In the words of Johnny Horton:

“North to Alaska, go North the rush is on.”

A trip to Alaska has been on my bucket list for many years.  I finally got to do it and the trip exceeded expectations.  Once again, I have my daughter-in-law Megan to thank for finding great excursions that enhanced the experience.  The seven-day cruise went from Seattle to Juneau to Glacier Bay to Sitka and Ketchikan returning back to Seattle along the Southeast Alaskan Panhandle.  I was surprised by many things and I will try to capture the highlights here.  It is hard to appreciate the vastness of Alaska without seeing it live.  The scale of everything is huge and you just can’t grasp it unless you view the towering mountains in the distance.

A stop in Seattle wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Pike’s Market.  It’s perhaps best known for the fishmongers who make a game out of their job, throwing fish when a customer makes a purchase, chasing people with ugly fish and generally clowning around.  The flowers and produce are striking and the street performers are great.  There are lots of high quality hand crafts, foods and souvenirs available.  It’s a happy, festive crowd of all ages.

The ship sailed in late afternoon.  We took the Holland America line on the MS Eurodam.  It holds about 2100 guests and is about 1000 feet long, not huge by today’s standards. We sailed for almost 48 hours to reach Juneau, the state capital, it was about 900 miles.  The distances between towns are hard to imagine unless you experience it.  The three towns we visited can only be reached by boat or plane. For an East Coaster, I can’t imagine living there, but the people who live there love it.  It’s common to get around in small float planes which have short take offs and landings.

I Imagined Alaska as a very cold lifeless area, but the lower half of the panhandle gets a lot of rain and it’s quite temperate along the water.  When we were there in early June the flowers were blooming and we only needed to wear a fleece.  We had scheduled a helicopter ride up on top of the glacier near Juneau, but it was so foggy that all the flights that day had to be cancelled.  So, we just enjoyed the town and the locals.

From Juneau, we sailed to Glacier Bay National Park which was much more interesting than I ever expected.  It’s only about 60 miles in a straight line to the mouth of the bay, but it took 9 hours to zig zag between the islands.

The bay is about 50 miles long and has a history of being covered then uncovered by glaciers.  In the late 1600’s the area was actually land but in about 75 years a huge glacier gouged out the bay.  Up until 1750 it was covered by this single glacier extending out beyond what is now the mouth of the bay.  Then in less than 100 years the glacier retreated 50 miles to where it is today, leaving Glacier Bay and about 20 separate smaller glaciers around it.  I always thought that glaciers moved very slowly, but I believe the park ranger said the Margerie Glacier currently moves about 6 feet per day.  The oral tradition of the Native Americans who lived there when it was land says the glacier moved so quickly that they had to just abandon their villages as it advanced to the sea.

The boat went up the bay close to the Margerie Glacier, much closer than I expected the ship to be able to approach.  This is a tidewater type glacier which means the ice goes right to the water.  It was very impressive and its size is hard to grasp.  We thought we were about 200 yards from the front of the glacier and that it was about 100 feet high.  In reality we were about a quarter mile away and it was 250 feet above the water and extended more than 100 feet below the water.

Glacial ice is royal blue in color due to the ice being subjected to great pressure and the high-density ice reflects and scatters blue light.  When the glacier cracks, it sounds like a plane flying over or a clap of thunder.  Every so often huge pieces of ice would “calve” off the front of the glacier sending water high in the air.   From there we sailed to another tidewater type glacier called the Johns Hopkins Glacier, then started making our way south out of Glacier Bay.

The next stop was Sitka, a small town of only about 1000 people.  We never went into town.  Instead we spent about 7 hours on the water with a great guide, Captain Davey Lubin.  I would describe him as a naturalist guide.  He picked us up right at the wharf.  You can tell Davey loves his job, loves the area and really knows where to go to see some wonderful things.  Every once in a while, he would look at something and comment something like “boy is that ever beautiful”.  He not only knew the name of every plant we saw, he knew their Latin scientific names.

His boat is the Esther G and while it is not unusual for Alaska, it is unusual to someone from the lower 48.  It was of very utilitarian construction and made from ca. ¼ Inch aluminum plate welded together; very tough for a very tough environment.  He extended the length of his boat last Fall by having it cut in half and had a four-foot extension welded in the middle.  We cruised around Sitka sound and saw whales, sea otters, bald eagles, puffins, etc.

After cruising around for several hours Captain Lubin took the boat into a protected area, gave us each tall rubber boots, and craned the inflatable off the top of the boat so we could paddle ashore onto Kruzof Island.  It appeared he had done this many times before.  Davey took his rifle just in case and gave Megan a can of bear spray.  Piles of logs had washed up all along the shore line and it was a difficult climb over them to get into the forest.  But once inside we were in a temperate rain forest, first time experience for me and unexpected.  Everything was covered with thick moss and even the trail had a six-inch cushion of mass to walk on.  We talked loudly as we walked the trails to make sure the bears knew we were there.  It worked, we didn’t see any bears, but there was bear scat and signs of bear everywhere.

We had lunch in another protected small bay with several hundred sea birds and raptors.  And what a lunch for being out on the water: charcuterie, salad, poached halibut, wild rice with asparagus…  Then it was back to the ship and reality.  A unique experience for sure.

Our final stop in Alaska was Ketchikan, a slightly larger town of over 8,000 inhabitants.  We took a great bush plane tour on a de Havilland Canada, Beaver float plane through the Misty Fjords on Taquan Air.  We were very lucky to be there on a day that wasn’t misty.  The sights of the mountains, waterfalls and lakes were spectacular.  Flying in a bush plane made for a spectacular experience flying over the mountains and low through the valleys.  We landed on one of the many lakes and got out of the plane to stand on the floats and grasp the spectacle.  The town of Ketchikan was very nice with interesting shops and things to do, but nothing to compare to the flight.

We had a quick stop the next day in Victoria, BC before our return to Seattle.  We found Victoria to be a very impressive, friendly, picturesque city.  The weather is temperate and they get very little snow.   Along the waterfront there are many interesting “float houses” which are houses built on a sort of barge, built to be in one place semi-permanently, not like a house boat.  It must be a very interesting environment to live in.  You could never do it in the lower states because of the storms.

There are a number of choices of cruise lines but their itineraries are similar.  You can also spend two weeks and go all the way to/from Anchorage.  I’m very glad I was able to check Alaska off my bucket list and experience the enormity and the very different way of life.  I guess you can feel the enthusiasm from my ramblings here…

 

RO 6/30/17

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