Month: July 2010

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We set the alarm for Skagway, knowing the day ahead would be long and full. This time we decided to do one of the Princess excursions, because we didn’t want to miss the chance to do the two things really important to us and still get back to the ship on time. Skagway is a delightful little town, with an old fashioned boardwalk, and some good shopping, but our focus on this day was riding the White Pass Railroad and going kayaking.

T he White Pass Railroad is part of the epic history of the Klondike Gold Rush, with the construction of a narrow gauge train 112 years ago. The White Pass & Yukon Route was designated an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, along with the Eiffel Tower and our recent destination, the Panama Canal.  In addition to the many hazards and obstacles the builders overcame, they built this railroad in two years, two months, and according to some storytellers, two days, two hours, etc. etc.  Riding this train is a fabulous experience, unlike the many touring trains that dot the western landscape, this one has real views, and tunnels, and trestles, and has such an amazing history. 

Fascinating as well, was the young woman narrating the journey.  She was born in Skagway, a town of about 800 residents and a population that drops to less than 500 in the winter.  She graduated in a class of seven, all them them with close to a 4 point average, and all of them continuing that average when they went away to college.  Her family has a gun business and a restaurant and were long time Skagway residents as well.  She is entering medical school this fall and plans to be a plastic surgeon. She gave us lots of information about the train and the journey, but because we were in the “sound car” we got to hear her side conversations with some other people about what it was like to grow up in a small tight community like Skagway. 

The train climbs from sea level in Skagway to nearly 3,000 feet at the summit of White Pass, in just 20 miles, passing through some of the most magnificent terrain in the US.  The purpose for this train was to get people in and out of the Klondike, in anticipation of the huge gold rush expected there.  What I didn’t know before this trip, was that that huge gold rush actually burned out after only two years, with very few people actually making any money.  But the stories of steam engine number 9, and the rotary snow plow number 1 were fascinating.  Other stories from Skagway include the notorious “Soapy” Smith, a thug who ran the town until he was killed by another thug who was then eulogized as the man who saved Skagway.  I took a photo of the “trail of 98” where men hauled literally a ton (2000) pounds of goods over the pass for hundreds of miles on their backs.  They had to make many trips because the Canadian government at this time wouldn’t allow a foreigner in the country without enough provisions that they wouldn’t become a drain on the Canadian economy.  It was said if you lost your place in the line of men on this tiny trail, it could take a day to get back into line to continue forward.  What a story.

After White Pass, we got off the train at Frasier, British Columbia, to begin our kayak trip on Glacier Lake.  Our guides were typical young, adorable river boys, who gave us a lesson in tandem kayaking with a rudder, helped with our skirts and life jackets and let us out into the lake.  Now you know that Mo and I are kayakers, but we do usually each have our own.  It’s fun trying to figure out who is in charge when there are two people in a kayak.  We did fine, eventually, and I did eventually figure out the rudder pedals.  The lake was lovely, clear, and windy, with protected coves.  The wind saved us from what I assumed would be legendary bugs, with only one mosquito to mar the day.  Just one.  That was amazing in itself!  The mountains around us were topped with snow with several glaciers visible.  The lake is in a place called Tribulation Valley, desolate and windy and incredibly harsh.  We were on the water for just over an hour, not nearly enough, before we had to return to Frasier and the waiting coach.  The train up the pass follows the east side of the river, and the Klondike road on the west side of the river was our route back down to Skagway.  Our coach driver told us stories about Skagway and the local history as she negotiated many bikers from Sockeye  tours who refused to move to the right of the road to let the bus pass.  She had a few pithy comments about Sockeye, and asked us to please not do a tour with them, ever. From the way everyone talked, it was obvious that this was a small community, supportive of each other, but also much like a small family with some infighting as well.

