Alaska: Part 3

Thurs, 7/10: Red Bluffs

Happy Ted's Birthday! Today is Ted's 21st birthday. We had the serendipitous event of briefly having cell phone service as we passed near the town of Cake and so we texted Ted to say Happy Birthday. He responded with a picture of a bottle of tequila which he said was his first legal liquor purchase. Then David sent us a Snapchat of the two of them doing shots in our kitchen. And then the cell phone service dropped off, leaving to our imagination any further details the mayhem going on back at home.

The cell phone thing is kind of funny. I haven't bothered to even carry my phone around, since I don't use it much for non-connected apps such as reading or even music. I guess other people had theirs with them because all of a sudden you'd see a group of people assume the heads-down, phone-out position we've all gotten so used to at home. Whenever I'd see the telltale posture I'd get the urge to dash to my cabin to see if I, too, could go online and see what today's Groupon is. I usually resisted.

Seeing a Bear at a Distance

This morning was a time of rest and relaxation. We were cruising Frederick Sound rather than "doing operations" (the crew's very military-sounding term for the cycle of outdoor activities which would go on when we were anchored) and so there was no morning activity to hop onto. With nothing to rush and get ready for I took advantage of the time and went to the 6:30 AM yoga class. It was a misty morning and we were on the move so the day's yoga vista was a succession of misty peaks and bright sunlight diffused through the fog. Then it was down to the lounge for coffee and the early riser breakfast. I went up to the top deck and where I bumped into Dave (Claudia's husband). We chatted for a bit, believe it or not about oncology research and grants management software systems, as he is the head of a veterinary medicine research foundation. Dave was topside to join Megan and Mark in working out. I looked over at the two guides and was momentarily transfixed with jealousy as I watched Megan braid Mark's long, lush hair into a ponytail. When they started their workout I snapped out of it and headed my bald self to the bridge (guests are welcome to visit the bridge). There are displays on board showing our position on the chart and I had noticed that we had been meandering since the previous evening, so I immediately went to the charts and started asking about what we were doing, pointing out where we had been at 11 PM last night based on seeing a particular lighthouse, and where we are now. Perhaps I established a bit of cred on the bridge from being knowledgeable about the chart and our track. I got into a conversation with the captain about navigation systems, and I told him my history of designing maritime navigation systems. He mentioned having had to have learned several antiquated systems, LORAN and Omega, to pass a navigation officer exam. He's a young guy. When I was working in that business those were still current systems, though admittedly no longer state of the art.

I read down in the lounge for a bit, then it was time for brunch. Since we were cruising the morning's meal was a big buffet brunch. I toddled out of the dining room pretty full straight to my Thai massage with Nikki, a sunny young woman who is also the morning yoga instructor. It was a pretty interesting experience. Imagine someone is playing with Barbies, putting them into stretchy yoga positions. Now imagine you are the Barbie. Very different than a regular massage. I left feeling good and relaxed.

V and Karen

In the afternoon we pulled into Red Bluffs, a fjord with another big waterfall (maybe 500 feet?) and views of some big mountains. I had originally signed up to do open stand-up paddleboard (SUP), but the area was so beautiful that decided that I wanted the ability to explore more of it beyond the on-a-short-leash open SUP area. Another thing about this location is that the ship was surrounded by tremendous lion's mane jellyfish and I didn't really relish doing SUP in water that was both cold and full of jellies. So I switched to guided kayaking. I paired up with a woman named Els, a technical theater professor from the west coast. V paired up with a woman she had kayaked with the previous day, another Australian (and another nurse) named Karen. Karen was traveling with Jeff and Linda, a doctor and nurse respectively. V and Karen had hit it off as a paddling pair the previous day and we wound up eating a number of meals with the three of them. The group also included Guy and his son Dante. We had sat with them at one of the first meals but hadn't really done much with them since then. Once again, Megan was our guide. This was a group with a wide range of skills. Guy and Dante had never kayaked before but were gung-ho and both clearly pretty active. V & Karen weren't fast kayakers. They turned back shortly into the trip and joined the open kayaking around the ship instead. It turned out Els is a former high school rower and she turned out to be a good paddling partner and so she and I kept winding up way in front of the other boats. In terms of wildlife viewing V & Karen got the better show. We saw some eagles back in the fjord but nothing else, while they got an up close visit from a seal and also saw a big collection of starfish. On the other hand, paddling back into the fjord past yet another raging waterfall was pretty spectacular in its own right. I also had the audacity to give Megan a few pointers on her kayaking. She's clearly a very fit woman who could probably beat the pants off me and just about any sport (unfortunately having her beat the pants off of me was not offered as an activity) but was paddling with her arms, not taking advantage of her core strength.

