June 16 and 17 Ketchikan to Juneau

Two days worth this time, almost caught up.

Thursday, June 16

Breakfast in this B&B is a do-it-yourself affair.  We had cereal, English muffins, bananas, juice and tea and coffee.  Yogurt was also available.  The owners both have jobs and were off to work when we left.  We simply left the key on the table and pulled the door shut behind us to check out.

Our morning destination was the Saxman Native Village, located about 2 ½ miles south of downtown.  We watched men carving and repairing totem poles.  

 In earlier days, poles were just left to rot and new ones constructed, but with modern economies, new poles are very expensive, so old ones are being restored.  The poles are made of Western red cedar, so the term “rot” is a very slow process.  Some of the 30-plus poles here are over 125 years old.  Most were recovered from villages that were abandoned in the early 20^th century when mining and logging interests lured natives away for paying jobs. Saxman Village itself was a product of New Deal programs of the CCC and WPA and has continued since as a center for native arts. Ardith's favorite was the one to the left that tells the legend of the man who married a bear and their 3 cubs.

 A lot of the poles are just fun.

We had lunch at the Oceanside Restaurant in the seafood packing and shipping part of town.  The Italian – Mexican establishment had a unique decor: Greco-Roman with Mexican highlights.  Even the restrooms followed the theme.

Jim enjoyed the day’s special, 2 really great soft tacos with specially done meat, rice that had corn, peas and rice in it and beans with a very thing cover of cheese.  Ardith had turkey on a croissant.  It was really good, but she could only eat half of it.  She also had some delicious cream of broccoli soup.  The owner brought out small samples of the soup and the meat in the taco before we made our decision.  She had also made many of the decorations and was proud of her food and crafts.

There was an area a few blocks away where we sat and watched seaplanes and an eagle.  We were sitting next to a place where the seaplanes went to get refueled and cleaned before picking up passengers for tours.  There was a lot of activity.  There are only 2 cruise ships in town today, tomorrow 5 ships will be in with 12,500 passengers plus crew.  All the tour facilities will be hopping.

When we went to check in for the ferry, the super-pleasant clerk noted that we didn’t have a cabin. The web site for the Alaska Marine Highway (the ferry line) was quite confusing.  Ardith watched Jim click a button to reserve a cabin, but it wasn’t on the clerk’s computer.  Jim checked the receipt, which he stored as a PDF on the laptop, and sure enough, there was no cabin.  Jim made the assumption that $529 for 2 trips probably included a cabin for one, but not so. Fortunately, a cabin was available.  It was an inside cabin, but that was quite fine.  We only slept in the tiny room, spending most of our time in the wonderful public places on board.

When we boarded the Taku, the men guided our car in a place that was crosswise.  There were a lot of cars there from Prince Rupert.  The same boat makes several stops, dropping off and picking up people and vehicles along the way.  Three boats ply the way from Prince Rupert to Juneau (our destination) and some go beyond.  They run every other day from any given place. 

Our boat was only about a third full in terms of number of passengers.  However, the vehicle deck was fairly full, including 4 semi-trailers and 2 Army vehicles.  The lack of passengers meant there was no competition for seats or other resources.  The trip began at 2:30pm and ended the next afternoon at 1:30pm.

There were people on board doing serious whale watching.  Jim got a very brief glimpse of a whale, Ardith saw a pair while Jim was working on this blog, but they were gone by the time she notified Jim.

We spent a lot of time with a couple from New Jersey who were born, raised and educated in Holland.  They have been in the US since the 70’s.  He was an engineer with AT&T, she is a retired nurse – anesthetist. 

Below are some of pretty scenes while we were underway:

The boat had a 45 minute stop in Wrangell.  Jim enjoyed watching people and vehicles come and go.  There was a fun sign on a building close to the dock.

The far end of the ramp had a very serious hump because of low tide and one vehicle towing an Airstream trailer needed to have ramps placed under its wheels to get on board. 

Some people from the ship went to shore for a walk.  One couple had bicycles and rode around much of the town.

The sun was just casting a final glow on the mountains as we were preparing to leave Wrangell.

 

Jim stayed up to watch the ferry go through the narrows, with about 20 feet on either side of the ship to the channel markers.  Definitely not a place for cruise ships to enter.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Ardith had trouble getting to sleep due to the noise of the ship’s engine.  Jim came to bed an hour and a half later and was asleep in about 5 minutes.  His issue was getting in and out of the top bunk.  Climbing up wasn’t the issue. There was less than 18 inches of clearance between the mattress and the ceiling!  This meant he had to sort of nose into the space until up to his waist, then lie down and try to flip his legs on the bunk.  It wasn’t pretty, but he succeeded unassisted.

Ardith was fully aware of both stops the ferry made during the night.  Jim was dimly aware of the announcements for the first one, but heard nothing for the second.  We woke a few minutes past 8.  Jim has usually been up a bit before 6 most mornings and was surprised to sleep so long.

Several people find ways of not paying for a cabin while on board.  Many roll out sleeping bags on the floor or on lounge chairs or simply sleep on the recliners like we did 2 nights ago.  One guy pitched a tent using duct tape to anchor it to the deck!

We had breakfast with a doctor who was just a few years younger than us who had spent much of his life in New York State.  He and his wife have been in Alaska for 7 years now.  Ardith continued to talk with him in the observation lounge while Jim did computer stuff and took some additional pictures.  Ardith got to see a young humpback whale and Jim ran outside onto the deck to try and catch a picture of it.  He got a few good shots of its tail and of its spouting, but either missed or got blurry ones of it when most of it was out of the water.  There was one great moment when it was largely out of the water and splashed back.  Out of about a dozen of us taking pictures with long lenses, only one got a good shot and hers was great.

The scenery continues to be breathtaking.  It is so vast and magnificent that pictures can’t do it justice.

When we got within a few miles of Juneau, we had a great view of the Mendenhall Glacier.

As we were nearing Juneau, a local resident on board recommended a waffle place that is just down the road from where the ferry docked. We easily found it and Jim enjoyed the waffle of the day (peanut butter and blueberry) while Ardith had a waffle filled with bacon and sausage.  

 

Outside the waffle place were some trucks with bumper stickers showing their opinion on farmed salmon.

On our way to our motel we stopped at Mendenhall Glacier.  It was truly impressive.  The visitors’ center included a small “calf” (piece fallen from the front) of the glacier you could touch and lots of explanations of the geology of glacier movement and of the local wildlife.  This glacier has been retreating between 50 and 100 feet a year since the late 1700s, with larger amounts in recent years.  When the visitors’ center was built in 1963, the head of the glacier was about where the red line is in the photo below.

We walked two of the three  hiking trails.  One takes you close to a waterfall near the head of the glacier.  The other goes to great picture taking sites of the glacier itself.  The trails passed a lot of interesting plants. 

Jim hadn’t previously paid attention to the fact that alder trees are the only broadleaf species to have cones.  

We watched several arctic terns swooping above the lake just off the end of the glacier.  There were some skirmishes above one area.  There was a tiny chick who only popped out for a second or two at a time and its parent was there to protect it.

We watched two kayakers in the lake near some blue ice.  The blue color is due to a crystal formation of the ice caused by extreme pressure.  One the ice is exposed to the air for a while, the crystal structure collapses back to ordinary ice.

We were fortunate that the weather was pleasant.  Temperatures were in the low to mid 60s.

We checked into our motel and discovered that the wi-fi was not operating. After two hours of working with the desk clerk we switched motels.  We really needed to connect to the internet so that we could post some entries to our blog.

Since we were full from lunch and tired from moving we had cheese and crackers in our room while Jim inserted the pictures into the blog.