Oh my! Forget the lions and tigers, just worry about the BEARS! We had the time of our lives!

Day 3 – Skagway

Wall of Fame 
Rock wall that cruise lines post their info

Of course as we awoke, the skies were grey.  All I can keep saying as I view the scenery is “50 shades of grey!”  I am sensing a pattern here.  Other travelers to Alaska are probably wondering where my unrealistic expectations of sunny and blue skies are coming from.  I am now hearing this dreary weather is more the norm.  It’s my boss’s fault!  My boss, the Sheriff told me that he had two friends on two different cruises in June and July of this year that had beautiful sunny, warm weather on their trip.  Checking the weather channel app prior to our trip confirmed what Darren had said, sun, sun, sun.  So it’s all Darren’s fault that my expectations were set so high!  Evidently this summer Alaska has experienced unseasonably warm temperatures and sunny skies.  In Anchorage they said it was their best summer ever. 



Constant reminders of the cruise that wasn't to be!

We departed the ship with no set plans.  We thought we would do some hiking and started off to explore the shore.  The hiking trail to Yakutania Point followed a trail along the coast and we found some interesting vantage points to view the surrounding mountains and water.  As we reached a small cove, Tony decided to start mountain climbing and I was eyeing some fireweed to somehow fit into my pictures.  As we were there the sky started to lighten and the sun started to appear.  YES!!!  About the same time I heard this unusual whooshing sound.  After the second time, I asked Tony if he heard it and what could it be?  Immediately after that we saw a whale break the water adjacent to the cove I was photographing.  He was just going out of view so we started to follow him back the way we came.  As we rounded the corner on the trail leading to the harbor, there was a crowd of people on the trail pointing to an area behind us.  There was a Golden Eagle in a branch not 30 feet away.  In addition, there was a pair of eagles down below us on a sandbar at the mouth of the river.  Wildlife galore!  I pulled out my big lens and started shooting.

At that point the grey skies had disappeared and were replaced with gorgeous blue skies with puffy white clouds.  Right past the eagles was the Temsco heliport that flew “Walk on the Glacier” tours.  The tours are very expensive so we didn’t want to prebook anything for fear of grey rainy weather.  However, it was a whole new ballgame now with blue skies, so we immediately hiked over to the heliport and were able to get on the next flight out.  In Alaska there are a lot of small aircraft.  For helicopters and small planes everything is based on weight.  So rather than worrying about weighing luggage, on these flights they weigh you!  Your seat in the helicopter was based on your weight as well as the other passengers.  We had a safety presentation, were issued an orange safety flight vest and were fitted with boots with cleats on the bottom for traction on the glacier.  We were lined up according to the weight configuration that was best for the flight.  The helicopter held 3 in the front and 4 in the back.  Tony and I were in the back with Tony by the window and me in the middle.  Forgive all the heads that are in the way of my pics!

The flight to the glacier was one of the most amazing things that we have ever done.  The scenery

and the perspective were incredible.  Flying up the face of the mountain in the helicopter, we were so close I felt you could almost touch it.  The motion of the helicopter was not bad, very noisy but they provided headphones with 2 way speakers to communicate.  The helicopter allowed you to get so close to the cliffs and the top of the mountains.  Along the way to the landing area we crossed over multiple mountains and glaciers, saw several azure glacial lakes high in the mountains and saw the glacial raceways that extended from high on the mountain down towards its terminus in the ocean.  The sights we saw could never be observed from just hiking.  Our tour included walking on the glacier for 40 minutes.  I thought that would be the highlight, but the helicopter ride was just as fantastic.  

We were heading for the Meade Glacier, part of the Juneau Icefield like the Mendenhall Glacier.  As we circled the area we saw a tent, evidently a local hangout for guides waiting for tourists.  As we landed, we were instructed to keep our heads 

 

down low and get out of the helicopter area.  Our guide was awaiting us and took us to various

areas of the glacier where we could see crevasses, running rivers on the glacier that had eroded

huge holes in the ice as the water made its way down from the glacier to the sea.  The sun was out

and the skies were beautiful the entire time.  You could not have had a better day.  The guide told
us the day before had been rainy, cold and lots of clouds, and today was about as good as it gets. 

