Final Dateline, somewhere in the Inside Passage, British Columbia, Canada-Thursday, August 30

Left: dolphin breaching under our balcony-Inside Passage, BC

This day has been spent at sea, progressing toward a final destination and disembarkation in Vancouver tomorrow, Friday.

We departed Ketchikan last night. When we awoke this morning, we were far out in the Pacific Ocean, out of sight of land. The open ocean waves gave the ship quite a bit of motion, to the point that we swayed and staggered as we walked through the hallways.

Fortunately the ship and its cruise activities mean that one never has to be bored. Each evening we have enjoyed a very entertaining live floor show in the onboard theater. The dining is an experience in itself. In the evening we are served by tuxedoed waiters and offered a full course, gourmet menu from which to choose. There are bingo games and the casino for those so inclined. In addition to the outdoor swimming pools on the top deck, there are indoor, heated swimming pools, whirl pools and jet tubs. The fitness center is very complete, including personal trainers. And there are no shortage of restaurants and lounges, some of which are always open. The views from the ship are wonderful. Our stateroom has a balcony with two deck chairs and a table, where we can watch the sights in privacy, read a novel or enjoy the fruit and snacks that are delivered each afternoon. There is always a crew member standing by to fulfill our every wish.

We entered the Canadian Inside Passage early this afternoon. The waters immediately calmed. We cruised the narrow waterway between beautiful, moist coastal mountains. The towering peaks, ice fields and glaciers are far behind in Alaska. Shortly after entering the passage, we were greeted by dozens of dolphins. A group of half dozen or more broke away from the main group and raced toward us, finally swimming parallel to the ship while rhythmically leaping out of the water in long, graceful bounds. When they reentered the water, we could see their silver grey bodies streaking just under the surface. They finally turned and were gone as quickly as they had arrived. Later we spotted from our balcony spouting whales a few hundred yards away. They were in a pod of at least six. When they surfaced to spout, they would linger on top of the water and raise a black and white fin or fluke: Orcas or Killer Whales.

Looking back on our trip, we saw so many wonderful sights and met so many interesting people. We visited the interior at Denali, toured the Kenai Peninsula with its mountains, harbors and rivers, and visited the historic and picturesque coastal cities from our cruise ship. We met and learned from native Alaskan people as well as others who have come here from the lower forty-eight states to make Alaska their homes. We saw eagles, mountain sheep, moose, bear, caribou, fox, seals, dolphins, salmon and whales, all in their natural, unbounded habitats. We could not help but be awestruck by how vast and remote Alaska is even today; for all our twelve days of travel here, we only saw a tiny fraction of the state.

One of the most interesting aspects of the trip has been interacting with the Tlingit people. They are being tugged by the desire to cling to their roots on the one hand, but be part of the modern American dream on the other. Our Tlingit guide in Hoonah was in the Army for eight years, attended and completed college, traveled the world, but came back to the remote island birthplace of her mother. When I asked her why, she smiled and said “in the end, we all return home”. I didn’t know if she was talking about just herself or all of us. Alaska to me represents the American dream of our ancestors; few boundaries, challenges, self reliance and opportunity. In a way, it was like returning to an earlier version of America. Will my grandchildren have the same opportunity to experience Alaska that I have had? Or will it be sacrificed to progress? Already, cruising Canada’s Inside Passage we see large areas of logging on once pristine Vancouver Island. A metaphor for the struggle of the Tlingits; preserving the past or moving into the future. We feel blessed for the opportunity we have had to see and experience all that we have; for the opportunity to come home to Alaska.

Dateline Ketchikan, AK-Wednesday, August 29

Right: Tlingit guide (Eagle Tribe) Joe Williams

This morning we docked in the coastal town of Ketchikan, the southernmost city in Alaska. It is located on a large island in Alaska’s inside passage. We were greeted by a steady rain which lasted all day, the first rainy day since we boarded our cruise ship (although we had plenty during the pre-cruise land portion of our trip). Ketchikan is one of the rainiest cities in Alaska; it rains on average two hundred and forty days a year-two days of every three. The winters are also comparatively mild, more like the Midwest Unites States.

With a population of thirteen thousand, Ketchikan is fairly large compared with other southeast Alaska towns. Like many other ports of call for our cruise ship, the immediate downtown area is chocked full of shops aimed at the cruise line tourists. It shares a gold rush era history with other inside passage towns such as Juneau and Skagway.

