Sitka

Sitka is Alaska's fourth largest city. It is located on an island in an archipelago in the Gulf of Alaska. After early battles with the native Tlingits in the early 1800's, Russia established a fort on this site to protect their sea otter pelt trade. Sitka became the capital of Russian America.

Sitka was also the location of the flag lowering ceremony in 1867 when America bought Alaska from Russia, but the Russian heritage is still evident in the city.

After America's purchase, Sitka became Alaska's first American capital (before later moving to Juneau). Growth was centered around gold mining and fish canning. Today, tourism has kept the city humming. Museums, historical buildings (such as the onion shaped dome of St Michaels Russian Orthodox Cathedral pictured above), and of course, shopping are all there. My wife Sharon and I toured the town on foot with stops at the Alaska Raptor Center and Tongas National Forest.

The Raptor Center takes in 100-200 birds of prey annually that have been injured and they try to rehabilitate them. Those they can "fix" are released back into the wild while others are sent to zoos or kept on-sight for viewing by the public. If you want a close up photo of an eagle, hawk, owl, falcon, or raven(?), this is where you can get it. Also at the center are hiking paths through the surrounding woods. At the head of the paths a sign read, "This forest trail is excellent habitat for brown bears. Please use the trail at your own risk." For some reason, Sharon was always looking over her back!

We also hiked through a small portion of the Tongas National Forest. Tongas is the largest national forest in the United States. It encompasses most of the panhandle of the southeast portion of Alaska. It is classified as a temperate rain forest. Amongst the tall spruce and hemlocks were ferns, moss, and mushrooms. Sharon saw her first red squirrel chattering away and a stream in the forest had one and a half to two feet long salmon trying to get upstream. With fish only a foot apart from each other, across the entire width of the stream, for as far up stream we could see, it's no wonder the bears hang out around there! At different parts of the park's paths are totem poles representing family histories of the indigenous people of the area.

After a stop at a local bar back in town (for Sharon!) we had a snack before heading to the ship. I had a reindeer sausage sandwich. It tasted like a Polish sausage. Maybe the reindeer was Polish! Live (and eat) The World!

Icy Strait Point & Hoonah

Our cruise stopped at the port of Icy Strait Point. Celebrity and Royal Caribbean have just recently started calling on this island just outside of Glacier Bay. I assume others will soon follow suit. (Some cruise lines offer excursions to Icy Strait but don't dock there. A good travel agent can help here.) Icy Strait is the only Alaska wilderness port on "big cruise line" itineraries.

This area has been inhabited for 1000 years by the Huna tribe of the Tlinkit people. Today's town of Hoonah, about a mile from the port, is the largest Tlinkit town in Alaska. Its population is about 900 with 70% being Tlinkits. Everybody knows everybody else and most are related to each other! It is a glimpse into the "real" Alaska. The main industries are fishing and logging (and probably soon, tourism). With a brown bear for every acre and a half, whales enjoying this north end of the Inside Passage, and a lot of old growth forests, cruise sightseers can get an eyeful.

Our ship, the Summit, anchored off shore as we tendered into port. The port of Icy Strait is the site of what was once one of the busiest salmon canneries in the world. The buildings have been restored and now house gift shops, restaurants, and Tlinkit artifacts. But you don't come to Icy Strait just to look at the port. This is a place to take an excursion! Whale watching, fishing, biking, hiking are all offered, but my wife Sharon and I went to see the bears!

Arranged into small groups each with a guide, we loaded into 4-wheel drive vehicles and headed toward the river. The town's people have built an area not too far from town with a boardwalk through the fields and woods to a number of elevated viewing platforms above the river. This is where, in hushed silence, we readied our cameras hoping a bear would come down the river (and not sneak up behind us!). We had good luck that day and saw a number of bears trying their luck fishing for the running salmon. It was really evident which were young bears and which were older besides just looking at their size difference. The older bears quickly caught fish and sat in the water for their lunch. The younger bears were almost comical running this way and that, upstream and downstream attempting to get a paw or mouth on the elusive fish.

After surviving the bear encounter, Sharon and I decided to walk from the port into town. It is about a mile from the port so some may prefer a taxis, but we like to walk. Saw a bald eagle on the way. The town of Hoonah is not a tourist town or a rich town. It is a place to visit with the locals maybe over a beer or sandwich. Sharon and I found the place to go; it is called The Office. The Office is a small bar and restaurant that serves fresh Dungeness Crabs! Outside of the bar, a small tent shelters the cooks with their cooler full of live crabs and the crab pot. Yummy! Eating at the bar, Sharon and I made friends with the Tlinkit owner and her daughter barmaid. We were introduced to their cousin who loaned us his cell phone to call the lower 48. That's friendliness! The cousin also bought us a few beers, posed for pictures, and gave Sharon big hugs. It turns out he would be on our ship the next few days as the naturalist guest speaker!

Before getting back on our tender back to the ship, we took part in a Tlinkit tradition. At Icy Strait, a big bonfire was roaring and being tended by a Tlinkit gentleman. He gave Sharon & I each a cedar wood chip. We tossed the chip into the fire. That brings good luck and we hope to go back. Isn't it interesting to Live The World!

Skagway

After Juneau, the next stop for Celebrity Cruise Line's Summit was Skagway. As with all areas of this country, there were indigenous people before the arrival of "us." In the case of Skagway it was the Tlingit (kling-kit) people. Skagway's beginning after "us" was, again, the gold rush but for a little different reason than the gold found around Juneau. Skagway was the entrance to the gold of the Yukon.