After another amazing ride back down the mountain into town, we decided to check out the cute town of Skagway. 

 

First stop was the National Park Service building and I got my National Parks stamp for the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park. I had forgotten my Parks Passport book when we visited Mendenhall.  Skagway was another Alaskan town established in the 1890s when the gold rush started.  We then went through town looking at the historic buildings and window shopping through the town.  We decided that we needed to check out another local brewery, another Alaskan Brewery’s Alaska Amber for me. As we were leaving the brewery we ran into our Australian friends Kevin and Margaret.  We both seem to spend a lot of time in bars!  We both compared notes of our activities of the day and made our way back to the ship to set sail for Glacier Bay.  

 

Cheers! Crissy has joined us and is following in her parents footsteps of the trip, spending the afternoon in a brewery.

Brooks Falls - Brown Bear Watching the webcam and getting psyched for our trip tomorrow at Katmai, NP.

http://shar.es/kstgu

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Afternoon break at the Glacier Brew House in Anchorage, Ak. So nice to have on demand internet! I have come in from the wilderness!!!!!

Day 2 - Juneau

Everyone who really knows me, know that my favorite color is blue.  I like everything in blue; blue clothes, blue paint, blue furniture, blue flowers and blue M & M’s.  Everything is better in blue!  I also love to take pictures and the thing I always look for is blue skies for photos.  Many times, I will insist that Tony and I go back to a certain photographic location because the sky wasn’t blue at the time.  Glacial lakes, mountains, animals, flowers, everything looks better with a beautiful blue sky and sun.  For as much as a sunny blue sky with puffy white clouds will enhance your photos, a grey sky will do just the opposite.  Spectacular scenery is mundane, flat and lifeless.  I live for blue skies on vacation, so I was starting to get a little depressed when I awoke AGAIN to 50 shades of grey and a low foggy ceiling.  I am normally a happy person that doesn’t get grumpy about much.  However, the caveat to that is going on a trip of a lifetime and having grey skies at every port!  I was not happy; poor Tony! 

 

We had lots of plans for Juneau.  It started off great, first thing we see as we get off the ship is a Bald Eagle posing for me!  I quickly changed lenses and was able to get a nice close-up of a dry eagle this time.  In addition, there is a tram that takes you to the top of Mt. Robertson starts in the area where the ships dock.  Lots of activity in that small area as you get off the ships. 

We had 13 hours in port and our main stop would be the Mendenhall Glacier, a NPS National Park which is located a short distance from downtown Juneau in the Tongass National Forest.  The glacier is twelve miles long from its origin on the Juneau Icefield to its terminus at Mendenhall Lake.  Tony and I have come to love glaciers over the years after visiting the Canadian Rockies in Alberta Canada and visiting the Athabasca Glacier in 1996.  Last year we visited Glacier National Park and took hikes to several glaciers and those incredible sights had us hungry for more.  The two highlights of our trip would be the Mendenhall Glacier and the Margarie Glacier in Glacier Bay.  If I could only have limited access to sun, please let it be in those two places because of course, glaciers show up better with blue skies behind them.  Maybe the weather would clear...   Not!

Unless there is no other way to get there, we tend not to take tours.  We like to hike, explore and take our time.  I like to take a million pictures and putting us on a timed tour just is too stressful.  I have wanted to go the Mendenhall Glacier for many years, so we were excited to take our own tour to the glacier on the $8 Glacier Shuttle to the glacier, a 30 minute trip from downtown Juneau. 

Mendenhall was located in bear country.  No food or flavored drinks were allowed on the trails.  Too bad we didn’t know that before came; we had packed sandwiches.  At least Tony was carrying the food; I could take pictures if the bears tried to get his pack!  Had the salmon been running, we almost would have been assured of seeing a bear, four bears had been in the area the day before, but luckily we didn’t run into any on the trail.  The Mendenhall Glacier is visible from almost any location in the park.  It is an immense, impressive presence.  One of the hikes took you through rain forest areas with heavy moss growth on the ground and trees, much like those in Olympic National Park and Capilano in Vancouver.  The wild flowers were just starting to bloom; lupines and fireweed.  There also were some interesting mushrooms and cone flower plants too just steps away from the lake.  The runoff from the glacier forms the Mendenhall Lake.  From time to time, chunks of the glacier will break off and fall into the lake, a process called calving.  The hike went along the banks of the lake directly opposite the glacier.  It was exciting to see that there were a number of icebergs floating in the lake and we found a small one that had washed ashore and it was perfect for a photo prop. 

