Alaska Trip

We have just returned from an amazing trip to Alaska. We had both wanted to go, and since it was our 25th anniversary, we decided, "If not now, when?" So we bit the proverbial bullet, scrounged up enough cash, or room on our credit cards, and went.

We flew to Vancouver, BC, where we kicked around for two days. We even ate at The Old Spaghetti Factory one evening! We boarded the MS Ryndam on Sunday, the 21st, and set sail for the Inside Passage.

We left with four other cruise ships, and saw them ar each port of call. And for the first day, we were in sight of all of them. A traffic jam on the Inside Passage. However, those ships soon disappeared. We discovered that each ship captain has freedom to chose his own route through the Inside Passage. And Our captain spent the early part of his career on the Rhine River in Germany. So a river captain was not afraid of some of the narrow passages he took us through, one was only 400 yards wide!

The picture to the left was taken at the Mendenhall glacier, outside of Juneau. Alaska evidently has about 10,000 glaciers, and the Juneau ice field is the birth place for many of those. The interesting thing is that 80% of the glaciers are retreating, but 20% are advancing. When we sailed into Glacier Bay, we saw two glaciers, from the same ice field, one was advancing, the other retreating. You would think that both would operate in tandem, but this was not the case. I have no idea what this means concerning the "global warming" debate, but I found it interesting.

We saw an amazing variety of wildlife on the trip. We saw humpback whales, and dolphins one day. Another day we saw eagles. While in Denali, we saw moose, a grizzly bear and her cub frolicking in the blueberry bushes less than one half mile from us. We saw caribou, ptarmigan (a bird), otters, and a beaver. The beaver, (at left), at the Mendenhall Glacier, swam past us several times to check us out, and then emerged from the water no more than ten feet from us, and hustled into the bush a few yards from the water's edge. In Seward we saw a group (pod?) of white beluga whales. At a wildlife preserve outside of Seward, we saw a bald eagle, some moose, and caribou.

While in Carcross, Yukon Territories, we saw some Alaskan Huskies, bred for dog sled racing. They are not as "thick" as the Siberian Huskies, but they are bred to run. The puppies were very cute. To practice in the non-snowy times, there are some special dog sleds with wheels in the runners. While we were there, one of the sleds was pulled out. And the twenty or so dogs went strak raving nuts. Barking and yapping and jumping and digging and almost doing cartwheels! When the six were chosen and harnessed up, and took off with great enthusiasm, the remaining dogs al jumped up on the top of their dog houses and wailed plaintively, "awoooooooo"! Here is Beth with one of the mama dogs, very sweet.

Our cabin onboard the ship was amazing. A king bed, a small refridgerator, a TV, a couch, and a small table, and some closets. It had a small verandah, or deck, where we would often just sit and read, or sit and drink in the beauty of our surroundings. On the left is a view of a glacier and some mountains looking out of our verandah. It was a very comfortable room, and we soon got used to the gentle rocking of the ship. In fact, we got so used to it, that for several days afterwards, we felt that whenever we stood, we were rocking. Our first day off the ship in Anchorage, I took a short nap, and felt that the hotel was gently rocking back and forth! A strange feeling!

Our cabin steward, Mahommed, was from Indonesia, and a very charming fellow. Each night, he left us towels in the shape of animals. One day it was a turkey. One day it was an elephant. One day, it was a pig. They were very cute. Try to guess which animals are to the right.

The glaciers were amazing. Glacier Bay was incredible, as was College Fjord. Up close, the glaciers have a deep blue color. Evidently, the pressure of the ice forces out most of the air bubbles, and the ice absorbs all colors except blue. The glaciers snap, crackle and pop, like Rice Krispies, but the popping is more like gun shots or thunder. Every once in a while, a chunk of ice will fall off the glacier into the water, the process is called "calving". We did not see any huge chunks of ice calve, we saw several smaller chunks fall off the glacier into the water. What an awesome sight. I got to wondering how long that ice had been there. Starting as snow, and then being covered by many feet of snow, turning to ice, and then "flowing" down to the ocean or inlet. Thousands of years old, I will bet. Our ship-board naturalist said at some glaciers, people actually take boats out and pick up some of the smaller chunks of glacial ice, and take them home to use. The water in those chunks of ice is purer than anything they could make themselves, and since there are no air bubbles, the ice lasts much longer.

We bravely signed up for a flighttour, and were flown over some glaciers near Ketchikan in a small float plane. Small planes make me nervous, lots of bouncing around. But the view of these glaciers was amazing, breath-taking. Miles and miles of ice, thousands of feet thick. Carving out huge U-shaped glacial valleys, and depositing huge amounts of glacial silt at their terminus. The picture at left is the floatplane we flew on. Beth actually got to be the co-pilot, though we are both glad she did not have to do any actual flying!

I will hopefully blog more on our trip later.