My mother-in-law decided this year that we should all go on a cruise to Alaska. So we went. The cruise was 7 nights with a night in Anchorage before we boarded the boat. Cruise destinations were Glacier Bay, Sitka, Juneau and Ketchikan. After my mother in law and Maggie's sister left us in Vancouver, we went to Victoria for a day and then took the ferry to Seattle. We met with friends there and then spent nights at Mt. Rainier and Mount Saint Helens before returning home.
After a long flight from Las Vegas to Anchorage, we settled into our hotel room and then went to dinner. It was still light after dinner, so we walked around, looking at the shops in downtown Anchorage before getting a good night's sleep. After a leisurely breakfast and another stroll through Anchorage, we boarded busses for Seward, where we would board the boat. Even the drive was beautiful; the green a great contrast with Las Vegas. The most eventful thing on the bus ride was where traffic backed up because a pickup truck hit a moose. The moose was killed (the 375th of the year, according to the roadside sign). A person is required to report hitting a large animal because Alaskan authorities immediately come out to recover the animal, which is butchered and given to indigent families. They take care of the humans too, but they are not butchered.
Once we reached Seward, we boarded the boat and got settled in our cabins. The first night was informal; most people ate dinner and then went to bed. But not everybody. Paul, Susan and Beth tried out the midnight buffet. The boat reached Glacier Bay at midmorning. A park ranger boarded the boat immediately after entering the park. She narrated over the ship's intercom while the cruise naturalist spoke at closer quarters. He was quite good and I did not miss one of his talks during the whole cruise. The park ranger was not as good.
The boat cruises as far into Glacier Bay as is allowed and then turns around, so you can see everything twice.
Reid Glacier Johns Hopkins Glacier
The bay and the scenery along it was immense. The mountains rose 4000 or more feet on all sides. Starting with Reid Glacier, each one being grander than the one before. Johns Hopkins and Margerie the best and Grand Pacific still very impressive. The turn out brought us closest to the glaciers. I would like to return to Glacier Bay in a smaller ship and get even closer. We were too far out to see much in the way of wildlife, which would be another advantage of a small boat. There was not much calving that day.
The next stop was Sitka, the old Russian capitol. After visiting a few shops, we went off to the Governors Mansion. Life was not easy back then, but the settlers did the best they could to bring their culture to the area. They did pretty well, considering how far away Moscow was. The mansion was nicely fitted out. The chapel was particularly beautiful.
While we were walking and visiting, the kids went kayaking. While Paul went fishing after lunch, the rest of us went on a nature cruise on a smaller boat. We saw eagles nesting, seals, otters and humpback whales. Both the whales and otters were numerous. Several whales breached for us. It looked like there was a designated tourist attraction in one of the otter colonies. One otter was stuck posing and vamping for us while all of the rest were able to relax and get on with their lives.
We all went our own way in the morning in Juneau. My mother-in-law took a contingent to the State Capitol and I went to the Natural History Museum. I think I got the best of the deal. The displays on Alaskan ecosystems were very good. And I didn't have to hear any legislators or lobbyists. Juneau is large enough to be like any other city (except for the setting, mountains pushing up 5,000 feet, limiting the growth of the city). It was not as picturesque as Sitka or Ketchikan. Its tourist section looks more like a tourist section.
The clear highlight of the trip was the afternoon. We took a helicopter ride to the icefields where we rode on a dogsled. The travel channel also happened to be filming a travel story on the dogsleds, so we got to see ourselves later on television as well.
The helicopter ride took us up over the freeway, up the mountain and over to to the Juneau icefield. On the trip out we saw some Dall Sheep. They were fairly small dots below us. On the icefield, we separated into two groups. Paul, Beth and I were on our sled. Maggie, Susan, Soosan and Mary Lou were on the other sled. We took turns riding and mushing. Out leader was the first woman who ever won the Iditarod race. After a shaky start (I hit a bump and landed face first in the snow), we took off, wound around on a loop trail, and, eventually, returned to our starting place. The dogs, retired racers, enjoyed themselves immensely. As we did! The glacier is not an extremely cold place if you dress warmly.
