Since returning from our Alaskan cruise and land tour on June 29, I have been immersed in getting to know this state better. I am determined to return to spend at least one full summer there, hopefully in May, 2012, as a student at the University of Alaska. Alaska has a hold on me and I don’t want her to let go!
It is impossible to describe Alaska. I was captivated, exhilirated, but also frustrated because I knew right away that our visit would only scratch the surface of the place. I hated to come home. I must learn more about the history, geography, geology and biology of this wondrous place we are lucky to call American. I have a new hobby. Alaska!
First of all, you can’t imagine the size of the place unless you have at least skimmed the surface of the land mass, not just the southeastern panhandle where the cruise ships go. That goes for you folks in Texas, too. Size-wise, Texas can’t even come close. Alaska is bigger than California, Texas and Montana combined. It takes hours to get from place to place, even in the finest weather. (No wonder Alaska has more airplanes and pilots than any other state.) But in the summer those hours are filled to overflowing with fantastic scenery: mountains, wildlife both flora and fauna, gleaming rivers, beautiful meadows, majestic spruce, cottonwood and aspen trees, and lots and lots of lakes, large and small.
Then there is the magnificent isolation of the place. Only about 600,000 people live in all this space, half of them in Ancourage. The next largest cities, Juneau and Fairbanks, are under 30,000 people each. Everyone else lives scattered among tiny villages, especially on the coast, or else they live truly remote. One “town” where we stopped for a break on our bus ride on the Denali Highway has only 9 people who live there year-round, and that community is not unusual. (They did have electricity.) The Denali “highway” by the way, is 135 miles of dirt/gravel road over the sub-Arctic tundra, open only in the summer. We bounced over every inch of it, a nine-hour ride at 40 mph tops. Human beings are simply dwarfed by Alaska, and rightly so. For two weeks, I saw not one billboard, not one fast food place, not one traffic light, no WalMarts or movie theaters or shopping malls, until we got to Ancourage at the end of our trip. And not one bit of trash anywhere.
Juneau, the state capital, is completely cut off, unreachable by road.. Not one road goes into the town. You fly in or boat in. This is actually true of all the villages on the Inside Passage, where all provisions, everything, has to come in by barge. Nonetheless, there were plenty of souvenirs to be had in Ketchikan and Skagway! I was sorry we didn’t visit Sitka, once a major Russian town dubbed the “Paris of the Pacific”, complete with an opera.
Alaska’s wildness is carefully protected. 85% of the state is federally controlled, mostly national parks. We visited three national parks. One is a maritime park, accessible only by water: Glacier Bay. Our cruise ship toured the area with us all agog on the decks. Besides glaciers and icebergs, we saw humpback whales, sea otters, many eagles, Dall’s porpoises and even a wolf walking along the shoreline. All illuminated by commentary from a terrific naturalist who spoke to us, quietly, over the loudspeaker as we gaped from the open decks. He mentioned that in his twenty-odd years of touring Glacier Bay he had never seen a wolf from a cruise ship before. They are truly elusive and we did NOT get him on camera. There was a grizzly bear too, but I missed him. Brother Ed got a good shot of him. It was thrilling to see these wild animals just living their natural lives unmolested.
We spent two nights at the edge of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, where we went white-water rafting. We were there on June 21, the summer solstice, and those of us who weren’t sleepy went on a short hike with a ranger at midnight (the sun was still up) while he explained the significance of Alaska’s long summer days and what the solstice means. We saw a terrific movie about the Northern Lights, but you can’t see them in summer because it isn’t dark!
Then there were two nights in the Denali National Park, where we got to pet sled dogs and see them in action. We also took a 4-hour bus tour along the park’s only road, which took 18 years to build and is still mostly gravel/dirt. We saw lots of moose and caribou, one moose walking rifght along the side of the road. We met an Athabascan Alaskan native (“Indian” if you want to be politically incorrect) who told us of his culture and showed off his snow shoes and bear-killing pike. (Mom was deterred from joining us on this side-trip when she discovered there were only outhouses available.)