The Mendenhall Glacier is one of the top attractions in Juneau and lots of people from the cruise ships make the trek to visit there.  In addition to the glacier and the glacial lake there is a huge waterfall of melting snow from the mountains.  From across the lake, we could see people standing

at the base of the waterfall.  It is only when seeing people the size of ants does it give perspective to the sheer magnitude of both the waterfall and the glacier.  When you go into the visitor center, there were many displays of the regression of the glacier.  Since 1958 the Mendenhall Glacier has receded 1.75 miles.  Glaciers all over Alaska and the world are receding.  Wikipedia explains the reasons the best “The Little Ice Age was a period from about 1550 to 1850 when the world experienced relatively cooler 

Blue ice of the glacier under cloudy skies!

temperatures compared to the present. Subsequently, until about 1940, glaciers around the world retreated as the climate warmed substantially. Glacial retreat slowed and even reversed temporarily, in many cases, between 1950 and 1980 as a slight global cooling occurred. Since 1980, a significant global warming has led to glacier retreat becoming increasingly rapid and ubiquitous, so much so that some glaciers have disappeared altogether, and the existence of a great number of the remaining glaciers of the world is threatened.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850 . 

My hopes for sun were dashed as showers moved into the area in the afternoon.  We were through exploring the park and decided to move onto the next adventure, a salmon hatchery.  After Ian had told us about the hatchery in Capilano, I was anxious to see one in action; with lots of fish.  Turns out we could take a public bus to the Macaulay Salmon Fish Hatchery just outside of downtown Juneau.  The hatchery is a non-profit organization that generates 
over 150 million salmon fry a year.  The process is amazing and quite a production.  Luckily the Coho Salmon were just starting to run and we were able to watch the salmon ladder in action.  A salmon ladder is a man-made structure that simulates the process of the salmon migrating  upstream, fighting the currents to the calm waters where they spawn.  There were lots of salmon using the ladder.  Those fish were huge, at least 30-36” and nasty looking.  I didn’t know they had such wicked teeth! 

In the wild, salmon migrate from far reaches of the ocean to the

same fresh water river where they were born.  There they lay their eggs far up river in fresh water in the summer.  The eggs will normally fall down into the rocks at the bottom of the streams; incubate for several months and the hatched fish fry, live off the yolk sacks until they are old enough to migrate down the river to the sea sometime from March to May of the following season.  So they are born in fresh water, live their adult life in salt water and come back to fresh water to spawn.  A fish that does that is Anadromous and besides salmon include smelt, shad, striped bass, and sturgeon.  Most fish cannot tolerate going between the two types of water, so it is quite remarkable that nature has adapted them so that the small fish have a greater chance of survival before they enter the ocean.

In a fish hatchery, salmon have their eggs harvested.  After the fish navigate the ladder they are sorted by sex, the captured salmon are shocked unconscious, the eggs are removed and artificially fertilized in a bucket and the contents is poured into huge trays filled with water and stored in a dark warehouse for several months until they hatch.  When they have exhausted their egg sacks they are then put into huge tanks and fed a specially concocted fish food until they are large enough to release to swim back into the ocean.  To make sure that they return to the same location to spawn, the small fish have the fresh waters of the nearby river infused into the tanks.  This is called imprinting-it stimulates the salmons senses to recognize the smell and location of the river and it will only return to that location to spawn 3-7 years later, depending on the variety.  Before the salmon fry are released, approximately 15% have a top vestigial fin on top clipped and a small wire inserted into their nose that identifies which hatchery it came from.  If the salmon are caught, the fishermen return the wire to the hatchery with information that helps them track the location of the salmon that were released.

The Coho Salmon in the fish ladder had been raised in captivity but come back to spawn at the exact location where they were released, it is totally amazing how strong the homing instinct of the salmon is.  As salmon on breed once and then die, the adult salmon at the hatchery are sent to processing plants for pet food once the eggs have been harvested.  In the wild they are eaten by bears, eagles and many other animals and is one of the major food sources for those animals.  The circle of life-oops, wrong park!