Ketckikan is a much more picturesque town than Juneau. It pulls off the old time touristy type ambiance without seeming cheap and tawdry. It is quite a pleasant place. Having taken side trips at the other stops, we were tripped out. We spent our day wandering around downtown and Creek Street.Creek street has a lot of shops of all kinds and a few museums. Dolly's is a preserved bordello as a museum. The goods in the other shops were quite good. We made several purchases of goods made of anchorite, jade and other things. Creek Street's motto is "Where the men and the salmon come to spawn."
Downtown Ketchikan looks, if you take away the electric lights and the cars, like it could have come out of the 1890's. The shops are generally very good, as are the restaurants. We struck up conversations with several residents, all of whom liked living there. It would be nice to go back there for a more complete exploration.
Ketchikan was the last stop before final debarkation in Vancouver. Our luck with weather on the cruise was great. We had rain and clouds only at night between destinations. The rain occurred mostly after Ketchikan and before Vancouver. We debarked Sunday morning and caught a taxi to the bus station, where we took a bus to the Victoria ferry. The bus and ferry took 3 hours and the scenery, though more urban than before, was still great. We caught another bus from the ferry landing to downtown Victoria and then settled in at our hotel. The next day we took a bus to Butchart Gardens. This is a magnificent garden. It goes on for acres and is extremely well kept. No wonder it is a major attraction in Victoria. The next day we wandered around downtown Victoria and along the waterfront for a while. The British Columbia Museum of Natural History took us about half a day. It is well worth it. The exhibits specialize in the local cultures and are very well done. It is right next to the Parliament Building, so the architecture in the area is also great. Especially when you consider the Princess Hotel, about a block away. Downtown Victoria is a truly cosmopolitan area. We passed restaurants of all type, as well as shops selling goods from all over. Victoria is a great place to visit!
The next leg of the trip found us on a ferry to Seattle. The trip took 3 hours and was very scenic. We saw where a house had slid into the Sound the winter before. We docked, went through customs, and went to our friends, Chris & Irv's, where we spent the night before heading out through the lush grasslands and rising mountains to the base of Mount Rainier. We stayed in a rustic cabin at an in that included an hour in the hot tub as a part of the stay. It was very relaxing, if not sapping.
The next day we drove to Paradise. Passing over the Nisqually River, we noticed that the water was a silty grayish blue. This is because of the "glacial flour" in the water. We, as in the Alaska part of the trip, were blessed with great weather. There was not a cloud in the sky. We hiked around the meadows to a site with a small waterfall, with Mount Rainier's snowy peak always in view. We then went on a ranger led tour to see the Nisqually glacier. We passed the site where the largest snowfall ever on record was marked. The snowpack reached 226 feet in the early seventies. The glacier has not been in steady retreat, but has advanced and receded over the last 100 years. It is now slightly longer than it was 100 years ago. One day is clearly not enough time to give Mount Rainier National Park, but it was enough to whet our appetite for a return trip. As the day drew to a close we drove to Longview, where a hotel awaited our night before the last leg of our trip, a day at Mount Saint Helens.
The final destination on our trip found us experiencing another day of great weather. Mount Saint Helens had few clouds around it and those that were at that level were from the volcanoes steam vents. We drove in on the main highway, seeing the devastation that the eruption of 1980 caused on the Toutle River. As we got closer, we could see the downed trees. The landscape became more an more desolate. Finally, we reached the Visitors Center. The displays there are very informative. We enjoyed the presentations by the rangers. A mood of awed silence pervaded on the drive back out. I had us stop at the elk viewpoint. You could see the greatest level of devastation to the river at that point. The bottom of the valley had been scraped clean. As you looked at the rising land you could see where the grasses had come back. This is where the elk make their living. You are about 300 feet above them and they are out about a mike from the viewing center, so they appear as dots on the horizon unless you use the telescopes or your binoculars. They must have sough safety on higher, sheltered ground during the eruption.
Having concluded our Mount Saint Helens visit, we returned to Seattle for our flight home the next day .
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