| Submitted by: Evelyn C. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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' In other words, it was the old red light district, but although all the buildings (or their restorations) remain, they are now all tourist shops except for Dolly's House, which is maintained as a brothel museum (US$4, but we skipped it). When it was finally closed down by the government during World War II, they held a 'Close-Out Sale,' advertising 'a variety of sizes in two colors.' We skipped the museum, but did stop for a Squirt (grapefruit soda) along the street, which is actually a long wharf along the side of the creek.
We went into the Tongass Historical Museum (US$2 each) in the library building. It was a small museum (two rooms), but had a good set of displays on salmon fishing, lumbering, mining, etc. The most interesting piece to me was the Truman Pole, carved by Casper Mather. His description is as follows: 'This totem I carve to show how the world is now. At the bottom of the pole is the world. The long zigzag crack shows how it is divided into two parts. The Russian bear crouches on top of the world and growls. He think it belong to him. Big Chief Stalin is in top of the world. He is fierce, warlike chief. He want whole world to do as he say. The British Lion is above Stalin. he roars and show teeth. He always ready to fight enemies. Big Chief Winston Churchill is on top of British Lion. He lead people in big fight. He all time smoke big cigar. American Eagle above Churchill. Eagle very powerful and swift on wing. He come to help England win big war. Big American Chief, Harry Truman, look very stern. He hate war; wants peace. He says all peoples must be free. I hope some day there will be no cracks in the world.'
There was also a display on felt button blankets, which became very popular as ceremonial wear by the Tlingits (the local Indian tribe) after the 1850s when the Hudson Bay Company brought in blankets and buttons.
This is as good a time as any to note that R. D. 'Chuck' Jensen and E. L. 'Wally Christiansen started the world's first cable television station here in 1949, mostly because they couldn't get a broadcast license.
Ketchikan also boasts the 'only tunnel you can drive through, around, and over!'
We did a little bit of shopping, buying the obligatory T-shirts and some postcards. Then we returned to the ship just in time for lunch. Well, let's face it-any time on the ship is just in time for some meal.
The ship sailed at 2 PM and we went to a talk at 2:15 PM, 'The Intriguing World of Dolphins, Seals and Sea Otters,' which covered all the non-whale marine mammals. De Phillipo started with the manatee, supposedly the origin of the legends of mermaids, though looking at them, one has no idea why.
The walrus can grow up to ten feet long (the females are about half the size of the males). They keep warm with temperature regulation via blood. When they dive into cold water, the blood all moves inward to keep their internal organs warm. So when they come out, they are almost white, but they become pink as their blood flows outward again.
Otters are the cousins of weasels, and are unusual in that they use tools-they break open shells on rocks placed on their chests as they float on their backs.
Do you know the difference between sea lions and seals? Sea lions are autarids (or eared seals) and can also rotate their hind flippers under their bodies and stand up. What you see in the circus are sea lions. Seals have no external ear flaps and can't stand up. Also, sea lions propel themselves with their front flippers and steer with the hind flipper, while with seals it is the reverse-they propel themselves with their hind flipper and steer with the front ones. And seals also have a different shape (more 'sausage-like').
As far as the genuine seals go, there are harp seals, harbor seals (which he said we would see here), and Northern elephant seals (an ugly son of a gun).
De Phillipo said that some environmentalists had been trying to save baby harp seals by spray painting a stripe down their back with indelible paint. As the seals mature they shed their coat of white fur and the paint with it. However, they had to stop when a naturalist pointed out that this also made them much more visible to polar bears searching for food.
And of course there are dolphins. In fact, there are seventy-nine species of cetaceans throughout the world, with fourteen species of whales and five of dolphins in Alaska. He mentioned Amazon river dolphins, or botu, who supposedly come out of the water and seduce women. He claimed that some birth certificates in Brazil actually list 'Botu' as the father.
At 3:45 PM John Lawrence gave a lecture on 'The Trail of '98' which we watched on the television in our room. Mark will undoubtedly write a lot about this subject, so I will refer you to his log if you want more detail. In any case, I'm moving the information down to the Skagway section, since that's really where the Klondike Gold Rush came through.
