Juneau
Juneau is the capital city of Alaska and it had the largest down town area with the largest buildings.  Some of the original buildings had the old town charm but the large office buildings made it seem like a metro area. 

This is down town Juneau with some tourist areas including a photo bear and the Taku smokery and fish house.  The smoked salmon was amazing.  Juneau is only accessible by boat or plane so it was amazing to see the bustling cars and trucks and they even have a Walmart.  With no roads in or out our tour guide said that for one of larger cities in Alaska its isolated and people don't get out due to cost.

The main activity was a trip by tour van to the Mendenhall glacier.  It was pretty cool seeing the glacier up close along with the ice berg chunks that have calved off.  There is also a waterfall that shoots straight out of the mountain from melting ice up hill.  If you look at the picture of it you can see how small the people look next to it.
The blue color of the ice and some of the bergs was interesting and I am speculating the older the chunk the bluer it was.  Some were so blue they seemed to glow and others had dark dirt and rock stains in them from scraping or picking up deposits somewhere.  The water was clear on the top but murky on the bottom and the guide later explained that that was silt from the melting glacier ice that it picks up as it moves down the valley.  This silt is so strong there are no fish that live near the glacier head and the silt is even sold in soaps or other products to clean skin.

Endicott Glacier
after departing Juneau and on our way to Skagway the cruise traveled up a narrow path to tour Endicott glacier. There was an excitement about this jaunt I think mostly from folks that did not venture to the Mendenhall glacier.  As we got closer to the glacier head more and more announcements came including a count down and people assembled at the bow of the ship snapping pictures at each berg that floated by.  The cruise staff even setup a special bar with hot alcohol drinks, Irish coffee, Kaluha and other made up names to mix drink and flavors.  The crew had access to a private part of the bow equipped with two Jacuzzis and they joined into the glacier approach suspense.  At then end it was too cold for me to endure the countdown but luckily the captain turned the ship at the head so we could see it from our balcony.  The glacier and the experience was pretty awesome.