Next we rode a train for four hours to get to Talkeetna, the funky, weird village that inspired the “Northern Exposure” TV show. Talkeetna really is as odd and quirky as the show, full of interesting people, dogs who run loose, shacks made into art galleries, and outfitting shops for the mountain-climbers who attempt Mt. McKinley each year. The train ride was made special by our “bubble top” rail cars, with see-through roofing so we could take in the full view. It was also fun eating in the dining car. Full luxury a la the Orient Express. Incidentally, nobody in Alaska calls Mt. McKinley by its official name. This highest peak in the Northern Hemisphere at 20,800 feet is Denali, Athabascan for “The Great One”.
We rode a fast catamaran across Prince William Sound, allowing closeup views of harbor seals. When we went to dock at Valdez, there was a humpback whate lolling right in front of the pier! We had to wait for him to move so we could tie up. He meandered along quite leisurely, another reminder that Alaska belongs to him, not humans. We saw the Alaska pipeline and a great little museum at Valdez, plus the area where the oil spill happened in 89. There is still oil three inches below the sand on the narrow beach.
Perhaps the most fun and excitement came the afternoon we spent whale-watching from a small boat while we were in Juneau. We got as close as the law will allow, about 100 yards, from a pod of humpbacks, including a baby who leaped into a “full breach”, his entire body out of the water. (My camera missed that, too, but I got some of the others who breached partially). I felt a kinship to the hunters of Moby Dick because we were so close and at water-level, although how anyone could imagine, much less attempt, to kill one of these unbelievable creatures is beyond me.
Skagway was my favorite southeastern village because of the history there as a gateway to the Klondike gold fields. Much of the village is unchanged since 1898. At the moment I am deep into The Klondike Fever by Pierre Berton, a Canadian who grew up on the Klondike and whose parents were in the gold rush. This is a terrific book even if you aren’t interested in Alaska or even the gold rush. Berton is (was?) a journalist who wrote this book in the 50’s, so he writes in an exciting, breezy style, though the book is a serious work which he researched by interviewing “old stampeders” before they all died. It remains THE book about the gold rush, and I can’t put it down, especially since I have walked on some of the same real estate featured in the story. The tales of the miners, the confidence men, the saloon girls and the chicanery of the gold rush will curl your hair. Not to mention starvation, disease, accidents, boats caught frozen in the Yukon River and dead horses all over the place. The lunacy of the gold rush will amaze you, disgust you and make you smile. It was an international phenomenon, a human migration of over 100,000 people unique in history.
We visited the cemetery where Soapy Smith lies buried, along with hundreds of others who died trying to get to the fields. (Read the book to hear about Soapy, or google him.) The cemetery is also close of a lovely waterfall and a genuine bear cave. The bear wasn’t home, thank God, but I found his poop and actually sniffed it to check it out. Whew! It couldn’t have been more than a few hours old, still soft.
At Ketchikan I watched a mama seal and her baby for fifteen minutes eating shiners right below the pier where we docked.
I haven’t said much about the cruise ship, which was as fabulous as you can imagine. We all had balconies (Ralph and I had a suite, too!) and enjoyed the food, the pool, the shows, and the pampering tremendously. But the on-board naturalist was the best part for me. I can’t say enough about Princess, and I’d sail with them again, although they are wizards, sneaky and subtle, getting you to spend money. Still, I felt we got good value and the service was incredible.
Our trip included my husband, my two brothers and their wives, my sister-in-law's sister, and my mother. The whole thing was a gift for her 80th birthday. She did great! We all took turns catering to Mom, to make sure she had assistance and attention every moment, and we learned a lot about accessibility issues and handling a wheelchair when she needed it. We figured out that Mom had not been with all three of her kids on a trip since 1970. It was a wonderful family time none of us will every forget.
If you want to look on a map, our itinery was as follows: plane to Seattle, bus to Vancouver, ship to Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway and Whittier, catamaran to Valdez, bus to Copper River (Wrangell/St. Elias), bus over the Denali highway to Denali National Park, train to Talkeetna, bus to the other side of Denali national park closer to Mt. McKinley, bus to Ancourage, plane to Seattle.
