Our Alaska Adventure begin

Friday, May 26, 2017

Having celebrated Tim's birthday in Paris, Lynda was asked to decide where she wanted to celebrate hers.  She decided on an Alaskan cruise and wanted to include her brother and two of her cousins.  When all was said and done the cruise was booked and it included her brother, Gerry Brown and his wife Cathy, and her California cousin, Beverly Drury and her husband, George. The plan was to meet Gerry and Cathy in Seattle the night before our cruise began and Bev and George would fly into Seattle from San Diego the morning of the cruise and meet us at the ship.

We have been very lucky in all of our travels to have very few problems. Our luck seems to have changed with the beginning of this trip.  Our flight to Seattle out of Detroit was delayed by an hour and a half due to a brake problem. We were all asked to deplane with all of our carry-on luggage while the repairs were made and then we had to go through the whole boarding procedure again. Instead of arriving in Seattle at 5:30, we arrived at 7:00. In the grand scheme of things probably a minor problem. It meant that we met Gerry and Cathy for dinner at 8:00 instead of 7:00.

Our hotel in Seattle was located about 5 blocks from the Space Needle, an iconic Seattle landmark. We were not interested in the Space Needle itself but rather the Dale Chihuily Glass Garden at the base of the Needle. Chihuily is a world famous glass artist whose work we have seen and admired in other locales.  This display included several typical art gallery type rooms of his glass works as well as a small but lovely garden that had his glass creations interspersed among the flowering plants.  We also were able to watch one of the glass artists, not Chihuily, working with an apprentice, showing her how to create a small glass bowl.  Very interesting.

We scheduled with the hotel a 12:30 shuttle bus to the pier for our 1:00 embarkation time. The whole checking in process went smoothly until we arrived at a large lounge just outside the ramp to the ship where all the passengers were being held.  There was no announcement as to the cause of the delay of actually going aboard the ship but there seemed to be some unrest among the passengers who had arrived earlier. We had a relatively short wait which was not a problem because this was where the Browns and the Crandalls met up with the Drurys. Once on board the next problem was that our luggage did not arrive at our room. When the steward for our room stopped by we asked him to look into this. He later reported that the original scanning of our luggage showed something that would cause that piece of luggage to be rescanned which would not take place until after the life boat drill.  We did finally get the luggage in time to change for dinner. There was no explanation as to the source of the problem but we suspect it was the bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream we had purchased the night before and had put in the suitcase.

The major problem was Lynda discovering about 90 minutes before the ship was to leave port that she had lost her cell phone. We retraced our steps in the terminal and talked to the personnel in the terminal but they had not found the phone.  We also called the hotel and they checked with the shuttle driver who also reported finding nothing. So, much to Lynda's consternation, she is without a cell phone for the rest of the cruise.

Finally, to mercifully end this litany of problems, once the ship left the safety of Puget Sound we encountered rough seas which lasted all the first night and the entire first day of the cruise which was to be a day of tranquil sailing. Walking about the ship was a challenge, particularly when going through the buffett line at breakfast or lunch.  We all felt like drunken sailors. Fortunately, by Friday morning the weather had calmed and we had reasonably calm seas. Throughout all of the rough seas the sun had been shining and we were able to observe spectacular scenery.  Friday morning as we approached the port of Wrangell, Alaska, we observed a large number of what we were told were Black Sided Porpoises cavorting along next to the ship.

Wrangell, Alaska, our first port of call is a small village located on one of the many islands along the coast of Alaska.  There may be 2800 residents in Wrangell and this village turned out to be the least touristy of all of our ports. None of the ship sponsored tours were of interest to us so we left the boat and strolled about town, stopping in a local department store and a hardware store.  It was great fun chatting with the locals who were all exceedingly friendly. The main point of interest in Wrangell was a lovely little park that contained three authentic totem poles as well as a cherry tree in full bloom as well as a gorgeous rhododendrum. Before returning to the ship we made one more important local discovery: Alaska Amber Beer.  It is delicious.