As Els and I returned to the ship we noticed a large number of people lining the rails around the stern. Spectators for the Polar Plunge! We landed our kayak and as I was coming up the ladder to the 200 deck Amy grabbed me and said, "you've got to get your camera! Valerie's going to jump!" Fortunately I had my camera with me and so I grabbed it, squeezed into a spot by the rail still in full kayaking gear and watched as groups of people jumped off the kayak launch platform into the cold, jellyfish infested waters. Valerie was indeed among them; she took the plunge and came out sputtering but triumphant!! For the rest of the cruise people were coming up to me and commenting on it - I don't think they had her pegged as someone who would do such a thing.

My Wife is a Crazy Person

 After a dinner of flounder we went to Jackie's lecture on salmon. Did you know that Atlantic salmon and Pacific salmon are two very different animals, that Pacific salmon go to the ocean and return once in their lives but Atlantic salmon make the trip multiple times?

Fri, 7/11: Glacier Bay (Bartlett Cove and Johns Hopkins Glacier)

It's never clear what the ship does overnight while we sleep. Sometimes we drop anchor and sometimes we cruise through the night. All I know is that every morning I open our cabin door to find us somewhere breathtakingly pretty. This morning we started the day cruising into the entrance to Glacier Bay, making a stop at the park lodge at Bartlett Cove. This was our one docking point in the whole trip. We all went down the gangway (no shuttles in the small boats required) for a short shore break and some shore-based activities. I opted for the "fast hike", which turned out to be about an hour and a half in terrain that look similar to the Cascade Falls trail, but without the elevation change - a reasonably flat, if drizzly, outing. We also had a chance to briefly visit the lodge and to get a look at the whale skeleton displayed outside. One of the adventure guides on our ship had been part of the team that had worked to restore and mount the skeleton, so it was interesting to hear her description of the restoration process (lots of West Marine epoxy!) and then see the finished product. Boy, whales are big!! Unfortunately with the foggy, drizzly weather we didn't get any big views.

Sea Otters

At 11:30 it was back onto the boat. Our main reason for stopping at Bartlett Cove was to pick up an NPS park ranger. Glacier Bay is a protected area and so the ranger's job was both to provide interpretation of the sights for us and part to preserve the environment by making sure the boat followed the park rules. Ranger Nicole was very enthusiastic about the park, if a little conflicted about the Park Service. At lunch she gave us a quick and very enthusiastic overview of the park and its wildlife, working herself up almost to tears in her description of the park's majesty. Over the course of the day she continued this level of enthusiasm, pointing out a lot more things and telling us a little about the pleasures of her solitary life in Glacier Bay (going shopping in the "big city" of Gustavus - population 400 - is a big deal). As I write this at 10:30 at night Ranger Nicole is still working the lounge, describing what we're seeing as we sail back out through the ice field back towards the entrance of the bay. On the other hand, one on one she will grumble a bit. Apparently she works two half-year positions, summer in Alaska and winter in the Everglades, and so is considered a part-time employee, ineligible for benefits, even though she works year-round for the Park Service. She'll also tell you that the Park Service uniform hasn't exactly kept pace with developments in modern fabrics: wool pants and decidedly under-performing rain wear. She also told us that it was a pleasure to come aboard a small ship that could actually dock at Bartlett Cover. For the large cruise ships she actually goes out to the ship on a small boat and then has to climb a rope ladder up the side of the ship to the deck. Having boarded a large ship this way myself (back in my days of developing navigation systems) I can see why, as Nicole told us, a question about willingness to do so is part of the interview process for her position.

