Still in Juneau

Okay, back to Green Angel Gardens. This next picture is of bear bread fungi. The Athabascan culture will use one of these to carry their fire embers when they move camp. They take one of the fungi, hollow it out a bit, place an ember there, wrap the fungus in moss and then wrap the whole thing in a caribou skin. When they arrive at their next location they are able to use the burning ember and mosses to start their fire. Ingenious, huh?
While the picture doesn't show the true scale, these skunk cabbages are about three and a half feet tall. The Tglingit (pronounced Clink-it) culture used them for medicinal purposes.

Wandering along the foot path of the Green Angel Gardens. Hard to believe this is in Alaska, right?
After having our little mid-morning snack at the garden (along with the opportunity to buy local trinkets, of course) our little group once again boarded the bus, this time headed for the Mendenhall Glacier.

Of course, Juneau gets a lot of rain so the chances of us having a sunny, bright day to visit were slim to none. However, the glacier was awesome even in the dreary, wet weather.
Again we were allowed only 45 minutes to explore this national forest area, thus we didn't have time to walk the 3/4 mile path to the waterfall or to thoroughly explore the visitor center or grounds. This would be a great place to spend the day, have a picnic (watching carefully for bears) and enjoy the beautiful glacier.After a good dinner on board our ship, Denny and I returned to our room with a cup of coffee to sit on our balcony and enjoy just the tiniest bit of an Alaskan sunset as we cruised away from Juneau.
Man, this is hard to take!