In Russian Alaska

Arrival of these two cruise ships adds more than a third to Sitka's population.

Sitka's radio station began the morning news with the most important news first – just like a real radio station should. “Two cruise ships will arrive in Sitka this morning, Zaandam and Radiance of the Seas. They will bring 3,645 passengers ashore.” People with money were about to arrive. Get your sweatshirts and caps and Alaskan knives and Russian Orthodox gee-gaws out on the sidewalk. The tourists are coming. The tourists are coming.

We drove downtown on a beautiful Chelsea morning. Clouds wreathed the extinct volcano that is the backdrop to the town. But the sparkling sun showered the harbor with diamonds on the water. Delicious.

And in came the tourists. Sitka is too small to permit a cruise ship to dock. So the enormous ships parked out in Sitka Sound and ferried their passengers ashore. The difference between Tuesday and Monday in the little town was the difference between night and day. Sitka has 8,969 souls and was humming with activity. On Monday, we basically owned the town. We could park and walk at will.

We were able to visit St. Michael's Cathedral because the tourists were in. What opulence! Pretty much every wall was tarted up with silver and gold iconography. This is the former Russian capital of Russian America. The cathedral was consecrated in 1748. It was designed by Bishop Ivan Veniaminov who came here in 1834. This fellow truly was a renaissance man. Not only did he create a Russian-Aleut dictionary while working as a priest in the Aleutian Islands, he started another dictionary for the Tlingit aboriginals when he arrived here. He was a carpenter (constructed his own throne, plus lots of furniture in the Bishop's House which we visited on Monday). He also was a self-taught mathematician. Ninety percent of the congregation in the cathedral today is Tlingit.

The bishop was canonized as Saint Innocent in 1977.

On Monday, we'd visited the Bishop's house, a large but plain structure. It is the best preserved of four Russian structures in the western hemisphere. We then walked through the Sitka's National Historic Park where there is a collection of totem poles. Each tells a story about a Tlingit clan which was explained to us by using our cell phone. There is even a totem with a white man at the top. This totem story tells a story of thievery of shell fish and other goods. It was carved so the wrong could be righted. Was it? Doubtful.

Many of the stories of the poles dealt with the raven, which is considered the trickster who plays with men's lives. There are carving of whales, orcas, bears, frogs, as well as the topmost part which often shows a man in what looks like a top hat. They are actually the watchmen of the clans. The top hat get taller and taller as the watchman gains in stature.

We boarded Columbia for the next leg of our voyage south. Because this was an overnight leg, we got a berth so we could sleep in comfort. Some of our fellow passengers were much more rugged. They set up their tents on the rear deck, holding them down with duct tape.

We awoke in the middle of the night when we docked in Petersburg. Then we were off, through Wrangell Straits, arriving at 7:45 a.m. On time.

Jo was the first vehicle off, aboard the Honda Fit. I was not to lucky. I was the largest rig aboard and the crew had me back up about 50 yards with one inch to spare on each side of the rig. Just a little stressful!

We parked in a Tlingit-run campground to the south of the little town. Wrangell is too small to receive and handle cruise ships and, as a result, calls itself “the true Alaska.” Well, maybe. There were little kids on the waterfront, selling garnets they are allowed to chisel from the rock face across from the town.

The town has about 1,800 people– down from 2,550 in five years. “The young people leave here and never return,” one local woman told us when we visited the petroglyph beach. This is a place where 8,000-year-old petroglyphs (carvings in stone) are lying on the beach between high and low tide marks. They are thought to have been created by the people who came to Alaska before the Tlingit Indians.

Just north of the petroglyph beach is Dead Man's Island. Back in the 1800s, Chinese workers at the local salmon canning factory were taken there when they died. Their bodies were pickled in brine and placed in wooden casks before being shipped back for burial at home in China. All of this is described in great detail by James Michener in his must-read novel, “Alaska.”

In the evening, we drove and hiked to Nemo Point, south of town. We had the place to ourselves and the perfection of the peaceful scene left us breathless. We sat 2,000 feet above Zimovia Straits and watched the fishing boats shuttle back and forth in the sparkling waters below. There was not a sound to be heard at this height – not even a bird. Jo maintained a soft chatter – mostly to alert bears of our presence - but none appeared.

We managed to get into Chief Shake's House on the waterfront on Thursday morning. This is a Tlingit tribal house. The carvings inside were extraordinarily good (see photo album). Happily, Chief John, a Tlingit who also is of the Wolf clan, spoke with us about the traditions. He also showed us a traditional Tlingit canoe he himself had carved 15 years ago. Beautiful workmanship and lines to this little vessel.