We took a tour of the town and some of the surrounding sights. We visited a salmon hatchery and a bald eagle rescue center, with two injured eagles in residence. Beside tourism, fishing for salmon and other salt water commercial catches is the lifeblood of the Ketchikan economy. The hatchery captures spawning salmon during their runs up the local river and manually strips eggs and milt. The eggs are fertilized in the hatchery, and the hatchlings are raised in tanks for a year and a half before being released in the tens of thousands back into the same river. The fish migrate down to the harbor and spend the next several years at sea feeding and growing. In four to six years they return to the harbor fully grown at fifteen to twenty-five pounds, and again enter the same river to spawn. All of this maintains local salmon stocks to support sport and commercial fishing. We were able to view the process at all levels, from channeling freshly arrived salmon into the hatchery, to releasing the partially grown hatchlings back into the river.
Ketchikan is the territory of Tlingit (ta-link’-it) native people. Our Indian guide explained the system of tribes (Eagle and Raven) and clans (bear, eagle, killer whale and thirty others). Most Tlingits are today fully assimilated Americans, but their interesting traditions are based on a matriarchal society where a child’s mother chooses their spouse, uncles raise boys and aunts girls instead of their own parents. Even today, they do not marry within their own tribes; an Eagle may not marry another Eagle. There is a strong movement among Tlingits to resurrect their culture, including teaching the native language in schools and performing traditional songs and dances. We were treated to some ceremonial songs accompanied by a traditional drum by our guide.

We visited a native cultural center and saw the intricate and imaginative totem poles for which the Tlingits are known. Some were over two hundred years old. We also saw a replica of the wooden lodge in which extended families lived together in earlier times. A traditional village would be a collection of these large lodges, each of which would be home to a specific clan, while all residents of that village would be of the same tribe.

This is our last Alaskan port of call. We sail at 6 pm this evening, and will be all day tomorrow, Thursday, at sea headed for Vancouver, BC where we will leave our floating home for good and fly home to Michigan.

Dateline Chichagof Island, Icy Straights, AK-Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Left: Tlingit men in "regalia"; Chichagof Island

This morning our ship was welcomed by pods of spouting whales as we pulled into Hoonah Harbor on Chichagof Island. This unique, remote and distinctly beautiful place is a large island in Alaska’s inside passage. Its dimensions are roughly fifty by seventy miles and its human inhabitants are eight hundred fifty Tlingit native people in the village of Hoonah.

Our ship anchored in the harbor, and when we went ashore by tender we were greeted by Tlingit people in traditional “regalia” dress. The Tlingits are indigenous to southeast Alaska where their native customs, culture and religion have survived for over a thousand years. We found the people to be friendly, intelligent and welcoming.

Unlike other ports of call, cruise ships have only been visiting Chichagof Island for four years at the invitation of the Tlingits. Only one ship is allowed to visit at a time, as opposed to other ports of call such as Juneau and Skagway where four or five ships from various cruise lines were always present.

Chichagof (chich’-aw-koff) is mountainous and located across from the mouth of Glacier Bay. It is known for its sea life, including whales, seals, dolphins, sea lions, fish, clams and crabs. It is also known for the largest concentration of Alaska Brown Bears in the southeast part of the state.

We enjoyed meeting the native people, viewing their totem poles, hiking trails along the beach and seeing the village of Hoonah. Unlike our other stops, while there were a few small native run shops, there were no glitzy jewelry stores and the other standard tourist fare that we encountered previously.

After a light brunch we boarded a bus with a Tlingit tour guide to see some of the island back country. The island is mountainous and dominated by spruce forests in which some commercial logging occurs. The many fast moving streams are crystal clear unlike the milky blue-gray glacial streams we encountered elsewhere. The streams hold Dolly Varden trout, and were thick with salmon which run up from the ocean stream mouths to spawn. At each steam side stop, we could see literally hundreds of salmon swimming, splashing and jumping as they worked their way upstream to spawn.

The isolation and salmon runs are keys to the bear population. There are over three thousand huge brown bear on the island, one of the densest populations in Alaska. Spotting wildlife is the union of opportunity and chance. Alas, luck was not our friend today as we did not come across a bear, although sign was everywhere and others from our ship had spotted several earlier in the day.