Juneau is a cute little town and before boarding the ship we stopped at the Red Dog Saloon and had an Alaskan Amber beer.  I even liked it!.  We met this couple Kevin and Margaret from Australia and had a nice afternoon talking to them.  Once again the weather cleared that evening as we set sail for our next destination, Skagway.  However shortly before midnight ominous clouds filled the sky.

Day 1 of the Cruise – Ketchikan

The sun sets very late this time of year in Alaska, depending on where you are it can be between 9:30 and 11:15 PM.  It also comes up early between 4 and 5 AM.  However, just because the sun comes up doesn’t mean you see it.  As we cruised towards Ketchikan, our first destination, I learned the true meaning of “50 shades of grey”.  Whoever coined that phrase must have been from Alaska!  As sunrise approached, the sky became a lighter shade of gray and as the clouds descended around us, so did the rain.  Cancun gets 240 days of sun and Ketchikan gets 240 days of rain.  They must have one of the highest suicide rates in the country because it’s always rainy and gray!. 

After a delicious breakfast we made our way off the ship, equipped with rain gear and 2 tons of camera equipment.  Our plan was to wander around town and explore the city.  Ketchikan has the largest totem pole collection in Alaska, so they had several museums and parks with totem poles that you could visit.  I think its the totem pole capital of the world between the totem poles in residents yards and those for sale.  

 

 There also was a cute area, Creek Street that now has shopping-but had previously been a bordello, a salmon stream running underneath the raised boardwalk where the shops are located and a funicular that would take you to an overlook of the city.  There also was a Tribal hatchery and eagle center that I was interesting in visiting. 

 

 

Eagle Totem in Downtown Ketchikan

We took a little shuttle from the dock to Creek Street, first stop of our excursion.  We looked for the salmon beneath the stores as we window shopped as it was very early and most of the stores hadn’t opened yet.  We stopped into a local information center who gave us directions to the Heritage Totem Pole   From the ship, we had seen eagles diving in the harbor and one of them flew right by the window where we were eating breakfast.  Anxious to find a bald eagle, we walked towards the Totem Pole Center along the water front as the rain started coming down harder.  As we rounded a corner, there I spotted a Bald Eagle on top of a piling.   Hiding behind a piling, one because it was blocking the rain and two so we wouldn’t scare the bird, I changed out my camera to have a monster lens so I could get a good closeup.  We probably were only 50 feet away and the poor eagle was as wet as we were.  We watched him for a while and he then flew off into some adjacent trees.  We kept following him as he was going in the same direction we were.  

 

As we finally said goodbye to our first eagle of the trip we finally arrived at the totem pole center.  A small facility with an informative inside display with some original antique totem poles that were made by the native Tlingit Indians. 

One of the most interesting things inside was the antique pictures of the Eskimos with gigantic halibut.  Reminiscing about fishing when I was a kid, the 8lb 2 oz flounder my dad caught was humongous.  Up here, that would be the bait!   The Eskimo made hooks out of carved 1” sticks-one 12" and one 8” long  lashed them together and used a rock the size of a large pear as a sinker.  With that configuration they would catch 150 lb. halibut!  Everything just grows big up here!    

Adjacent to the Totem Pole Center was the Tribal Hatchery and Bald Eagle Center, however, for some reason had been closed down.  Ketchikan was originally established as a Salmon saltery in 1883 with a salmon cannery being established 2 years later.  For years, salmon fishing and processing were the main industries.   Now the main industry is tourism.  However, the only salmon I found was in the stores!

 

Rain was really coming down, so we made our way back to the ship, had lunch.  Tony had nicknamed Ketchikan, Ketch-a-cold as we were getting drenched by the rain! 

 

There are so many planes in Alaska, I think everyone owns one!

As luck would have it, shortly after setting sail, the skies began to clear and we had a great afternoon and evening for sailing to Juneau.  Once again we had a beautiful sunset and hopes for a sunny day in Juneau.



As we sail towards Juneau the day becomes gorgeous!  Look at that perfect BLUE sky! 
 

Beautiful sunset in the direction of the Pacific - but low clouds are lurking on the horizon