By the time we got back to Skagway, I was starving and grumpy, and made a beeline for someplace to eat.  After an Alaskan Amber and a burger at the Alaska Brewing Company I felt much better.  The restaurant was great, and looked historic and interesting, but a closer look at the historical walking tour brochure revealed that the building was erected 3 years ago, called Old Town Skagway.  The town itself is completely taken over by tourism and the cruise industry, with only a few local businesses on some of the side streets.  Again, Diamond International and all the associated Caribbean jewelry stores dominate the main street of Broadway, with just a few interesting local shops caught in the middle.  The town was crowded and busy, and with a population that swells daily from 800 to 10,000 or so with the cruise ship arrivals, it was certainly more like Disneyland than a true Alaskan frontier town. Mo and I were shopped out, even though we haven’t really bought a lot of “stuff”, and walked back to the ship.  Again, the flowers were brilliant and gorgeous, the skies a perfect blue, and the mountains magnificent.

When we left Skagway, Kathy talked on the microphone about the glaciers and waterfalls, and Mo and I braved the incredible winds at the front of the ship to get great photos.  We passed Haines on the right, the mountains adjacent to Glacier Bay to the north, and got an extremely rare view of three magnificent glaciers as we cruised down the sound.  I took a ton of photos.  Perfect.  Perfect that is, until this morning, when I discovered the horrific fact that I left the smart card in the computer and took all those photos without a card in the camera.  Geez, you would think a camera would tell you something like that.  So, no photos of the extremely rare sunny departure from Skagway, while we listened over and over to just how incredibly lucky  we were to see the glaciers and the mountains.  We were, I just don’t have photos of that experience!

Again, we skipped dinner in the dining room at 8 in favor of the production show.  It was well worth it, finally, this show was fabulous.  “I’ve Got the Music” was filled with great dancing, great singing, and all the bells and whistles.  We felt that we had truly been entertained.  It was so good that we decided we would have to go to the 10:15 show after our formal dinner at 8 on our sea day tomorrow.

I fell into bed filled with visions of mountains and glaciers and lakes and all the wonders we had seen on this day and slept like a rock!

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This was a day that fit all expectations of what a cruise to Alaska might be.  All night as we slept the ship cruised north through Chatham Strait and when we woke there was thick fog all around us.  I felt relief as the fog lifted and fell, and in the distance, I could see the sidewalls of the fjord coming closer.  Amazingly, we had a clear day, with only some high clouds, but nothing to obstruct the views of the magnificent mountains all around us.  We heard that the mountains had not been seen for days prior to this one. Dressing warmly, we headed for the upper decks to watch as we entered Tracy Arm and our encounter with a glacier. 

I really had no idea how impressive this trip would be.  The trip to Sawyer Glacier from  the entryway into Tracy Arm is about 27 miles.  It was breathtaking, and only became more so the farther we traveled.  Our captain has more than 30 years of experience, and as I watched the icebergs getting bigger and bigger I felt grateful for his skill.  Mo and I went to the forward upper decks to see as much as possible.  The winds were incredible, and the air was cold.  Gee, ya think?  After all, it is a glacier and those are ice bergs!  After a bit of time, I went back down to the pool deck to find tables of mittens and hats and blankets for sale and they were doing a hefty business.  I bought some gloves.  Once more, back to the upper deck to see the icebergs and watch for the first view of Sawyer glacier. I think I should have known somehow that icebergs and glaciers were blue, but I didn’t, or at least I didn’t have a clue just how blue.  The glacial blue is a translucent turquoise, pale but lit from within.  It’s a bit like that Caribbean color that I love, only surrounded by ice rather than warmth.

  When we reached Sawyer Island, the ice was too thick for us to continue any farther up the fjord for a closer look at the glacier.  The captain rotated the ship around while some people boarded a small excursion boat taking them deeper into the fjord.  I can see why a cruise to Glacier Bay might be impressive, with much closer encounters.  For my first trip to Alaska, however, I am grateful for what I did see, and incredibly grateful for a clear sunny day to see it.  As the day wore on, we kept hearing over and over how very lucky we were for the lack of rain and fog.  It seems that we brought the sunlight with us, because everywhere we went we heard that it had been raining hard for the last three weeks until we arrived.  Perfect.

