Splendorous Alaska

Alaska
Admittedly I am not going to do Alaska justice. It’s time to finish the blog and after all, Alaska is part of the good old USA (we were quite happy to be back), albeit one of the most beautiful parts. Talk about natural splendor! So many gorgeous snow-capped peaks, huge glaciers, cute frontier-become-tourist towns, and just an overwhelming sense of the size of that part of the natural world. We stopped at Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, Seward, Sitka, Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan. Dutch Harbor and Kodiak and are on the Aleutian Islands and the people there are pretty tough, surviving on fishing and other basics in a frigid environment. We actually enjoyed walking around both of them (and Unalaska, next to Dutch Harbor). We saw some native people, but not many survived the displacement that occurred during World War II, supposedly to protect them. Yes, Dutch Harbor was badly bombed by the Japanese (we visited a war museum), but they never got much further.

The highlights of Alaska for us included the special excursion to the glaciers near Seward, the tram ride in Juneau and the train ride in Skagway. On the special excursion we got within a quarter of a mile of the glacier and saw a chunk calve off (fall into the sea). We also saw killer whales, dolphins, and sea lions. We have seen a lot of these at Seaworld in Florida, but seeing them in their natural environment is a different experience. Along the way we also saw a big brown bear climbing a cliff, and a mountain goat climbing another steep slope. From the tram in Juneau we had a panoramic view of the waterway and the mountains around. Ronnie actually got up her courage to go on the tram and was glad she did. Juneau is nestled against the mountainside and not much room to expand. It looks less like a capital (we did walk by the capital building) and more like a tourist town.

Indeed Sitka, Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan have become tourist meccas, catering to the thousands from the cruise ships that come from late spring to fall. In most places there were several other cruise ships in town the same time we were, and in Skagway they expect up to 19,000 people a day. Lots of jewelry stores, many run by the cruise ships themselves as we discovered. Taking the White Pass and Yukon Railway in Skagway was worth every penny, riding up to the 2,865 snow covered summit in Canada on the historic narrow gauge railroad built in less than two years at the end of the gold rush of 1898. We had a crisp sunny day with many photo ops and even saw a mother bear with her cub just a few feet from the train. In some places you didn’t want to look down as the train passed extremely close to the edge of many a steep slope.