with no rain and and and in summertime I mean it doesn't it doesn't really get totally totally dark so I don't know besides the natural energy of being in a new place and I can't remember everything that we did but one of the most notable was watching the Fourth of July fireworks and the way they do it in Juno is the celebration is at midnight between the third and the fourth of July and the bar shut down everybody runs out to the waterfront and they have a fireworks display shot off from a barge that's in the channel and you know it's always super cool and then you know by 45 minutes later everybody rushes back to the bar and or goes back home or well or typically if they are downtown they're stuck in traffic for about another 45 minutes but the I've experienced many the first is most memorable because I watched them below me so for anyone not familiar with Juno the downtown is nestled at the foot of two mountains Mount Juno and Mount Roberts and the channels right in front and there's a landmark on Mount Roberts there's a tramway built to a point a little bit below the the cross there's a large cross built I should have looked up the history of it I will get that in another episode but it's great it looks out over the whole channel Douglas Island on the other side of the channel so mountains and water and just epic view and fireworks when you're like it when you watch them from ground which you don't like sea level pretty much it looks like super high but when you're at like maybe 2500 feet they're actually going off below you so it's it was a trip watching them bloom from above and but it's something I'll never forget the other thing I'll never forget is how I was so green and yet so red so I was a total Alaskan greenhorn when it came to hiking well actually getting some altitude you'd think being in Denver and Colorado but I was a kid then I wasn't really pushing my limits so much but so it's a it's not an extreme hike people run it up and down and almost no time you know like I'm at a bunch break so I'll run up to where the tram is now and come back down and of course with the tram being built there there's just hordes of tourists get cycled through there and you know it's an easy walk down the hike up well if you're a hillbilly and in overalls and a full-frame backpack with a case of Budweiser cans and this is the topper a cast-iron Dutch oven I I was under the impression we were going to cook something up there and we had been rocking the Dutch oven the whole the whole trip and for some reason I was I thought it was indispensable and I lugged that sucker up there with along with a ton of beer you know just full-frame blue pack that I had forever but what a clown move I I can't even I can't I can't comprehend anything that I just said in that sentence not not drinking I don't have a external frame pack you probably wouldn't need one unless you're like hunting and then because of the hunting or like prospecting something super super awkward mostly your internal frame packs and and come on a cast-iron Dutch oven I barely lugged that thing out of the back of a camper so that was my clown move so we probably I think we spent like a like overnight didn't want to wear out our welcome plus it is my buddy's room was like I described pretty pretty darn small so before too long we we ended up camping out at False Outer Point which is in North Douglas and so it was pretty cool you know we did the jungle hammocks and you can't really camp there too long so we were semi undercover and I mean car camping wasn't really an option because as I just before me and my bro were both over six foot and we were in a 1990 Honda CRX which is like looks like it would fit in your pocket it's it's short super short it had the killer gas mileage at the time and the hatchback it was surprising how much it actually would hold so that you know camping in Alaska and there's no you know of course you can hike around there and I think we took a waterfall shower like my buddy had described he we're sort of following in his footsteps because he camped out at False Outer Point when he first hmm he did it sometime I thought he was with his uncle but maybe that's before he got together with his uncle but man eagles are so loud there's a ton of bald eagles out there and man they just they keep you awake so early in the morning so my road trip buddy ironically for all the adventures that we shared on the on the road kind of went our separate ways almost as soon as we got there he ended up meeting a girl and moving in together I'm pretty sure that was his first first real place was like he met her right off to my recollection I don't remember him standing in place else he didn't stay a super long time I want to say maybe maybe a year I don't know I wouldn't I wouldn't be surprised if the if a cold cold dark wet winter kind of got on his head and he decided to bounce I mean he did have a degree from DeVry you know freshly minted still in his pocket so I mean he did have a great job at least when it comes to a cool factor so I think now it's a book a used bookstore place called Vito and Nick there's no Vito I don't even know if there's a Nick but there's another guy who was the owner and so my buddy ended up being a pizza maker and kind of learned from the best hand-tossed dough and he picked up that skill and they kind of hawk tourists they just grab some grab a little ball of dough and starts going out going out in the street on the sidewalk and and like tossing it like a like an act and I guess the owner could like throw it up over the telephone wires and I'm just kind of wondering how many times he got one hung up there like a raven's attack with this raw dough so yeah that was kind of his his story for myself my first roof in Juneau was at the local landmark to this day probably best known as the hippie house behind the Baronov Hotel it was a great place to see a beautiful cross-section of Juneau right off the bat getting hooked up with the folksy music music scene you know even though it got my my head banger main groove being around you know being around musicians is always fun and this house was just it had every instrument imaginable available and they had the greatest jams they probably probably still do to this day I was lucky enough to get a to rent a room I guess I should describe this so it was a largest large old house two-story basement where the owner had a like a modest room himself but and then rented out all the others I want to say three upstairs and then another one or two one in the basement I don't know there was just so many there's always always seem to be somebody new passing through always your you know always a roof for anyone in need kind of thing but you couldn't ask for a better place to meet people and the other the other main thing was I had to start making some money and so my first job was at Heritage Coffee as a sandwich maker and so that's that's kind of cool being the deli dude and making like cold salads and stuff I was I learned under the wing of oh let's see he's an Oregon biker he used to be a Marine and he and his wife were totally ran this place she was front of the house he was back they made it work and it's like the one rule always be nice always be nice even when you're telling somebody off be nice so he had a way of saying have a nice day that was his way of saying F you and so that was kind of a good one to pick up yeah oh yeah a couple of crazy things happened that summer on the there's a bit of a scandal when after hours somebody some of the youngsters added some tequila to the granita mix in the machine and then failed to clean it out adequately and people getting their granitas first thing when you have a granita first but yeah they kind of got they got busted for that the other thing the cautionary tale that I have for you this is so as I said the Heritage Coffee is a I didn't say anything there's a coffee shop a bakery a small kitchen in good well-rounded it was the flagship for a Juno based a coffee importer and roaster distributor and a minor sort of Juno it is a Juno landmark to this day well the company is now I don't I don't remember what that space is now direct it was the original coffee shop directly across from the Alaskan Hotel which was the other place I ended up working as well but the cautionary tale is so stainless steel whipped cream canisters that operate with compressed air cartridges horrible accident one of the baristas was assembling the whipped cream just like every day just like they do dozens of times every day but it got cross-threaded so it didn't the lid wasn't on the way it should be it wasn't on tight and the first time they activated it the the whole cap blew off the canister into their face directly like very serious I mean like plastic surgery multiple I think kind of poor person and so now like I swear swear every time anytime I have anything that's got a lid on it man I'm sure it's not cross-threaded so but that gruesome note gosh I should have ended on something happier that's all I had time to scribble down in my notes well the first hook was great set the set the hook then I mean it is a temperate rainforest so of course the rains came and kind of kind of driving my road trip buddy back down south but it nourished the Alaska Dub and and some of the friendships like the general attitude really really set the hook but some of the some of the individuals who are friends to this day are are really special so I will leave you with that much happier note until next time be good