The boat turned and headed back out of the fjord.  By the way, another thing I should have known but didn’t, is that a fjord is a glacially carved inlet with tidal salt water, no beaches and vertical walls.  I am ready now to see the Scandinavian Fjords, or maybe those in New Zealand.  As we headed back out of Tracy Arm, we passed another ship, the Golden Princess, and had fun cheering each other as we passed.  It was a perfect chance to get a photo of a ship identical to ours in the fjord in a way that we couldn’t get while actually on our own ship. 

Another great thing on this cruise has been the commentary by Kathy Slamp, a delightful woman and naturalist who has lived in Alaska much of her life.  Kathy discussed the landscape, the geology and geography of the glaciers, in addition to some of the colorful history of the area. Kathy conducted a daily lecture series in the theater, with slides and stories that helped us more fully experience the landscape where we traveled.

We were out of Tracy Arm by 10 am, heading for Juneau.  Arrival in port at 2 in the afternoon was accompanied by brilliant, clear blue skies and magnificent snow topped mountains.  Again, Mo and I decided to do our own excursion.  Our boat was docked at the farthest possible place, so we bought a shuttle ticket to town, and once there found another inexpensive shuttle to the Mendenhall Glacier just out of town about 15 miles.  I’m not sure what the excursion would have cost, but for us, paying $17.00 each to do our own thing was perfect, and we didn’t have to adhere to someone else’s schedule.

The visitor center at Mendenhall Glacier is managed by the Tongass National Forest.  There are trails and viewpoints, ponds and wildlife, and signs about the glacier.  Mo and I took off on the hike to a waterfall just east of the glacier.  Previously, as we cruised Tracy Arm, we saw many waterfalls, some of them 1000 feet high, yet they appeared dwarfed by the immensity of the landscape around us.  Hiking to this waterfall gave us the opportunity to see just how massive these falls are up close.  Mendenhall Glacier is part of the Juneau Ice Fields and is rapidly retreating.  Another local comment: “See the Mendenhall Glacier before it’s gone”.  On the trail, we met another woman, walking the trails trying to find a way across the stream.   She had lived in Juneau for more than 40 years and said she hadn’t seen the water as high as it was this year in that stream.  She also pointed out a spot on the landscape, very distant from the present terminus of the glacier, and said when she moved to Juneau, that was where the glacier used to be.  Global warming isn’t just a concept in Alaska, it’s real.  Everyone in the state talked about the retreat of the glaciers.  It’s dramatic and measureable.

After our hike we took the shuttle back to town in time to do a bit of shopping.  Juneau was much bigger than Ketchikan, in fact, there was even a good deal of five-0-clock traffic.  The shops were interesting as well, and we stopped in to visit the famous Red Dog Saloon for an Alaskan beer.  The place was noisy and fun, with sawdust floors, a colorful history, and some live music from a honky-tonk piano man and a crunchy old guitarist. By this time, we were beginning to wear out, so even the delight of nice shops couldn’t keep me going and we headed back to the ship. Leaving Juneau was sunny and gorgeous.  How lucky for us!

We decided on an early supper in Horizon Court so that we could go to the production show at 8:15.  The show “The Piano Man”, was better than the previous one, but still not a very impressive production show. Mo and I have been watching “So You Think You Can Dance” and decided that it made us a bit snobbish about choreography and good dancing.

We were definitely tired when we retired to our cabin for the night.  We have discovered that an Alaskan cruise isn’t as relaxing as one to the Caribbean. Sitting here discussing, and wondering just why that is: maybe it’s the lack of sun time and deck time, or maybe the wild landscape around us that is so stimulating.  We are hiking more, perhaps, and quite a bit more active, even though we do a lot on most cruises, it seems different somehow.  It’s a beautiful cruise destination, but the cruising experience itself feels quite different.

