Around the World with Marsha & Joel

We woke up this morning sailing into the mouth of Glacier Bay National Park. A surreal place made even more mysterious by the fog and suspended clouds and bits of glacier ice. You can only visit this magical place by water. It was cool, calm and so quiet.

The only break in the mirror-like blue water was the gentle wake as the ship made it’s way slowly along the 65 mile-long passage.

The visitor’s center is like no other national park’s. It’s the only one where the rangers have to come to you in a pilot boat and board via a ship’s ladder. They joined us at 7 am along with a very interesting and informative member of the Tlingit tribe who grew up in the area. They brought literature and narrated and lectured during the course of the trip. We were glad we already experienced the Mendenhall glacier at Juneau so we had some basic understanding of how this place was (and is still being) formed.

We dressed in layers and stayed on deck almost the entire day. How could you turn your eyes away from this. We were rewarded by the clouds lifting and exposing the blue of the sky, imitating the blue of the glaciers. Ahead was the ice field feeding the Grand Pacific glacier.

At the very top of the bay was the castle and spire-like Margerie Glacier. The ship stopped and drifted closer and in a circle for over an hour so everyone could be filled by this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. The glacier terminus is the height of a 25-story building. Visual spacial reference is null and void here.

Your imagination just runs wild. Do you see the rocket ship? (Guess I’m the only one). And it’s constantly changing as the glacier retreats and changes its face.

I’m the lucky one to capture one of several “calvings” we saw during our stay. Large chunks of ice fall from the face with a cracking and thundering louder than a lightning storm. It looks close enough to touch, but the ripples from the falling ice take an incredibly long time to reach our vantage point. We also hear booming from the interior of the glacier as ice collapses, forming crevasses.

From the surreal to the bizarre as stewards come around offering bowls of hot pea soup – apparently a Dutch (or Holland America) tradition while sailing Glacier Bar. It’s delicious, warming, and becomes an important part of the experience.

As we begin to sail back toward the entrance we make a hard right turn up the Johns Hopkins Inlet beyond Jaw Point and toward the immense Johns Hopkins Glacier. We don’t approach too close to avoid frightening a new crop of baby sea lions.

We also pass the Reid and Lamplugh Glaciers. Another ship is closer to them and it gives some perspective. The giant cruise ship up against the wall of ice looks like a tiny bathtub toy.

As the spectacular journey draws to a close we discover that Linda and Josh are celebrating their anniversary this very day. An anniversary never to be forgotten…by any of us. We toast the doubly special day with a beautiful bottle of champagne at dinner.

We sailed out into the Bay of Alaska for our last night aboard the Statendam. Early the next morning we would dock at Seward to begin the land (and some sea) part of our adventures.

Woke up as we docked in Skagway. Went to breakfast. Came back to our stateroom. Opened the door. Looked in. And almost jumped out of our skin when we saw this! The stateroom stewards are all schooled in towel sculpture. Every day we found a different “creature” in our room; an elephant, a bat, a sleeping dog, and more. We were so happy with them that we took a basic course the ship offered…and bought their book on “Towel Creations”. Next time you stay over in Bordentown, expect something different in your room.

Skagway is directly connected to the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1899. We took a ranger walk through the town (all part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Park), an interesting mix of preserved historic buildings and those leased to merchants (the “gold” is in tourism from 1899 ’til now).

The town was created and developed by Capt. William Moore and a little later by a lone woman, Harriet Pullen. The stories of these two pioneer/entrepreneurs is absolutely fascinating (look them up). They anticipated the gold rush and set up the services needed by the 100,000 (mostly) men who came through seeking their fortune. Unfortunately almost all the claims were staked by the time the rush began.

In two years the town swelled from a couple of people to over 8,000 residents, then quickly shrank back to 700. However, tourism quickly saved the economy since the railway had already set up lines to bring up goods for the businesses and the prospectors.

The railroad originally brought good only to Skagway. The prospectors then had to haul hundreds of pounds of supplies over either the Chilkoot Trail (33 miles) or the White Pass Trail (dead horse trail) to the Yukon. Carrying your own supplies via the Chilkoot might take three or four round-trips to get the year’s worth of living and prospecting supplies to where you needed them.

Here’s a section of the trail (seen from our train). Imagine dragging a several hundred pound sledge along this in deep snow and ice at below zero temperatures…three or four times. Things were pretty desperate for some in the 1890s.

We took a spectacular trip on the White Pass & Yukon railroad (first of four tunnels).

Tried to ignore the rather flimsy trestles being crossed.

And made it to White Pass, just at the Canadian border.

The views back were just amazing on this overcast day. We could even see back as far as the Skagway harbor at one point.

Back in town we checked out a few of the historic buildings and saw a terrific display of scrimshaw and other bone/horn carvings at a private museum. The museum had an interesting illustrated accounting of the history of the Iditerod dog sled race. The sporting event is based on the heroic efforts of local dog mushers in 1925 to quell a diphtheria epidemic that threatened Nome, especially the Alaska Native children. Their dog-sled relay was the only way to bring in the serum that would save the children. Fascinating.

This was the only day we really experienced the “cruise ship crush” as a huge Disney ship (probably 4,000 passengers as opposed to our 1,200) landed at nearly the same time in this tiny town.

A rotary snow plow used to keep the White Pass & Yukon line tracks clear.

Back to the ship for something completely different. Tomorrow we enter Glacier Bay, for what will be one of the most spectacular, inspiring days of our journey.

Docked in Juneau (Alaska’s state capitol) first thing in the morning. Passengers streamed out to meet their guides for a number of pre-booked tours. But the big attraction is the Mendenhall Glacier and we opted to visit it on our own (we had read many comments that the tours didn’t spend enough time at the glacier or the visitors center). We took a local shuttle bus and knew we made the right decision when we saw people complaining as they were hustled out of the visitors center to make their bus.

The day was overcast and cool, but that first spectacular view from the visitor’s center warmed us up quickly.   We took the Nugget Falls trail to both reach the falls and get the closest view possible of the glacier itself.Looking back from the trail toward the visitor’s center you get a great view of Mendenhall Lake, created by the glacier melt.An overlook just before reaching the falls.The Nugget Falls itself is a torrent because of this year’s exceptionally heavy rainfall. The falls comes from the enormous ice field feeding the glacier. A ranger, at a talk in the visitor center, told us that as a child (and she wasn’t that old) she could walk up and touch the glacier near the point where we are standing. The message about global warming was made clearly by her personal observation…and the extensive science-based displays at the center.

The rocks pushed and carved and finally deposited by the glacier were spectacular in themselves — even more interesting as a sculptural tableau by Marsha (can you find the contemporary embellishments?).

Nature’s art was also evident as you looked closely at the plants and trees, and even the rock-altering lichen left by the glacier’s retreat.

Water everywhere (part of the Tongass rain forest), in all it’s forms. In it’s gentleness, in its power, in its tenacity.

More salmon (Sockeye and Cohoe) in a glacial stream spawning comfortably with no bears in sight (good for them, bad for us).

We returned to the ship fulfilled, tired, and hungry (becoming a theme). Marsha and I stayed on board while Linda & Josh pushed back out into Juneau to get a quick evening (stays light until almost 10 pm) look at the state capital building, the city museum and the construction for a southeast Alaska native cultural center. We were all disappointed that the state museum is closed until 2016.

The Statendam pulled out of port for our overnight cruise toward Skagway.