After our tour, we enjoyed fresh caught fried clams in a beachfront café, and returned to the ship to relax and enjoy the view of the harbor. We set sail at 4 pm for Ketchikan, where we will dock tomorrow morning as our last port of call prior to terminating our cruise in Vancouver.

Dateline Skagway, AK-Monday, August 27

Right: White Pass & Yukon narrow gauge train approaching wooden trestle and stone tunnel

After an evening at sea, our ship pulled into the port of call of Skagway, Alaska this morning.

Skagway was founded during the 1890s gold rush era as a jumping off spot for would be prospectors. At one time the largest city in Alaska, it currently has only nine hundred residents and is supported almost entirely by cruise ship tourism.

After breakfast we walked into town for some shopping and sightseeing. The shallow, fast water creeks which flow into the harbor were literally stuffed with spawning salmon. As with all of the coastal places we have visited, the town and its harbor are ringed with huge coastal mountains. The downtown area (the entire city is only a few blocks square) is composed of frame buildings which serve as shops offering everything from reindeer hides, through native art to diamond and gold jewelry. There is a “boot hill” cemetery containing the graves of assorted characters from the gold rush era.

After a light lunch aboard ship, we boarded the White Pass & Yukon narrow gauge railroad for a trip to the summit of White Pass, which was the gateway to the Klondike gold fields in the Canadian Yukon. We learned that over one hundred thousand hopeful prospectors came through Skagway and over its mountain passes. A small fraction of those, perhaps forty thousand, actually reached the gold fields of the Klondike, and only a few hundred ever found gold, most of those collecting a trivial amount. For less than one hundred intrepid and lucky souls, fortunes were made. The other ninety nine thousand faced exhaustion, financial ruin, injury or even death.

Before the railroad was built, prospectors climbed to the pass on foot, leading pack animals loaded with all of their supplies. The trip to the Klondike was over six hundred miles. Part of the old foot trail is still visible in places, only a few feet wide. The prospectors had to go single file, and many of them or their animals died falling off the foot trail and plunging over the side of the mountain.

Our rail trip was spectacular, clawing its way up a grade carved out of the side of shear mountain rock. For over twenty miles and a rise of three thousand feet from sea level, we passed mile after mile of wild river rapids, waterfalls, mixed forests and gorgeous mountain vistas. The surrounding peaks soared to over seven thousand feet. Our path took us over rickety trestles, around switchbacks on the edge of cliffs and through tunnels punched through solid mountain rock. It was all the more amazing to realize that this was constructed by men with picks and shovels, using black powder to blast rock, in the late 1800s. We were told that thirty five thousand men worked on the railroad right of way with thirty five killed for their trouble. And after the gold rush played out, the railroad became largely useless. Today it is used almost solely for tourists.

Tonight it’s another floor show, dinner in the main dining room and on to Ketchikan and hopefully bear viewing tomorrow.

Dateline Juneau, AK-Sunday, August 26

John & Nickie: Mendenhall Lake & Glacier

We awoke at 6 am this morning to our ship pulling into its birth in Juneau. Nickie had her hair “done” this morning in the onboard salon and John worked out (AGAIN! Not that he needs it).

This afternoon we left the ship and went on an excursion to Mendenhall Glacier, only a few miles north of Juneau proper. On the way, we saw many Bald Eagles around the harbor and alongside the highway. Mendenhall is one of thirty-nine glaciers in the Juneau ice field, and a large one at that. The glacier terminates in a pretty blue-gray colored lake, which is in turn drained by the Mendenhall River. We took a rafting tour of the glacier, its lake and an impressive waterfall that takes glacier melt into the lake in unimaginably large quantities. The lake was also full ice flows which calved from the glacier. Then we (with a guide and some other tourists) rafted down the Mendenhall River, which is fast moving with many rapids, some quite intimidating. Everyone that boarded the raft also arrived at the end with nary a scratch, although there were some damp clothes. We stayed pretty dry through the ordeal. Our guide explained that the water temperature ranges from 34 to 36 degrees in the summer, since it is all new ice melt. The glaciers have been retreating in recent years due to melting, but Juneau on the other hand had its coldest and snowiest winter in memory this year. Go figure.

