Our May 2015 dinner destination – Taku Glacier Lodge, aka “Taku Lodge” – is only 48 kilometres distant from downtown Juneau.
It is, however, genuinely “remote”.
No road reaches it; access is only via floatplane or boat.
The surrounding terrain meets any reasonable definition of “wilderness”.
It includes the world’s thickest alpine glacier, one of its most productive (wild) “salmon rivers” and part of the world’s largest substantially-intact, temperate rainforest.
All of this untamed splendour sits well within Juneau’s “city limits”, which extend to the Canadian border!
In urban reality, Juneau is one of North America’s smaller cities.
However, its designated governance “footprint” makes Juneau – notionally – the second-largest city in all of North America.
The photos above and immediately below were taken shortly before “touchdown” on the Taku River, adjacent to Taku Lodge.
What is now a “historic site” and “wilderness recreation” tourism operation began, a little more than 100 years ago, as “Twin Glacier Camp”.
Unsurprisingly, it serves delicious salmon.
The Taku watershed encompasses circa 4.5 million acres; it is the largest “intact” river system on the Pacific coast of North America.
A Taku factsheet is here.
Although the photos below do not “look down”, it would be mean if I were to fail to show what the local temperate rainforest looks like, at ground level, circa five minutes walk from Taku Lodge…and something “very unexpected”, just outside its front door.
Amazingly – to us, at least – in the warmer months, this location is a popular destination for migratory hummingbirds.
The return flight to Juneau was equally “eye-popping”, as the next two posts will attempt to show.
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