All roads lead to Rome. No roads lead to Juneau.

I'm sitting here now in the lobby of the Frontier Suites Airport Hotel, about 15 miles outside of downtown Juneau, on their agonizingly slow wireless connection with the first pictures of Mission: Alaska '08. First, let me just say that my trip here yesterday was both delightful and painful. I guess you could say it was delightfully painful. The flight from Birmingham to Houston went smoothly and there were actually a few people on the plane who were on their way to summer jobs in Anchorage and Denali.

Upon arriving in Houston, I spent forty minutes trying to get from one end of the airport to the other just to get to my connecting flight. Turns out the flight was full and I almost got bumped. Fortunately, I was one of the last two or three to get on at the very last second. That delayed that flight from getting to Seattle on time and the rough weather in southeast Alaska delayed that flight for two hours. When I finally got on it, we sat on the runway for fifty minutes before getting clearance to leave and didn't get into Juneau until 11 P.M. It was 12:30 when I got to the hotel (3:30 for you Alabamians).

Today I spent three or four hours wandering around downtown Juneau and I had forgotten the power this place has. It's still the off-season, so there were no cruise ships and the streets were dead. The scenery was awesome, but to just be able to breathe the fresh air and feel the rain was almost like a spiritual experience. I honestly don't know how else to describe this place. Tomorrow morning I'm on the ferry at 6:30 and it will arrive in Skagway at 1:30. That trip is when I'll be getting a look at some MAJOR scenery. There's more I want to say but I've got a few other things to take care of online, so I'm not gonna waste time. Here are some pictures. The first is from the plane flying over the Rocky Mountains.



Next a shot of the mountains across the bay from Juneau. I got GREAT video of these.



A HUGE mountain on the outskirts of Juneau. The pictures of this mountain SUCK, because this thing was GIGANTIC. You could easily the crags, waterfalls, and treelines down the side of the mountain and this picture is like a bastardization of the real thing, but here it is nonetheless.



And here's a look at downtown Juneau.



There's more but that's all I have time for at the moment, so I'll leave that as a little taste. The only problem in providing photographs of a place like this is that it's a place that cannot be photographed. The frustrating part is being unable to provide solid proof of that.