Ranger Nicole Introduces us to Glacier Bay

Another cool thing I did today was to work with guide-dude Ken to identify one of the whales we had seen. Each humpback's tail is unique in its shape and pattern of white spots. Ken had on his computer an index of humpback whales with pictures of the tails of each. I had transferred a couple of my clear photos to my iPad and we put the two side by side to make comparisons. We're pretty sure that one we say was Sorex, which had first been spotted and catalogued in the same area of Frederick sound back in 1995.

We paused as we passed South Marble Island, which was chock-a-block with life. Stellar sea lions, sea otters and birds including murres, guillemots, kittiwakes, puffins, cormorants. Did I mention the puffins? Puffins! Ranger Nicole referred to murres as the "penguin of the north" since they are have black and white coloration and similar swimming deep diving habits, but to my thinking it's the puffins. Further up, at Gloomy Knob, we saw a mother and baby mountain goat on the side of the mountain.

A Puffin in Flight

As we motored further up the bay into Johns Hopkins Cove we encountered more and more ice, calved off the glacier. This was the first time this season that the ship was going up this far since the area had been closed off until July for seal pupping season. The seals come up here to haul out and have their babies on the ice, protected by the shallow water and noise from predators. Our destination was the Johns Hopkins Glacier, which is one of the few glaciers moving forward at a healthy pace: 12 feet per year. Most of the other glaciers are receding. The easy conclusion to come to is that this is the result of man-made global warming, but in fact glacial advance and retreat seem to be governed by complex processes. All of Glacier Bay was very recently covered by a glacier. Not thousands or millions of years ago, but just two hundred years ago the glacier rapidly jumped forward over just a few decades, scattering the local natives, poking out all the way to the ocean, Just as quickly it receded, leaving behind the bay and surrounding terrain in its wake.

Johns Hopkins Glacier

The glacier itself was spectacular. This my fourth glacier: Mendenhall, Dawes, and then Lamplugh on the way up Glacier Bay, but this one was in my opinion the most spectacular. It was so large with such a beautiful blue color, plus the ice and seals around the bay in front of it. We were only permitted to stay up close to the glacier for a fairly short time. I kept saying that I had seen it and was going to go back into the lounge for a warm drink but I simply could not tear myself away from the view for as long as we were there. Really wonderful.

Since it hadn't been an active day I went up to the top deck in the late afternoon and made use of the ship's rowing machine. It really felt like I was accomplishing something, watching the scenery glide by as I rowed the boat :)

Rowing the Safari Endeavour

Sat, 7/12: Glacier Bat (Beartrack Cove)

We awoke to another day of "Alaska liquid sunshine" - in other words, foggy and rainy. Alas, any hopes of big Glacier Bay vistas were dashed, but it is still a beautiful place - at least what we can see of it.

Bushwhack Scenery

In the morning I signed up to go on another bushwhack hike. A lot of people dropped out because of the weather and so it wound up being just four of us plus Tess, who was once again our guide (there were about half a dozen guides on board but I somehow always wound up being in groups led by either Tess or Megan). The other three guest on the hike were folks I hadn't spent much time with: there was a group on board of people associated in one way or another with the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, and the "Sheddheads" (my term) socialized primarily within their group. They certainly were troopers about tromping around in the rain. The terrain for this hike was different than in our previous hikes. Because this area is more recently reclaimed from glacial coverage it is not as heavily forested. After being shuttled to shore we hiked up the beach over large fields of mussel shells, and then through a meadow - the first meadow I'd seen on my hikes - before finally reaching woods. The woods themselves were pretty much pure spruce with little understory and so provided easier tread. Unlike our previous bushwhack we weren't crashing through bushes or dodging rocks. There were also very well defined game trails to follow. Since I didn't have to watch my feet I got to look around a lot more, which is nice. We saw lots of signs of bear and moose, but alas not the animals themselves. In fact, we think we saw bear scat and scratched off bark on the way out that hadn't been there on the way in - very fresh bear signs! We made a few loops in and out of the forest. The first game trail led us right back to the beach where we had landed. Our second loop led us a little further in, but again we emerged at the beach. Finally, we hiked along the beach a ways. Rather than dive back in for another exploration we wound up calling for pickup a little sooner than originally planned. While we waited for the launch to arrive we sat on the beach and Tess told us a Tlingit folk story with an earnestness that only a young white girl from the suburbs who is totally Into native culture could manage. OK, perhaps I'm being hard on her - as I've written previously I found her to be a very nice person, knowledgeable about the area, and an excellent excursion guide. While by this point I had already heard much of what she had to say about the local flora, it was on this trip that she had us try nibbling on spruce tips, which provided a refreshing piney flavor.

