Old Friends and New Friends.  We have met so many people on this trip so far that we will probably do a post dedicated just to them. But for now we will mention John and Mark, who were the cool guys on Bruce Gordon's we met north of Skagway (Editor: see later post). 
They both live at Juneau, a place that Sarah had expressed an interest in visiting. The capital of Alaska with a population of over 30,000, there are no roads to it - you must fly or boat in. That is interesting in itself. So we used the marine ferry system to leave Haines (Boo-hoo) and stopped off at Juneau to take up John's offer of hospitality at his home with his wife, Steph.
The ferry is some 12 miles from Juneau. People had spoken of Juneau as an 'urban, concrete mess', but au contraire! (Editor: those people should visit Manchester. And you shouldn't use french phrases).

We quickly met Steph, and felt immediately at home.So when she said "Do you fancy a hike this morning?" we were lulled into saying yes. We even looked out of their window at Mt Juneau, our goal. Well, it is over 3500' from sea level to the top, mostly at a severe angle. Steph's native name would have been 'Burning Thigh'.

And just to prove that I am not merely Sarah's Tour Photograher....

On going down Sarah did scare us all with a short glissade atop a 50' slope down a sharp gulley, pulling up just short of the point of no return. My, how we all laughed - not. She is a one.
Before leaving Juneau we caught up with Mark and his boathouse - I could live in it.

 All too quickly we were saying our goodbyes to our new friends.