Rain is part of the adventure for those visiting Juneau on the last cruise ship of the season
- Jasz Garrett
- Oct 14
- 5 min read
Visitors' spirits high during a late-season visit; final numbers of 2025 Juneau cruise ship passengers being finalized
By Jasz Garrett
Juneau Independent
The sun, hidden by dense clouds, set at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, and a few hours later so did the 2025 cruise season.
In the darkening, rainy evening, the eyes of tourists glowed with the lights of The Norwegian Encore. They walked through puddles on the dock to Tracy’s King Crab Shack, their arms full of end-of-season sales items.
Manuela Ospina Unbe explored Juneau with two others from Colombia. She said they did their research beforehand and expected the rain. October was the cheapest time to go.
“It’s been nice,” Unbe said. “It’s the atmosphere and adventure that we were expecting.”
After getting off the ship, Unbe said her group took a cab to the Mendenhall Glacier and hiked to Nugget Falls. It was the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center’s last day open for the year, according to the U.S. Forest Service. It was challenging to operate the visitor center this summer after layoffs of federal employees left only two staff members, but with the help of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska’s cultural ambassadors and Discovery Southeast employees, they made it work.
“Mind-blowing,” Unbe said when asked about her first time seeing a glacier. “We loved it. We really liked Alaska, the mountains, the trees. It’s beautiful.”
After arriving back downtown, she joined others off her ship waiting in line at Tracy’s King Crab Shack. It was Harrison Holt’s second season working at Tracy’s. He said it seemed busy for a last day and noted the restaurant will be closed until the ships resume in 2026.
“On October 1st, businesses start closing when there start to be gaps,” he said. “We stuck it out until the end.”
Chilkat River Trading, which sells Alaska Native arts and crafts, is open year-round. The owner, Jack Tripp, said business this season seemed consistent with previous years, even though there were possibly higher numbers. Alexandra Pierce, tourism manager for the City and Borough of Juneau, said she expects the final count of cruise passengers to be between 1.6 million and 1.7 million.
Tripp said he remains open year-round because he wants “a viable downtown.”
“You should be able to come downtown and shop at Christmas,” he said. “It would definitely be more lucrative for me to just close, but it keeps my employees going and we’re a family business so it’s important.”
Right outside, Texas residents eyed Chilkat River Trading’s sale. They spent their day shopping and going to bars to complete the Alaskan Duck Fart drink tour. Jennifer and LT Kravetz-Stansbery were happy with the rain since it’s humid and hot where they’re from in Dallas-Fort Worth. The couple said they also got the chance to learn about bears from locals.
“We didn’t see any though,” Jennifer Kravetz-Stansbery said, who was celebrating her 50th birthday. “We saw a whale on our way up.”
John Miller and his 10-year-old daughter Summer also gladly took a break from the heat. They walked “shop to shop” on Tuesday and fit in a trip to tour the Alaska State Capitol.
“We thankfully had umbrellas,” Summer Miller said. “It’s the last day of some of the shops because they’re gonna go for winter, so there’s been some good deals. On the cruise, there’s a lot of trivia and ‘Deal or No Deal’ game shows and that’s fun.”
John Miller said it was 100 degrees back in Arizona and Juneau’s weather was “nice.” Cruising in October was optimal since it was his daughter’s fall break from school.
“My brother and me are doing this thing where we’re trying to visit every 50 states,” she said. Alaska was her 28th state and the Millers plan to visit Hawaii at the end of the year.
Down the street, Erica and Saul Sanchez said they knew they would get wet. Their neighbor in New Mexico, who grew up in Alaska, warned them of the weather. The Sanchezes said they had wanted to visit Alaska for six years. It didn’t matter when they came — it was all a part of the experience.
“The rain, the weather, is part of the adventure,” Erica Sanchez said. She and her husband carried a bright red Alaska Shirt Company bag containing gifts for their children.
A group of cruise passengers from Wisconsin found the views of nature to be the highlight. Tom and Heide Harron were invited by their friends Terry and Joanne Mihm to join their cruise. Before reboarding the ship for dinner on Tuesday, they gazed up toward the misty Mount Roberts and Mount Juneau. The Goldbelt Tram was still sending its cars up and down Mount Roberts.
“I like going out west hunting in the fall,” Terry Mihm said, noting the rain was alright. “Beautiful scenery here.”
Tom Harron said, “We like nature vacations.” He said just being around nature itself was worth the trip. He usually goes camping at the border of Minnesota and Canada for the same reason: revering in nature.
Melani Romero-Flores was also traipsing through the cold weather before returning to the ship. But instead of her first day in Juneau, she was making the most of her last day.
She said she worked as a Norwegian Cruise Lines crew member for the past six months in guest services, handling complaints for 12 hours a day. Romero-Flores spent her three-hour break enjoying a barbecue dish from Bernadette’s Filipino food truck at Marine Park and taking photos.
Her ultimate goal is to work in International Guest Services, which requires knowing four languages. She plans to study German in Germany this fall before returning home to Peru for a month.
“I’m going on vacation at the same time that we leave Alaska,” she said. “Then they send me to three months to Caribbean then three months to Europe. I’m glad we are still here because most ships left two to three weeks ago. We are the last ones.”
Juneau may have offered a respite from the heat for some cruise passengers, but Romero-Flores said Alaska’s cooler climate reminded her of home. For this reason, she preferred it to working on ships in the Caribbean.
“I don't like hot weather,” she said. “My hometown has similar weather so when I come here I feel like home, like not so far. It’s a very small town similar to this one. It’s surrounded by lakes and mountains and snow. This weather, the autumn and the rain is literally like home. It even smells like home.”
The Norwegian Encore departed Juneau at 10 p.m. Tuesday with its next stop scheduled for Skagway. The first ship of 2026 is scheduled to arrive on April 27.
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.