Death in the Afternoon

This female sockeye salmon finds the perfect spot in her natale stream to place her eggs.

The end is near for the hundreds, no, thousands of sockeye salmon in the creek that runs into Gastinaeu Sound, Juneau.
There is something exquisitely sad in the watching of this death and life drama play out. The salmon congregate in the stream, flicking their tails as they burrow to create a safe place to drop their millions of eggs. They are spent. They are surely at the end of their cycle for the dorsal fins are ragged, there are cuts and breaks on their mouths. But there is this sense of divine destiny in the air. They have this final mission: return to the stream of your birth – your natal stream – and lay the eggs that will allow the cycle to continue.
They left this precise stream two to five years ago. They found the great Pacific and wandered through the ocean. This came after they had been born in the stream and absorbed their yolk sacs. After emerging from the gravel they fed on tiny aquatic insects. Chinook, coho, and sockeye salmon spend one to three years in fresh water before migrating to the ocean. Pink and chum salmon migrate directly to the ocean after emerging from the gravel. The young salmon are called “smolts”.
Now the sockeye had made their return. Think about the shock to their system as they make the transition from life in the salt water to life in the clear, fresh stream that roars down from the mountains that make the dramatic backdrop to Juneau. They have long since stopped eating. Now they have one task and one task only: spawn.
The eagles and the gulls stand on the banks of the stream and wait and wait and wait. They surely know from where their next meal is coming.
When the salmon has spawned and the eggs have rested in the comparative safety of the stream bed, the male sockeye moves in and fertilizes. Then they die. It is that sad and that simple. They have completed the life cycle. They gasp on the bed of the stream, they lie on the bottom, letting the fresh water pour over them. And they die. Hundreds of thousands of them just die.
It is moving and sobering to watch this scene play out. There is no joy here. But there is a sense of “mission accomplished.”

The night before we left Haines aboard the Matinuska, the oldest ship in the Alaskan ferry system, we were alerted to something on the beach in front of our RV by a tap on our door. A Grizzly Bear was wandering on the beach. He was young, looked to be about 500 pounds in weight and walked and ran at a frightening speed. He'd stand on his hind legs, rising to an intimidating height of six or seven feet. Then he'd run again. Even though the sun was set, I grabbed my camera and tried to photograph this bear. The result is interesting, to me. Because of the long exposure I was lucky enough the create an impression of the bear.
The following morning, we drove to the ferry and there he was again, crossing the road in front of us. He stopped, gave us a look, then trundled on down the bank at the side of the road. This is one of the things that makes this the trip of our lifetimes.

It's about FREEDOM

Dave Stancliff and his teenage musicians entertain us with stories about Alaska at the Tok RV Resort.

Dave Stancliff was our entertainer of the evening. He is a guitar-playing-songwriter and story-teller about all things Alaskan. We were in Tok RV Park and his concert was part of the services offered. Tok is 90 miles from the Canadian Border and is a key crossroads since this is where you have to decide whether to head for Anchorage or up to Fairbanks. He was accompanied by three high schoolers - Jenny on the fiddle, and brother-sister team Huff and Holly.
Jenny told us the schools never close because of weather in Tok. But, when the temperature drops below minus 30F, the kids are allowed to skip school without it counting against them. But she said she'd gone to school earlier this year when the temperature was minus 73F. This may explain why she was school valedictorian at graduation this year.
They entertained well enough but Dave's stories were what enthralled. He explained why he has spent the better part of his 60 years in Tok. “No taxes, no law enforcement, no laws so you can't break any. We're free.”
Jo fretted about this after the concert. She couldn't figure out how anyone could live without paying taxes. But it was clear there were no services in Tok. But she persisted. “Who is paying the teachers, building the schools and fixing the roads?” So we decided to stop by the office on our way out on Tuesday morning. The woman behind the counter was quite happy to answer Jo's questions. “We decided not to vote ourselves into a borough,” she said. “So we have no town officials, no building inspector, no police, nobody who wants to 'help' us.”
In answer to the next question about schools, she said the state pays. “But who pays the state?” I asked. She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “The oil pays, of course,” she said. Same goes for the repair of the highways. Because Tok is unincorporated, the state has to maintain the roads. What about the state police? Same answer. State pays.
So if you, by now, are getting aboard your SUV and heading north to live free, I'd recommend against that. While the country is spectacular and the wildlife is unmatched, we're not over-enthused about the run of the mill Alaskans we have met. Obviously there are exceptions, but we have found them to be self-centered and very much looking to pick a fight with anyone who believes the federal government can actually do anything worthwhile. The Alaskans we've met – many of them – remind me of branch office workers I've worked with over the years. When you're cut off from the mother ship an inevitable sense of second-class citizenship seems to built and you are quick to look for slights and the sense that the main office doesn't really care much what happens to you. Everything bad happens in the lower 48 states, from many of their points of view. Finally, they drive with such foolishness, ignoring double yellow lines on the two-lane roads, that it is a miracle there are not more deaths from rollovers. And there's hardly a road sign that hasn't been shot out with bullets.
But life is pretty free. It really does live up to its license plate logo: “The Last Frontier.”