Having a deep harbor and located at the beginning of an easy (?) way through the mountains (now known as White Pass), Skagway was the perfect jumping off point for the prospectors heading into Canada in the late 1890's. Using Tlingit trails and later a narrow gauge train, those seeking their fortunes could traverse the mountains into Canada up to Bennett Lake where they could pick up the Yukon River for their final destination; the Klondike. Sharon & I took an excursion that retraced these step; the White Pass Train.

Now used mostly as a tourist attraction, the White Pass Train takes you up through the mountains above the timberline to the "top" at Frazer. We went WAY up! Two non-cruise tourists got off at an intermediate stop to backpack and camp near a glacier. (I think one of them was Grizzly Adams!) The train went through tunnels and over long tresses (which I hoped had been strengthened since the 1890's!) as we made the slow, switchback climb to the top. Of course, beautiful scenery! When we got to Frazer we were in the Yukon of Canada. Before disembarking, several Canadian Mountain Police boarded the train checking our passports. After a little rest at the top and a lot of picture taking, most people took the train back down to Skagway. Sharon & I were on a different package; we took bicycles back down. (There's a road through the pass now!)

Going downhill all the way for miles is my idea of bicycling! Kind of reminded us of the bike trip down the volcano Haleakala in Maui only Sharon & I were in the mountains this time. We went in small groups, with two guides, protective headgear, and a lot of safety precautions outlined to us. We weren't allowed to ride too close to the edge of the road, for some reason. The group made frequent stops for picture taking. There is a small guard house at the U.S./Canada border. All of us had to stop our bikes, get our documentation checked, and our passports stamped as we re-entered the states. Probably mostly for show, but it was fun! We didn't lose anyone to rogue bears and we didn't hit any moose, but my travel agent (Sharon) was always taking up the rear.

The people of Skagway have purposely tried to preserve the historical look of the gold rush days. Over 100 buildings have been refurbished in their original style. At its peak around 1898 the population of Skagway was between 8000-10,000 making it the largest city in Alaska. The reputation was pretty rough and lawless. Even though today's population is closer to 1000 a lot of them are involved with the tourists. We saw costumed girls hanging out of hotel windows beckoning us to come up for "a visit." One of their more famous saloons, the Red Onion, had costumed bar maids, a rag-time piano player, and a few R-rated pictures from the 1890's hanging on the wall of former "employees." It's always an experience when you Live The World!

Juneau

From Vancouver going north we sailed through the Inside Passage. The Passage is our first taste of the rugged mountain terrain Sharon & I will experience in the days to come. I was surprise how narrow a few parts of the Passage were.

Our first port of call is Juneau. Juneau is the capitol of Alaska, third largest city, and its area is roughly the size of Delaware (that includes its unpopulated area). Like many Alaskan towns it was founded around gold. Surrounded by water the town is on an island only accessible by boat, ferry, or plane. Its eastern boundary is British Columbia, Canada. Juneau's weather is mild compared to what we think of as Alaska weather with the average summer temperature of 65F and winter of 20F. Only (!) about 100 inches of snow a year, but they get a lot of rain and ice. It was drizzly but in the upper 60'sF when we were there at the end of August. Guess the summer of 2006 was extremely wet throughout a lot of Alaska. The talk of the town when Sharon and I were in Juneau was the renewed effort by some to move the capitol to Anchorage. Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska's first and second most populous cities, have been fighting for years about moving the capitol to their cities. Should the capitol move, the locals say Juneau's population would decrease by 75% and make the town a virtual ghost town (except for the cruise passengers!).

The city area is at the foot of Mt Juneau and Mt Roberts; and they go straight up! The cruise ships dock right in town. A tram is available at the pier that will take you up Mt Roberts to view the wilderness area and Juneau Ice Field. This ice cap feeds about 30 glaciers in the area. Since it was cloudy and drizzly, Sharon & I didn't think the view that day would be very great (and it costs about $25.00 per person) and didn't make the trip. What we did do was go to Mendenhall Glacier.

Mendenhall is the number one tourist destination in Alaska (maybe because it is the only glacier accessible by road). It's only about 10-15 miles out of Juneau. You can sign up for the cruises' shore excursions or you can get bus transportation or taxis right off the ship. Funny, the people in Juneau take American money and they speak English! Some people took the helicopter excursions that allows you to land and walk on a glacier! Mendenhall was the first glacier Sharon & I have ever seen and boy is it awesome! The face of the glacier is over 100ft high and it stretches over a mile and a half in length. The blue tinged, dirt streaked, fissured ice stretches for miles up the mountain and out of sight. A waterfall flanks Mendenhall on its right. Our perception of scale was clarified when we saw ant-sized kayakers being dwarfed by the enormity of the glacier. This is also the area some of our cruise mates saw their first bear. Sharon & I didn't see it.

Our bus took us on a short tour of the Juneau area, stopping at a log cabin church and a river where salmon were running, and dropped us off back in town for some more sightseeing and shopping. I wanted to go to the Alaska State Museum, but Sharon wanted to taste the micro brews in the Red Dog Saloon. Guess where we went. The Red Dog started back in the mining days (1880's) as a place for entertainment and relaxation. I'm thinking the piano player and bar of today aren't all that was offered for entertainment in the past! The Red Dog Saloon was fun though it can get crowded. They also serve food. The rustic decor has the obligatory snarling grizzly bear leaping out at you and a giant king crab on the wall, but it also includes creative taxidermy like black bears chasing a person up a pole and chasing another into a garbage can. Then there is the rear end of a white tail deer with eyes and rabbit ears??? That's why it is fun to Live The World!