HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION--2002

    The big event this summer was a cruise to Alaska.  It really wasn't particularly planned in advance.  It all started with a conference in Vancouver at the end of May.  Thea decided that Vancouver sounded like a nice destination, so she arranged to come along.  We decided that we might as well make this our summer trip, so we planned to spend another week or so traveling around British Columbia.  We were thinking of spending some time on Vancouver Island or driving out to the Banff area.  A few months beforehand I decided to go to AAA to get some maps of the area.  While standing in line I noticed some very nice posters of glaciers in Alaska and signs advertising special deals on cruises through the inside passage.  I knew that a lot of these cruises left from Vancouver, so I approached a travel agent to see just how good the deals were.  It seems that the cruise industry was suffering from low bookings after 9/11, and their pain turned out to be our gain.  Before I knew it I had signed up for a cruise through the inside passage to Alaska on the MS Rijndam, part of the Holland America Line.  When my father first visited the US, he came on another Holland America ship, so it was a bit of a family tradition.  That's our ship below:



    Now, you might be wondering how I could get a picture of our ship while I was on it.  Truth be told, that is not the Rijndam--it's another ship that we passed on the way.  But you get the idea.  

    Before they let you go anywhere on a large ship, you have to assemble at the lifeboat stations with your life preservers on:



    The ship left Vancouver in the late afternoon and steamed up through the Strait of Georgia, between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland:



We spent the next day at sea, then wended our way through the many islands of southern Alaska in the direction of Juneau.   The next morning we found ourselves in a type of fjord heading towards Juneau, which is roughly in the center of the picture below.  Juneau, the capital of Alaska, can be reached only by air or water.  There is no road connecting it to anywhere else (besides a few small towns in the immediate vicinity).  They sometimes debate moving the capital to a larger or more accessible place, but so far all such efforts have failed.




Alaska was owned by the Russians until the United States bought it.  One of the remaining Russian influences is the Russian Orthodox Church.  Apparently, many or most of the Russian Orthodox in Alaska are native peoples.  Someone I knew in college was a native Alaskan (I forget the tribe he belonged to)  was Russian Orthodox.  This is the small Orthodox church in Juneau.  There were no chairs or pews.  




Our ship spent a day in Juneau.  Since we had some time on our hands, we decided to make a trip to the Mendenhall Glacier, which is about 10 miles outside the city.  We got on a bus and made the short hike to the glacier and this large river that came crashing down into the glacial lake:



That night we spent some time shopping in Juneau and taking in the sights in the town.  To be honest, there isn't all that much to do there.  Before long we were back on ship.  At around 9 or 10 in the evening, the Ryndam weighed anchor and we steamed off to our next destination.
    We woke up the next day to find ourselves moored in Skagway.  This small town grew up around the Alaska gold rush right at the turn of the last century.  This time, it really is our ship in the background!  It almost looks like it plans to sail right up the main drag, doesn't it?




When you go on these cruises, they are always trying to sell you on excursions during the time you are in port.  We usually went off on our own, but in Skagway we decided to take such an excursion down the Chilkat River.  This river is near Haines.  So first we had to get on a ferry that took us from Skagway to Haines.  Then we were taken by van to the river, where we boarded inflatable rafts (the boats were getting smaller and smaller!).  We then floated down the river for a few miles.
    The attraction of the Chilkat River is that there are hunderds of bald eagles here in season.  They come to eat the large numbers of salmon that congregate here.  Unfortunately, there were no salmon when we were there, and so there were also not too many eagles.  But we did manage to get a good look at a few of them:




    The next destination on our cruise was Glacier Bay, which is a national park.  It is truly a spectacular place.  The photo below was taken from the ship as we were entering the bay:





    Below you can see a close-up of one of the glaciers.  The ship managed to get remarkably close.  There was a ranger on board to make sure we didn't get too close, however!




    The most interesting thing about these glaciers is that pieces are constantly falling off.  They call this "calving."  You can tell from the dust and the impact on the water that these pieces of ice are quite large:

 

    As we sailed out of Glacier Bay, I decided it was time for a run.  Who could ask for more spectacular scenery?  And I needed to work off all that food they were constantly feeding us.
    Incidentally, as far as I could tell I was the only person who ever jogged during that cruise.  Part of the reason is probably that the weather was not always this nice.  The other reason may be that the average age must have been around 75.





We didn't see a lot of wildlife from the ship.  After all, it is a pretty large boat.  But we did pass some humpback whales at some point, and the naturalist on board talked the captain into slowing down to have a closer look.  That's the tail (or "fluke") in case you haven't seen one before:



The next stop was Ketchikan, which is the southernmost city in Alaska.  It is also the wettest place in the United States.  I see absolutely no reason to doubt this claim.  The day we were there, it never stopped raining!  It's a charming town despite all that rain.





Not far outside of Ketchikan is Totem Bight state park.  The park has a very fine collection of totem poles.  It turns out that these poles had a variety of functions for the tribes that made them (Nootka, Tlingit, Tsimshian, etc.)  Some are funeral poles that memorialized an important person (the ashes were placed in a space in the pole).  Others show the genealogy of a clan.  Still others are shame poles that ridicule someone who has done something bad.





Here's a close-up:





Totem Bight also has a very interesting clan house that was used for ceremonial purposes.  The hole below is the front entrance.





Fortunately, the art of making totem poles and other native art in the Pacific Northwest has not died out. Also near Ketchikan is the Saxman native village, where craftsmen like the one below continue to practice an ancient tradition:



    Well, as you can probably tell, we had a great time.  But all good times must come to an end.  So the next day we were back on the ship and sailing through the inside passage back to Vancouver:



    The cruise was obviously the high point of the summer.  But the rest wasn't bad. either.  I spent most of the remainder of the summer working on an article and trying to finish up a book.  I could put up some pictures of me sitting behind my computer, but that would get boring pretty quickly.  So you'll just have to believe me.