On our way to the border on Tuesday, I was fiddling with our computer navigation program when Jo, who was driving, slammed on the brakes and said, Oh my God! Oh my God. Oh my God.” By the time I looked up, a female moose and her calf were ambling onto the highway 15 yards ahead of us. Jo swerved and brought the rig to a halt. I grabbed my camera. But mom and her calf decided they had enough of this and quickly scooted back down the hill and into the trees.

We decided to revisit Kluane Lake, one of our favorite spots in the Yukon Territory. Amazingly, our first campsite was vacant and we moved in. A Swiss couple and their grown son arrived by van and set up their tent beside us. There are warnings about doing this between mid-July and September because this is bear country and the soapberries are out right now - a favorite of the grizzlies. They had flown into Yukon (Whitehorse, actually) from Zurich and rented the van.

The campground view was just as - if not more - spectacular. much of the snow is off the high peaks. But the wreathing clouds on the mountains made the place mysterious and cozy.

We arrived at Haines on Thursday afternoon. Haines is our departure point on the ferry system. Our car and rig are coated in dirt from the gravel road we traveled for 100 miles from the U.S. Border into Canada. I call this the 100-miles-of-hell highway. It is bone-jarring and hard on the vehicle. The only solution is to drive at 25 miles an hour. And that doesn't keep the dirt down. But it doesn't ruin the rig.
We parked on the waterfront in Haines and licked our wounds. The car didn't start when we unhooked it from the rig: our first real casualty. We jump-started it and then ran it for a few hours to charge the battery.
We head out aboard the ferry on Saturday morning and will make stops at Juneau, Sitka, Wrangell, Ketchikan and leave the ferry when we reach Prince Rupert, British Columbia, on Aug. 1.

Free Fish

The fish wheel spins in the river and scoops up salmon that are trying to head upstream. The buckets dump the fish (lower, center) into a box alongside the wheel.

