Shopping

The shops near the dock cater primarily to cruise-ship passengers. After around 500 summer port calls, many close their doors. The year-round community and more local shops tend to be farther up the hill. If you're looking for authentic Alaska Native arts and crafts, be warned that counterfeiting is widespread.

The Raven's Journey, 435 S. Franklin (tel. 907/463-4686), shows Tlingit and other Northwest coast Indian carvings and masks, totemic silver jewelry, and whalebone, ivory, basketry, and fossil ivory carvings and jewelry from the Yup'ik and Iñupiat of western and northern Alaska. Works are displayed with biographical placards of the artists.

Juneau Artists Gallery, in the Senate Building at 175 S. Franklin (tel. 907/586-9891; www.juneauartistsgallery.com), is staffed by a co-op of local artists and shows only the members' work: paintings, etchings, photography, jewelry, fabrics, ceramics, and other media. Much of it is good and inexpensive, and the way it is displayed creates a panorama of artistic visions.

Juneau's Rie Muñoz is one of Alaskans' favorite artists for her simple, graphic, generally cheerful watercolors of coastal Alaskan communities and Native people. Her prints and tapestries are shown downtown at the Decker Gallery, 233 S. Franklin (tel. 907/463-5536), and in the Mendenhall Valley at the Rie Muñoz Gallery, at 2101 Jordan Ave. (tel. 800/247-3151 or 907/789-7449; www.riemunoz.com).

For gifts, try Annie Kaill's fine arts and crafts gallery at 244 Front St. It's a little out of the cruise-ship shopping area and gets business from locals. The shop has a rich, homey feeling, with local work at various price levels. The long-established Ad Lib, at 231 S. Franklin St., also is a fun little shop.

Hearthside Books (www.hearthsidebooks.com) is a cubbyhole of a bookstore at the corner of Franklin and Front streets, but has a good selection for its size, especially of Alaskan books and maps. (A larger branch, with a good toy department, is in the Mendenhall Valley's Nugget Mall, at 8745 Glacier Hwy., a 5-min. walk from the airport.) Also downtown, Rainy Day Books has more than 10,000 new, used, and rare books at 113 Seward St.

The most remarkable shop in Juneau is The Observatory, at 299 N. Franklin St. (tel. 907/586-9676; www.observatorybooks.com). This browser's paradise specializes in rare maps and books about Alaska. The collection of antique etchings is mind-blowing in its comprehensiveness. Among the items I've seen here were huge charts drawn by the first 18th-century explorers to trace Alaska's coastline. To get the full effect you must strike up a conversation with the shop's owner, Dee Longenbaugh. She is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the only Alaskan member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association. One question will start a fascinating tour of Alaska history.

Bill Spear sells his own brightly colored enamel pins and zipper pulls from his studio, hidden upstairs at 174 S. Franklin (tel. 907/586-2209; www.wmspear.com). Alaskans collect the vividly executed fish, birds, airplanes, dinosaurs, vegetables, and many other witty, provocative, or beautiful pins, which cost from $4 to $20 each.

Taku Store, at 550 S. Franklin, across the parking lot from the tram station (tel. 800/582-5122 or 907/463-3474; www.takustore.com), is worth a stop if you're nearby, even if you're not in the market for the pricey seafood in the case: It's interesting to watch workers fillet, smoke, and pack salmon through large windows, and to read the explanatory signs about what they're doing. They'll ship fish anywhere in the U.S.

What to See & Do "Out the Road"

On sunny summer weekends, Juneau families get in the car and drive "out the road" (northwest along the Glacier Hwy., as it's officially known). The views of island-stippled water from the paved two-lane highway are worth the trip, and there are also several good places to stop. To use this road guide, set your trip odometer to zero at the ferry dock (which is 14 miles from downtown Juneau).

The Auke Village Recreation Area is a mile beyond the ferry dock and is a good place for picnics and beach walks. Less than a mile farther is a Forest Service campground.

The Shrine of St. Thérèse (tel. 907/780-6112; www.shrineofsainttherese.org), 9 miles beyond the ferry dock (23 miles from downtown), rests on a tiny island reached by a foot-trail causeway. The wonderfully simple chapel of rounded beach stones, circled by markers of the 15 stations of the cross, stands peaceful and mysterious amid trees, rock, water, and the cries of the raven and eagle. It is the most spiritual place I know. The vaguely Gothic structure was built in the late 1930s of stone picked up from these shores and dedicated by Alaska's first Catholic bishop to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who died in 1897 at the age of 24. Sunday liturgy services are held from June to September at 1:30pm. The shrine is part of a large retreat maintained by the Juneau Catholic Diocese, which includes a log lodge on the shore facing the island as well as several cabins for rent as lodgings. The shrine's island is a good vantage from which to look upon Lynn Canal for marine mammals or, at low tide, to go tide pooling among the rocks. The website covers the shrine's history and gives information on the facilities, gardens, and trails.

Eagle Beach, 14 miles beyond the ferry dock, makes a good picnic area in nice weather, when you can walk among the tall beach grass or out on the sandy tidal flats, watch the eagles, or go north along the beach to look for fossils in the rock outcroppings.

The road turns to gravel, then comes to Point Bridget State Park, 24 miles beyond the ferry dock (tel. 907/465-4563; www.alaskastateparks.org, click on "Individual Parks"). A flat 3.5-mile path leads through forest, meadow, and marsh to the shore, where you may see sea lions and possibly humpback whales. Three public-use cabins rent for $35 or $45 a night, depending on the season. The road ends 26 miles from the ferry dock at pretty Echo Cove.