Hubbard Glacier

As our Alaskan cruise continued, my wife, Sharon, woke me in the early morning. Our ship was sailing into Disenchantment Bay, home of Hubbard Glacier. It was drizzly, foggy, cool, and too early for me to rush awake. Sharon went up on deck and I followed later.

Hubbard Glacier is North America's largest tidewater glacier. A tidewater glacier is one that travels far enough to reach the sea. The origins of Hubbard are back up in the Yukon about 75 miles and it is still advancing. The face of the glacier is 6 miles long and 300-500 feet high. A lot more is under the water. It is HUGE! Our ship, Celebrity's Summit, was dwarfed by this 50 story high chunk of ice. We "parked" about a mile from Hubbard, but because of its size, it looked like you could almost reach out and touch it. When we saw a sea bird fly by our ship toward the glacier and almost disappear as it neared the face, we gained a little perspective!

For our best view we were allowed to go to the front of the ship to the helicopter landing pad. There, facing the glacier, a Tlingit naturalist (who Sharon & I had met and become friends with in Hoonah, our previous stop) told us all about Hubbard. The ice has a blueish tinge as did many of the glaciers we had seen earlier. I think this is caused by the air in the ice being pressed out by the pressures of the glacier. The color seems more evident under cloudy skies than sunny. A lot of the glacier's surface is heavily crevassed and fissured. Again, the size of these jagged cracks and convolutions was hard to comprehend until we saw them dwarfing full size spruce trees near the glacier edges. All glaciers also have dirt/gravel they have up heaved incorporated throughout their ice. Some appear "dirtier" than others like the smaller glacier to the side of Hubbard.

Viewing Hubbard Glacier was almost like a religious experience for me. Here we are, in the middle of nowhere, all by ourselves (well, 2500 other passengers too), in a slight drizzle, with fog shrouding the tops of the mountains, in front of a massive, thousands of years old example of nature, and it is perfectly silent. The silence would occasionally be disrupted by a reverberating "crack" or a distant rumble like thunder. Never quite heard sounds like that before. These sounds were Hubbard expanding and contracting. Like the old man he is, he creaks like my old knees. We kept a sharp eye because some of these cracks and moans meant calving (ice falling into the sea from the face of a glacier). Because of the size of Hubbard, though, by the time the sound got to the ship, the calving had already occurred. Did I mention that Hubbard is big? Live 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!

Cruise Alaska

This summer my wife and I took a cruise of Alaska's Inside Passage followed by a few days in Denali. I'll follow-up with some other blogs on the land portion of our trip, as well as, thoughts on the ports we visited.

There are a lot of options when cruising Alaska. First you have to decide if you want the small ship experience or what we consider "the normal size" cruise ships. The small ships generally have a more casual atmosphere and decor/accommodations and often have an expedition/education theme. They have the advantage of being able to go to places the larger ships can't. The larger ships have all the glitz and glamour we associate with cruising. They offer the lounges, spas, entertainment, and activities that are normally limited on smaller ships.

Next you have to pick a cruise line. All cruise lines are not alike. Even some ships within one cruise line can have a different "atmosphere." They will vary in price (of course), accommodations, level of service, food, type of clientele, prepaid inclusions, and activities/entertainment. A good travel agent can pick the cruise line that best fits your budget and tastes.

Cruises will vary in length and travel either north or south. There are a few round trip cruises (in and out of the same port), but I feel they only give you a tease of the experience. These cruises don't go far enough. I don't have any preference if I take the north or south route for just a cruise. I don't even see a big need to pick what side of the ship your cabin is on (to be able to see the land), but for some that might be a factor to consider. A determining factor would be if you are adding a land portion to the cruise (that, I really recommend!). Some people like to do the land tour first and then the "relaxing" cruise last (a south route). My preference would be cruise then land (north route, which we did) because the land portion was so spectacular! Doing the land tour first would make the cruise anti-climactic for me because a day in a port, although pretty and interesting, was not as dramatic as spending time as part of the land. Also, we saw much more wildlife on the land portion and, of course, Mt McKinley!

My wife and I were on the Summit of Celebrity Cruise Line. Celebrity is an upscale Royal Caribbean; its parent company. It's above the mass market entry level cruise lines but a step below the luxury lines. In a lot of respects, I find Celebrity and Princess Cruises are similar. There is still a wide variety of ages on both cruise lines but more of an upscale clientele and decor than, say, Carnival. Celebrity has a good reputation for its food. The service is good, the ship clean, with normal entertainment. Their specialty restaurant (at an an additional fee) was excellent! Cirque du Soleil is on board with an abbreviated show, but I wanted more having seen several of the full scale shows. Cruising on the Summit was very enjoyable. Having been cruising in the Caribbean, it was weird to see the deck chairs around the pool to have rolled wool blankets instead of towels! Live the World!