The fish wheel is a perpetual motion machine. The Copper River propels it. We received permission from Angus DeWitt, the grumpy Athabaskan native on whose property the wheel is located, to drive through and look at the wheel. As we stood on the bank on a drizzly evening, the river roared through on its way to Valdez. The salmon, heading upriver to spawn and die, have to run this gauntlet. There's an immature – but enormous – eagle perched on a fallen tree halfway across the river. He's waiting to see what he can collect.
The roaring river hits the baskets in the wheel and propels them, scooping up anything that is trying to pass upriver.
I made my way down the slippery bank and looked into the box at the side of the wheel. There were six salmon lying in there. I retreated to the bank and waited two minutes. A salmon appeared in the rotating wheel. It ferociously tried to find its way out of the scoop. He fell, twisting on the way down, and fell onto the wheel support system. It took him a second to wriggle off the wood and back into the river. Whooo! Close call. Two minutes later, the same thing happened. Two minutes after that, however, a salmon ended up in the scoop and didn't move fast enough. He ended up being caught in the box. Another few minutes passed and yet another salmon was picked up but escape death by performing a wonderful leap that took him to freedom.
The wheel is owns by someone other than Angus (which probably accounts for his grumpiness). You are welcome to pick out a fish (you are permitted 250 salmon per year). But you must report to a Ranger station to show a fin, along with the permission you have received from the wheel owner to collect fish. The Ranger will contact the owner to verify you have his permission.
We came here to Slana, in the middle of the wilderness on the road between Glenallen and Tok, on a visit to Brian and Jean Johnson's little cabin. Seven years ago, Brian had bought the shell of a cabin and five acres of land from a homesteader. The cabin housed the local preacher and was one room. He set about living in the plywood box while he strengthened the structure. He added insulation and then added log facing to the cabin. He built an attic bedroom and installed a couple of support beams to carry the load.
Brian said when he showed Jean the original cabin/hut she stood there and just laughed. But they have carved a beautiful little home in the wilderness. Life took a step toward modernity two years ago when the electric grid came through. Till that time, they had been living with a loud and heavy generator. “It was tough to get that started in the morning when the temperature was 30 degrees below zero,” Brian said. They would drag the generator into the cabin and warm it in front of the wood stove. Then they could get it to start. They found if they bought a smaller generator, they could start that after storing it inside the cabin. The heat from the exhaust would then be pointed at the larger generator and that would eventually unfreeze it. So the arrival of the electricity was an enormous boost for them.
The couple said moose wander into their front garden regularly. The female moose have a nasty tendency to snap off the birch trees. They do not bother to munch on the lettuce and potatoes the couple grown.
Brian explained how he and his wife benefit each year from the Alaskan Pipeline fund. He said they each receive around $1,250 per year. This changes, depending on the flow of oil and has been as high as $2,500 per person. You must own property in Alaska and stay in the state for a minimum of six months and a day to reap this benefit.
We parked on a gravel pull-off space at the front of the house and were sitting in the living room when Steve, a neighbor, stopped by. He offered the couple some salmon that left over after he'd married off one of his daughters the previous day. We received a whole, cooked salmon which we chopped up and stored in our freezer. Steve is a trapper and artist. He told me he runs two trap lines, usually between late October and April. “I'll run one trap line one day, the other the next day,” he said. He traps martens, fox, wolf, mink. He says he find the meat of these animals is not that tasty, although he is partial to beaver. “Tastes like high quality beef,” he said. His wife makes hats from the pelts and they make jewelry from the teeth.
The previous day, Saturday, we'd driven to Wrangel-St. Elias National Park. This is a huge wilderness – 12 million acres and the park abuts the Kluane National Park in Canada. The place is pristine with huge mountain ranges and endless glaciers. But it is not very accessible – only two roads lead into the park. One of them is prone to being closed by washouts. This happened to be the case when we headed down the Nabesna Road. It had washed out and was closed.
We hiked through the boreal forest with a park ranger and learned much about this largest organism in the world. It extends across all of Canada,, from Newfoundland-Labrador, crosses into Russia and China and ends in Scandinavia. Many of the trees are white and black spruce. In addition, quaking aspen is a major player in the forest. We learned about the “drunken forest” caused by the tilting of shallow-rooted evergreens because of the permafrost. We came to appreciate the fragility of the permafrost. If you melt it, it can never be restored to the original state. Parking lots, and highways do a great job of destroying the permafrost – hence the roller-coaster ride in mainland Alaska where the permafrost heaves and sags because of the highway heat.

Monday, July 19, 2010
We drove north to Tok, a small crossroads town 90 miles from the Canadian border. We checked at the visitor center and discovered the road farther north, to Chicken, was opened this morning. But we've decided not to push our luck by driving this ragged road after the washouts we'd read about earlier in the week. We'll head for the Canadian border and retrace our route to our favorite campground of the entire trip at Kluane Lake. Then we'll head down to Haines, Alaska.

Land of Giants

These are just a couple of the giants...from the Alaska State Fair.

We're in the Matanuska Valley, northeast of Anchorage. This is the vegetable garden for all of Alaska. But not just ordinary veggies, of course – whoppers. Here's a list of some of the records set for vegetables grown here:

35 lb. Broccoli
28 lb. Brussel Sprouts
127 lb. Cabbage
19 lb. Carrot
18 lb. Leaf Lettuce
83 lb. Rutabaga
569 lb. Winter Squash
168 lb. Watermelon
22.75 inches for the longest bean
16.75 feet for the tallest Sunflower

And it goes on and on. The reasons for this richness in the soil: glaciers. They macerated the rocks and created deep topsoil.

But the real story about this valley occurred in 1935 when President Roosevelt's administration colonized the valley by shipping 202 families from Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota here. They generally were farmers on the dole during the Depression. They were suffering through the worst drought in U.S. history. And they had nothing to lose when the government asked for volunteers to colonize this valley.

They came west by train, then north by ship. They initially were housed in tent villages built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. They were allowed to draw lots to receive their 40 acres of land. The deal included a house with between one and three bedrooms (depending on the number of children they brought with them), piped in water, a chemical toilet, and a repayment schedule that seems like a bargain to us: 30 years to pay back the government $3,000.

Amazingly, only 40 per cent of the families stayed on. Many buckled under the wilderness conditions, and the lack of medical support when their children began to die of measles and pneumonia. Eleanor Roosevelt eventually pushed hard for a hospital to be built for the colony. It's an interesting story of pursuing the American dream. There now are three of the original colonizers who continue to live today.