As always, one doesn't miss a meal on Safari Endeavor and so we were back on the boat for lunch, after which it was time to head back out for afternoon activities. Well, at least it was for the few of us stalwarts who were determined to get one last activity in. Most people had the sense to come in out of the rain and just relax, nap, and get a head start on packing. The afternoon "long kayak" group dwindled down to just Ann the nurse practitioner from Chicago and me, escorted by Jackie and her husband Brent. Ann is another person we had hung out quite bit with. She was traveling by herself; her husband had given her the trip as a present but this type of trip was apparently not his cup of tea. Now, Jackie and Brent are adventurous people but it was clear that they aren't expert kayakers (nor are they spring chickens) and I went out knowing in the back of my mind that if we got into trouble (which fortunately we didn't) I was going to have to be the rescue grownup. We kayaked for about 2 hrs in the pouring rain. Again, while we followed the shoreline we didn't see bears, though we did see a harlequin duck (Jackie got excited and pulled out her camera to photograph it), a sea otter, plus a seal that followed us for a while.

Someone Else's Photo of Paddling Near the Ship

Since Jackie was really leaving it to Ann and me in terms of what we wanted to do I didn't feel compelled to go slowly and let her be in front. Particularly towards the end I cranked it up a little bit and Ann and I (in a double) got back quite a bit ahead of Jackie and Brent. The following day Brent asked me how I moved so fast without seeming to work very hard so I had another opportunity to give a stroke improvement lecture.

Dinner on our last night was the "Captain's Dinner", with a choice of filet mignon or scallops. I had my one meat meal of the week, which turned out to be a good choice - the filet mignon was really good. After dinner we were treated to a slide show compiled from picture the guides had taken over the course of the week, then it was off to our cabins to pack.

Fun at the Final Night's Dinner

Sun, 7/13: Return to Juneau

Juneau was on the horizon as I left our cabin for breakfast. After being out in the wilderness for a week the city, which had seemed a remote frontier outpost a week earlier, struck me as being very large, urban and over- developed. Perhaps Ranger Nicole has a point about the joys of spending your life away from development.

We ate breakfast and said our goodbyes to the crew, and to the passengers I've mentioned above as well as other people we had gotten to know including Russ and Tina, who live on a large spread down in Florida, and Jim and Cindy from the Finger Lakes.

 

Juneau Airport, Ursine Pal

The rest of the day was spent in transit. Wait in the hotel lounge. Transit to the airport. Fly to Seattle. Rent a car, drive to Portland - a surprisingly un-scenic drive, save for a brief glimpse of Mt. Rainier. Stopped for dinner at a local burger joint somewhere in southern Washington state - very good, fresh burgers. We cruised past seemingly endless freight trains making their way towards Oregon. We couldn't imagine what could be in all those tank cars, though after a few days in Portland I suspect that it might have been tattoo ink.

The Multnomah Hotel, Portland, OR

 

After three hours of driving we arrived at our hotel in downtown Portland. After a week in our tiny and spare cabin and in the confined spaces aboard ship, we were quite taken with the elegance and roominess of the place. It's a grand 1912 building originally known as the Multnomah Hotel, now operated as an Embassy Suites. Elvis and Charles Lindbergh were among its many famous past guests, as was Thomas E. Dewey of "Dewey Beats Truman" fame (as well as the namesake of the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Thruway in New York). On to a different sort of adventure ... 

Note that another guest's account of the trip can be found here. It is very nicely written but rather long, so I'll quote the best part here: Day 5 ... "I was a bit intimidated to paddle with Jesse, who is a really skillful kayaker, but I was counting on my years of rowing crew to hold me in good stead." 

I will post a link to pictures once I put them online.