Celebrate Good Times, come on

Last winter was fairly mild for here, but driving around town the van slid several times, almost into danger, which I was very worried about; I didn't like driving around. The city actually doesn't plow much, people just drive in it. So, with winter coming, I really wanted some all-weather tires, and since ours were at 1/32 in. we needed new ones. Tires (like everything else) are cheaper in Juneau, so we decided to go there over labor day weekend, and combine it with celebrating RD's birthday and our anniversary. We took the ferry over, which is usually a little over 4 hours, took us six hours, as we stayed by a sailboat which had lost engine power until another boat from a nearby village could leave to aid him. The kids were SO excited to go on the ferry... Grace was clapping and cheering as we drove aboard. The novelty and watching for whales kept them busy for four of the hours. We even got to see a whale breaching, which was amazing!! the whale did it four or five times, it was so cool. Then it was thrashing it's fluke around.
We got in late, so the next day we spend shopping at Walmart and Costco, getting tires at the latter.... walking around the aisles, seeing all this stuff that we either cant get, or is twice as expensive, I was so excited to be able to get them! I could have bought a lot more, and justified it since it's so much cheaper than what we can get for in Sitka, but kids don't do well shopping, and we do have limits on budget, so we picked our favorites and then headed out to Mendenhall Glacier for a quick look around. It was very cool, so we were excited to check it out more the next day. We ended the day after a brief, tortuous fulfillment of a bribe/peace offering (for all the shopping) at Bullwinkles, a dark, sticky, and small version of Chuck E. Cheese. Some things we are grateful to not have in Sitka!
The next day was RD's b-day, so we just had fun! Hiked to Nugget Falls at Mendenhall, then took the Mt. Robert's tram to the top and hiked around up there, and found a geocache. The kids loved the tram, though it bothered Reese's ear/hearing aids with such a fast ascent/descent and pressure changes. I gave RD a cool X-files geocoin for his birthday, so he hid it in the cache up on the mountain. After dinner and a brief (well, long to RD) scope out of Fred Meyer (note to self and others, Fred Meyer is way better than Walmart in AK), we went to bed and left on the ferry the next morning. Thank goodness we had gotten each of the kids a toy for the ferry, they did really well, and also saw a whale right by the ferry! The travel was a bit stressful, and I was surprised how glad I was to be back in Sitka. It was nice to see some flat land in Juneau, and just more people. It seemed kind of like a cross of Sitka and Anchorage. I was disappointed with the ocean in Juenau, it's just a little strip of water. I love how Sitka is just nestled on the base of the mountains right next to the open ocean. But I do miss Costco now:)