After our white water rafting adventure, we toured downtown Juneau, which is mostly now for the benefit of cruise ship tourists. Juneau is the capital of Alaska, but it still has the look and feel of a pretty small town-there are only about thirty thousand residents. It was formed as a gold rush town in the late nineteenth century, and to this day has no trains or roads leading in or out (although there are of course a few roads IN town-cars are brought in by ferry). One must come by air or sea. Like all the Alaskan towns we visited, it is rimmed by stunning high, craggy coastal mountains. The harbor is a very busy working one; in addition to tourism the economy is driven by commercial fishing and some mining.

This evening we took in an onboard floor show and sat down to a fine dinner in the main dining room. Tomorrow it’s off to Skagway and a trip up the mountains on the narrow gauge, mining era railway.

Dateline Pacific Ocean somewhere off the Alaskan Coast-Saturday, August 25

We departed Seward last night just as dusk was settling in. We headed southbound into the Pacific Ocean for Juneau on Sunday. We applied motion sickness patches to ward off the ill effects of the sea, at least until we get our sea legs.

Our accommodations are very nice and the service on board is excellent. It seems there is something for everyone. John spent a few hours working out in the fitness center this morning while Nickie read her novel. The only negative so far is that the internet service aboard ship will not let us upload our photos to this blog, so our dear readers will have to use their imaginations.

Saturday is a day of cruising. However, this afternoon our captain maneuvered the ship for an hour and a half into a narrowing bay with two magnificent glaciers at the end. The bigger of the two, Hubbard Glacier, is the largest in American. It begins over a hundred miles up in the huge, snow capped mountains, and terminates in the bay. The crew took the ship within a few hundred yards of the face of the glacier where it enters the sea, and powered down the boat. The size and colors of the glacier were inspiring. As we watched, the glacier made cracking sounds which for all the world could have been rifle shots. Periodically, a chunk of glacier ice would fall off of the face and crash into the sea, followed by a sound like thunder and a large wave that rocked the ship. The beauty of Alaska is forever amazing.

This evening we visited the onboard casino, where as usual Nickie won at the slots, and John lost playing video poker.

All in all, the cruise is shaping up great. The weather has been sunny and the winds just a breeze. There is some motion to the boat due to the Pacific swells, but our patches seem to be doing their job and it’s actually kind of soothing.

We’re looking forward to tomorrow, our visit to Juneau for the day and a scheduled white water rafting excursion.

Dateline Seward, AK; the Celebrity Summit-Friday, August 24, 2007

We awoke this morning to clouds but no rain. Yesterday evening was spent at the laundromat processing a week’s worth of dirty clothes in anticipation of boarding our cruise ship today.

Since ship boarding begins at 2 pm, we took advantage of our morning by touring the Iditaride (a play on “Iditarod”) sled dog kennels. It is owned by the man who won the 2004 Iditarod dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome, a distance of over one thousand miles run by eighty five dog sled teams in the dead of winter. We “met” the dogs and mushers, and took a wild, wheeled dog sled ride through the Alaskan forest powered by a team of thirteen sled dogs. Contrary to our expectations, these race winning dogs were not pure bred Alaskan Huskies, but a mix selected for strength and stamina. Many looked as if they had some German Shepherd or even Alaskan wolf in them. The dogs are really quite small and thin, but have a tremendous enthusiasm for their work reflected in their happy yapping and nonstop tail wagging. All in all, quite a ride.

We then visited the Alaska Sea Life Center in Seward, where we saw a great display of seals, sea lions, sea birds including Puffins, a huge variety of fish and crustaceans. The displays were as good as we have seen anywhere including the San Diego Zoo and Sea World. Contrary to what we had been told to expect, we found Seward to be charming and interesting.

We dumped our rental car and boarded the Celebrity Summit in mid-afternoon. The ship is large and elegant. There is something for everyone including a movie theater, library, internet café, running track, fitness center, beauty shop, many bars and restaurants, and on and on. We were delighted with our balconied stateroom with its initial view of the mountains surrounding Resurrection Bay off of Prince William Sound here at dock in Seward. We were relieved that this morning’s clouds yielded to sunny blue skies. After dinner and the mandatory life boat drill, we set sail at 9 pm for a day tomorrow of cruising the open sea and Hubbard Glacier in the Gulf of Alaska