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Arriving in Ketchikan this morning was dramatic.  The sun rose long before we were awake, but the heavy lined drapes let us sleep longer than we had planned.  By the time I opened them wide to look outside we were very close to our first port.  The mountains around Ketchikan are beautiful, lush and green.  It is, after all, a rain forest, with precipitation over 100 inches a year.  Our plan was to explore the town on our own, avoiding lines and costly excursions.  Ketchikan is a small place, with few roads, and the town is clustered along the waterfront.

Leaving the ship entails a photo opportunity for the cruise photographers, and for some reason on this cruise they seemed to think that huge cartoon animals are cute.  Later, when we looked for our photos, it was hard to see anyone in between the giant salmon and giant fisherman in a brilliant yellow slicker.  We surely didn’t need to buy THAT photo, even though we both looked OK.  Kind of silly, really. 

On shore, we walked to the end of the dock, down the gauntlet of people hawking excursions, taxi drivers trying to get fares, and Princess personnel showing the way to the prepaid tours.  It was surprising just how much it felt like any other cruise port in Mexico or the Caribbean.  Still a lot of people around trying to sell you something and get your money. Then, along the main road next to the dock, there are all the Diamond International, Tanzanite International, and all the other jewelry stores found at cruise ports all over the world.  What a racket!  Duty free diamonds.  But wait!  Isn’t Alaska in the US?  Would I have to pay duty anyway?  Mo and I followed my daughter’s advice and avoided the first streets in favor of the smaller back streets and truly local shopkeepers.  The big stores are dominantly owned by the cruise lines, and certainly don’t do much to bring in real money to the locals.

On this day, however, shopping was our second choice to walking.  The town of Saxman was just a nice 3 mile walk along the waterfront and gave us a chance for some quiet and some nice views of the channel. Ketchikan has the largest number of ceremonial totem poles in Alaska.  We walked past cannery row and the Coast Guard station, through thick forests with salmonberry and ferns, punctuated by small waterfalls.   Along the way I met a sweet little very tiny lady with 5 cats and a gorgeous garden filled with flowers.  She had lived in Ketchikan since the early 70’s and was happy to visit with us.  I was surprised at the flowers everywhere, most of the shade and moisture tolerant types due to the heavy rainfall.  The delphiniums, however, were in full bloom, farther along than my own in Rocky Point.  The visitor center at the  totem pole park was nice, and the local staff were helpful and informative.  For a buck, you can buy a map of the poles with the history of each one. We learned that even though they are made of durable cedar, many of the original totem poles have deteriorated and most of them have been redone.   The re-carving is considered an important work and done with great pride by superior tribal craftsmen. The gift shop on the premises is run by the tribe, and there is also a clan house, with traditional dancing and singing performed periodically.  The carving shed is there as well, with a carver working on site.  You can watch him through the windows if you wish, but he only allows visitors inside at his discretion.

After enjoying the totems, for another buck, we caught the local bus back to town and were dropped off right in the center.  Things were a bit more crowded here, so we walked back to the Ketchikan Coffee Company for a cappuccino.  Another great local spot, with art on the walls done by the infamous Ray Troll, famous for his creative wild art, and an Alaska favorite. 

Creek Street is the classic row of one time brothels and bars, now converted to shops and a brothel museum.  Most shops here are locally owned, and the boardwalk area is quite picturesque reflected in the creek. Spending three bucks each to ride the tram up the hill was well worth it, and the Tlingit lodge at the top is lovely, filled with art and informative photos about the local history and tribal economy.  Walking back down to town, via the “Married Man’s Trail” was lovely as well.  We sidetracked a bit, ambled along the creek viewing salmon ladders, checking out the local homes, and visiting a bit with some local residents.

  Back to the ship for our boarding in plenty of time to find a spot on the upper decks as we left Ketchikan.  Even though it was cloudy, there was no rain and the views were lovely.  A local story of Ketchikan follows: Someone asked a young child, “how long has it been raining?” , and the child replied, “I don’t know, I’m only five”.