![A kayaker navigates through a melt pond in the Juneau Icefield, Coast Mountains, Tongass National Forest.](http://web.archive.org./web/20190606051306im_/http://www.traveller.com.au/content/dam/images/h/1/c/i/n/s/image.related.TravellerThumbnail.300x200.h1ciny.png/1552948673435.jpg)
The quirky Alaskan town where you should expect the unexpected
When you visit Alaska you expect to see ice, and I'm seeing plenty of it just outside Juneau.
When you visit Alaska you expect to see ice, and I'm seeing plenty of it just outside Juneau.
Like many of the other icefield glaciers, Meade is in retreat, losing about nine metres of ice depth a year.
Encountering glaciers, gold, bears and beads on a seven-day Voyage of the Glaciers cruise on Star Princess from downtown Vancouver
Log cabins, beer and taxidermy, it's all on tap in Alaska's most populous city.
Cruising here you have access to the bluest, cleanest and best-tasting water in the world.
Alaska offers a curious combination of the insubstantial, the surreal and the alarmingly down to earth.
Alaska is blessed with an extravagant bounty of geological wonders... waiting for you to explore.
Much like Australians regale visitors with tales of drop bears and crocodiles, Alaskans talk up their moose and their bears – and it pays to listen.
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The USA's biggest state is also big on sights and price. But nowhere else in the world can you traverse such a dramatic coastline and witness orcas frolic in wild seas, boulders of glacial ice crash into the ocean below or breaching humpback whales in a single trip. Inland, its national parks have hungry brown bears catching salmon in river rapids. Alaska may be hard work, but it's rewarding.