Saturday morning we arrived in Juneau, the capital city of Alaska.  We had some time before our tour to walk about Juneau. Our goal was to find the capitol building. It is without a doubt the most unassuming capitol building of all 50 states, nothing more then a 7 story brick office building. There are some things that don't change in state capitals however.  Our tour bus driver told us that Juneau's average temperature was higher then any other city in Alaska because of all the hot air coming from the capitol.  Before leaving home we had booked a local tour company tour that included a two hour whale watching cruise and a visit to Mendenhall Glacier.  The whale watching cruise was incredible. Within 10 minutes of leaving the dock our captain stopped the boat for our first sighting.  We were observing humpback whales. These whales will stay submerged for 5 or 6 minutes and then surface two or three times to expel the salt water they had swallowed while feeding before diving again. You know they are diving again when their fluke (tail) comes out of the water. They are initaily spotted by the plume of water that comes out of their blow hole. We watched this whale make two seperate surfaces before moving on to find another.  While watching a second whale, a third come a bit higher out of the water and then proceeded to spend the next five minutes or so slapping it's fluke against the water. We were about 100 yards from this whale and could easily hear the sound of the fluke on the water. We had a naturalist on board our boat as our guide and both she and the captain told us that it was highly unusual to observe this behavior.  To add to the excitement, a fourth whale rolled on its side exposing one of its flippers. We saw 5 whales in total and at the end of our cruise our guide told us we had been particularly lucky on this cruise.  We agreed, especially since Tim was convinced we wouldn't see any whales at all.

The next stop was the Mendenhall Glacier.  We were not able to get very close to the glacier  but we were able to see how much the glacier has receded in the last 50 years. While very interesting to see, the trip to the glacier paled in comparison to the whale watching.

Sitka was our port of call Sunday. This city claims to have the highest remaining population of Russians in Alaska. There is still a Russian Orthodox Church with a Russian bishop in Sitka. The first stop on our tour in Sitka was the Alaska Raptor Center. This center specializes in the rescue of raptors, mostly Bald Eagles and the re-introduction of them back to the wild. The injured birds are brought to the center where they are treated for their injuries and a determination is made of their future.  About 40 percent of the raptors brought to the center are released back to the wild. The remaining are placed in zoos or trained for visits to schools and the like. As part of our visit a handler brought a juvenile bald eagle into the room we were in.  The eagle was tethered to her arm so it was unable to fly but still.  It was a magnificent sight to see that up close and personal.  From the Raptor Center we took our bus to the Fortress of the Bears. This turned out to be a very zoo like experience.  There were five brown bears, a species that is larger then grizzly bears, in two very large open air pens. There  is a smaller pen containing three black bears. As we arrived  one of the zookeepers began feeding the bears. This was particularly exciting because almost a dozen eagles came swooping in trying to steal the food from the bears. We had been told at the Raptor Center that eagles can be rather lazy birds, perfectly willing to eat the leftovers of other animals' food. Tim had the opprotunity to talk to the zookeeper and discovered that these bears were all orphans that the State of Alaska would have killed if this facility had not taken them in. The Fortress of the Bears is lobbying the state legislature to allow for the re-introduction of these bears into the wild much like the Raptor Center.  Our last stop on this tour was a National Forest Park that is home to over 60 totem poles. It was fascination to read about the preservation efforts of these totems. Restoration specialists clean the totems, do any necessary repair work and then coat them with a water repellent. The totems are then reattached to a pole so that the original is not touching the ground, again to protect the totem from moisture. Many of these totems were located along a path the wound its way through a beautiful pine forest.

Memorial Day was spent in Ketchikan, Alaska. As in Wrangell, we had no tours booked in Ketchikan but instead enjoyed a leisurely stroll around town.  Other then Wrangell, the other ports, unfortunately, featured the exact same jewelry stores so that you had the feeling that if today is Sunday, this must be Sitka. The one distinguishing feature to Ketchikan was Creek Street so named because it went beside a picturesque little creek. Up until 1954, Creek Street was the Red Light District of Ketchiken.  Prostitution was outlawed in Ketchikan in 1954 but, according to signs on some of the houses on the street, a few of the women continued to ply their trade as best they could. Most of the homes have been turned into gift shops, although one did offer a "Red Light Tour". A sign on the side of this particular house advertised Creek Street as the place where salmon and men come to spawn.

While we have had excellent meals on board our ship the meal that deserves special mention happened off the ship in Juneau. We stopped at a small trailor, think food truck, that was offering fish and chips, the fish being fresh caught halibut. We ate at a picnic table with no silverware, just the fish and chips and an Alaska Amber beer.  Nothing better.

Tomorrow we will be cruising the Inside Passage completing our cruise in Vancouver, British Columbia.