Jaime B's Blog

So after a few days of resting from our rest, I'll tell you about our trip.

We flew Alaska Airlines to Seattle on June 6, where we picked up our bags and boarded our transfer to Pier 91. Our flight was about a half-hour late getting in, because we had a long take-off queue in San Francisco and never quite made up the flight time along the way. We were still on board the ship a couple of hours before sailing time.

When we got to our cabin, we found that our travel agent (a personal friend) had sent us a bottle of champagne and some chocolate-dipped strawberries. That was a good way to start our cruise!

The trip itself was lots of fun, and with the exception of about 24 hours of rough seas, we had a very smooth sailing. More about that later.

We left Seattle at 4:00 p.m., and woke up to the unexciting prospect of a dismal trip. Our first day was at sea, under gray skies. Nevertheless, on the second day, as we were sailing up Icy Strait to Glacier Bay, the sun came out, and we were able to enjoy the breath-taking views from the upper deck, as well as from our stateroom balcony, even in shirt-sleeves! That second night was the first formal night; we had brought our dinner jackets and other paraphernalia and got all duded up for dinner and drinks. Not many guys seem to wear tuxes any more, but then we heard that the Alaska cruise crowd tends to be more informal than people headed to other cruise destinations.

On the third day, we made port in Juneau at about 6:30 a.m. The fog lifted at about 8:30, and we had a beautiful sunny hike on Mount Roberts, riding up on a cable tramway just a few steps from our ship's gangway. The car dropped us off at about 1900 feet up, and the views were beautiful. We walked (or rather, climbed) through some wooded areas and through some meadows full of wildflowers. [See my profile page for the album "Alaska Cruise, 2010" on the left side-bar, about three sections down; just click on the first picture to see all 56 of them!]

After spending some time hiking, we returned to sea level, and looked at some of the tourist shops near the cruise ship pier, then we had lunch on shore, and continued a self-guided walking tour of downtown Juneau. We saw some historic buildings, did a little shopping for native art and returned to the ship. We weighed anchor at about 9:00 p.m. and headed for Sitka.

As the fourth day dawned, again with gray skies (this time to hang around most of the day), we were anchored a couple of miles off shore. There is no pier big enough to accommodate cruise ships there, and ours was a fairly large one, accommodating about 1900 guests and some 800 crew members. Going ashore meant getting into tender boats with up to 120 other folks for a fifteen-minute ride to a small dock near downtown Sitka. The first thing we did when we got ashore was to walk about a mile to the Alaska Raptor Center, a place where sick and injured raptor birds are rehabilitated and cared for. Many are eventually released back to the wild, but some are so badly injured that they would not survive in their original habitat, and those remain at the Center for life. We went through a darkened passage where we could see some of the birds (but they couldn't see us), saw a video, and met a female bald eagle resident of the Center, who was fed bits of salmon the whole time she was perched on her care-giver's glove. Then we went outside to see some other birds that were weathering to re-acclimatize to natural conditions. There were bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, and an owl. Then we walked a nature trail on the Center grounds, and walked back to downtown.

We visited the Russian Bishop's House with its small museum, maintained by the National Park Service, and had lunch once again on shore, because it would have taken too much time and bother to return to the ship and to town again by tender boat. A little more shopping, acquiring a very fine small carving of a raven (Russ's totem animal). We went on to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, St. Michael's, and to the Castle Hill, now bare, where the Russian fort had once stood. We saw the old blockhouse which had also once defended the center of town from atop a low hill. Afterwards, we walked through the Katsian neighborhood, the old commercial and shipping area, now largely a community with a strong Native American presence. More shopping. We made a last-minute run back across town to visit the Sitka Totem Park, with its many impressive poles. Some are in the album on my Profile page. Then we went back to the ship for an afternoon sailing. All told, we must have done about seven miles of walking that day, and our legs kept telling us about it for a couple of days more! That night was the second formal night, so we dusted off our monkey suits, and were resplendent once more.

Friday, we found ourselves in port at Ketchikan, Alaska's southernmost major town, very near to the Canadian border. There we revisited the Saxman Native Village, where we had been on our first Alaska trip, some eight years ago. We arrived there by bus, learned some simple phrases in Tlingit (on which we were tested a few time during our visit), and saw a video about the place and its inhabitants. They migrated there from the Cape Fox area, some twenty miles away by sea. Their history was the usual one of native peoples during that time: Children sent to boarding schools, the use of their language forbidden, evangelization and conversion to Christianity, complete with the usual demonization of their traditional customs and rituals. Later, we went to their clan house (the Beaver clan here) and witnessed part of their heritage in song and dance, with their native regalia of headgear, tunics, and Chilkat blankets studded with pearly buttons in intricate patterns depicting animals of totemic significance. We went from there to the totem carving shed, and once again (as we had eight years before) met Nathan Jackson, the master carver, who will happily carve you a pole for your home or garden for only $3500 per linear foot; it had been $2000 a foot eight years ago, and even then out of our price range (not that we have room for a totem pole in our cramped San Francisco flat anyway!). We saw the tools, and he demonstrated or spoke about some of the methods of carving, finishing, and painting the poles. We went out into the open area in front of the village, where there are about a dozen poles standing, and our guide told us something about their history and significance. After a brief visit to their gift shop, we returned to our bus and downtown Ketchikan.

There we visited the Creek Street area, group of older buildings along the banks of Ketchikan Creek and at a former time a red-light district, now converted to a mini-mall. Eheu, fugaces! More shopping, and back to the ship just in time, while enjoying a very cold and windy rain shower waiting in line to re-board as every passenger's card was scanned and each one passed through the inevitable metal detectors.

The weather leaving Ketchikan turned rough, and the rest of the day and all the following night into the next morning, we had high winds (no one allowed on deck) and "very rough" seas (read eighteen-to-twenty foot swells). We managed to have dinner in the ship's specialty restaurant (another gift from our travel agent). The rough seas didn't bother us, thanks to the ship's size and excellent gyroscopes. The food and wine was superb, as good as some of San Francisco's best French restaurants. The rough weather kept up all night. I slept pretty well, but had to hang on tight to keep from falling while making a bathroom visit in the wee hours; Russ, a more sensitive soul than I, had a bad night. For some reason, we were out to sea, rather than in the Georgia Strait, where we might have been more sheltered from the weather with Vancouver Island between us and the open sea.

The weather got better as we entered the Juan de Fuca Strait between Vancouver Island's south shore and the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. By the time we made port in Victoria, BC, the sun was shining, but we arrived a couple of hours late because of the rough going at sea, losing a couple of hours' time ashore. We walked from the pier to downtown and revisited some places we had been on a previous visit. Some things were closed, and not much time for shopping here in any case, so we didn't need to worry about currency exchange rates. We walked back to ship just after sunset (nearly 10:15 p.m.) enjoying the spectacular sight of Venus shining brightly enough to be seen even in the last rays of light to our west.

Sunday morning, we woke up in Seattle, disembarked, got our bags and flew home from Seatac. San Francisco greeted us with a sunny afternoon with unusually warm temperatures; apparently, we had missed eighty-degree weather during the last couple of days of our trip.

Well, that's about it. Don't forget to check out the pics in my album. It's good to be home again, and great to be back with the crowd at Basenotes!