While I'm writing about records, you might as well indulge in some others about Alaska:
Alaska's coastline total 33,904 miles.
The U.S. Bought Alaska from Russia for 2 cents an acre... total cost: $7.2 million.
Alaska contains the northernmost (Point Barrow), westernmost (Amatignak Island) and easternmost (Semisopochnol Island, across the International Dateline) points in the U.S.
And Alaska's capital, Juneau, is the only capital in the U.S. With no road access; a boat or plane is the only way to get there.

A Map at Last

In response to requests from our travelers, here's a map that shows our route through Alaska. We headed north to Fairbanks, came down to Anchorage, spent much time in the Kenai Peninsula. We sailed out of Seward and are now heading north and east. We arte in Eagle River, northeast of Anchorage.

If you click on the map, you'll enlarge it. If that doesn't work, Right click and choose "Open in a new tab". That should allow you to enlarge.

You might be interested to know we have had to have a major change in route on our way to Haines, Alaska. We'd planned to drive to Tok, then up to Chiucken and across the Top of the World Highway to Dawson City and down to Whitehorse, Yukon. But the road beyond Chicken was washed out in numerous areas after the river rose 20 feet on Saturday. There are a number of RVs trapped up there right now. So we will go to Tok, then head down to Haines Junction and on to Haines, where we are booked on the ferry system. It will cut 550 miles from our adventure.

Laughter in the soul

This Humpback calf came alongside to entertain and explore before we came up close and personal with the Northwestern Glacier.

We were floating in the very center of Northwestern Fjord, in the Gulf of Alaska. The captain of our vessel, Alaska Explorer, had taken the engines out of gear. Now he put one forward and one in reverse and the vessel spun on her own axis. As he did this, I held my camera and recorded the majesty of the scenic panorama as it passed in front of my lens. I was laughing inside...laughing in the soul, you might say, for this was a wondrous moment. He allowed me – and the 121 other passengers to experience that sublime moment that comes but once or twice in a lifetime. This was that time.

The mountains surrounded us. The sky was cerulean blue, not a cloud was to be seen. As the boat pivoted, one glacier after another appeared in my viewfinder. The peaks were coated in snow and ice. Behind the peaks lay the Harding Icefield, all 334,485 acres of it, concealing mountains that lie under several thousand feet of ice. The glaciers, even though they are retreating at an alarming rate, are sky blue. And they are always on the move.

The captain, when we had pulled up alongside Northwestern Glacier, stopped all engines and said simply, “This is the time when I let the glacier speak to you.” And she did. She groaned, she rumbled, she belched and she let go of her ice which came crashing down, calving into the fjord. The kittiwakes, floating on the bergy bits teetered and floated along unperturbed. The harbor seals, great sausages of sleek fur, lay basking on the floating ice, the sun warming them, they in all their glory on this perfect day.

Before we had reached the fjord, we'd come down the Gulf of Alaska and had come upon a mother humpback whale and her year-old calf, “a 2010 model” our captain called the calf. The calf was exceedingly curious. He leaped from the water and then made his way over to our stopped boat. Mama lay back, allowing him to explore. He gave us such a show, rolling, breaching, popping straight out of the water, newly-grown barnacles on his jaw.

We poked into one cove after another, each a treasure trove of wildlife and birds. /a mother otter lay on her back with her baby on her belly. Sea Lions basked high on a rock, the bull surrounded by his harem. He bellowed his displeasure as we stood off at about 50 yards while the sea lions basked in the building tide. Black oyster catchers, with enormous red beaks nested among the pebbles on one beach. Horned puffins, as well as tufted puffins fluttered like bats. They both are members of the Alcid family. This species come to land only to nest. Then they produce their young and head out for three years . They propel themselves through the water with their wings which are quite different from other species of birds. Their wing bones are solid to provide more strength for “underwater flying.” When they fly they always flap their wings. The moment they stop flapping, they begin to fall.

Jo and I befriended an Indian couple aboard our vessel, he from Mumbai, she from New York City. They had two delightful daughters and had flown to Anchorage and then rented a small motor home. He worked at Microsoft in Seattle and she was an independent entrepreneur who had started her own wholesale and retail business on the Internet. He was determined to catch salmon and/or halibut and to fly to Kodiak Island to see the Grizzly Bears catching their salmon.

The weather deteriorated as the afternoon wore on. We were back in the Gulf of Alaska and the waves rose along with the swells. The captain did a fine job of minimizing the impact by working toward the windward shore so we were less subject to the unpleasant effects of the sea. But it also was good to return to the harbor, tired but uplifted by the extraordinary experience with nature at its best.