Dinner was Shrimp, Scallops, Crawfish, and Mussels Appetizer, Spinach Salad, Grilled Salmon, Pistachio Gelato, and coffee. There was always an appetizer, a soup, a salad, a pasta dish, the main course, and a dessert, but I usually skipped a couple of these courses. While we were sitting there, we looked out the window and saw a couple of whales (in the distance, but still they count). These are the first whales we had seen on this trip (not counting the aquarium), but we hoped not the last. [They were.] David G and Sherry said they really enjoyed their kayaking (well, Sherry said so anyway).. Mom and Dad had taken a city tour.
After dinner we watched a re-run of the lecture on Skagway.
July 29 (58N, 134W, sunrise 4:43 ADT, sunset 21:23 ADT): We were awake at 6:01 when the power went out. It stayed out for five minutes, but since it was light outside and we had an outside cabin, we weren't really inconvenienced. Inside cabins, on the other hand, ....
We docked at Juneau fairly early. We had a 10:30 AM tour, so we went out about 8:45 AM to walk around a bit beforehand. We saw the statue of Patsy Ann, a dog who used to meet all the ships coming in. We went into the bookstore (Hearthside Books), which had a good selection of Alaskana (or whatever the term is), but not much for the people who lived there the whole year. The science fiction section was about twelve shelf feet with a minimal distribution of authors, with another nine feet of media tie-ins and other franchise books. I suppose their other branch, further away from the tourist streets, might have a better selection.
We decided not to take the Mt. Roberts tram for a panoramic view, since at US$16.90 it seemed a bit pricey.
At 10:15 AM we got on the bus and were driven out to the airport for the helicopter flight to the Mendenhall Glacier. On the way out we crossed over Salmon Creek, which was living up to its name and was full of leaping salmon. The weather conditions on the glacier were 41 degrees Fahrenheit with no wind. We were flying with Temsco Helicopters, which seems to be the major purveyor of helicopter trips to the glacier.
After arriving at the airport we were given glacier boots and a short safety video on both the helicopter flight and the glacier hike. (Things like 'avoid the rotor' and 'don't walk around on the glacier with your camera in front of your face'). The helicopters sat six plus the pilot, and there was semi-assigned seating. We wore headsets to keep out the noise and also to allow us to head what the pilot was saying through them. We flew up to the glacier, about a twenty-minute flight at about 150 miles per hour at an altitude of about five thousand feet. The flight was very smooth, with none of the bumpiness one gets in a small plane.
We landed on the glacier at something that looked like a base camp: a tent with an American flag in front of it. About four or five guides stay up there all day, so they use the tent between flights, though this day wasn't very cold and there was no wind. (That is, once the helicopters left-with the rotors going it was very windy.)
The area that we actually walked around was fairly limited, though we could see a long distance in all directions. The dangerous spots (deep crevasses and such) had yellow rope laid on the ice around them to warn us. The glacier was not slick the way one might expect, but uneven from the dark dirt absorbing heat and melting down in a sort of sponge pattern (though it certainly wasn't spongy). It was very quiet, and we could appreciate all the features with a minimum of disturbance. (You can never get thirty tourists completely quiet.) There was a waterfall down one of the mountains, and crevasses and moulons. Moulons are deep holes filled with water and are usually deep blue from the color of the ice underneath. They are caused by rocks which absorb heat and sink through the ice, often to a depth of a hundred feet or more.
(I wish I could convey the experience better. Let me just say that I would certainly recommend this trip, especially if you've never flown in a helicopter before.)
After twenty minutes on the glacier, we had a fifteen-minute flight back and a bus ride back to the ship. We had lunch at La Pizzeria on the ship. Mark had a pepperoni pizza; I had a California pizza (sundried tomatoes and avocado). It was okay, but I prefer the Horizon Court. For some reasons, beverages that are free in the Horizon Court (e.g., iced tea) are charged for here, even though the pizza is not. And they suggest tipping the waiters, although most people aren't carrying money around ship, because there's nowhere else it's needed.
After lunch we went out for more of the Juneau Walking Tour. After a quick stop in the Red Dog Saloon (full of sawdust and Alaskan artifacts), we started with the Alaska State Museum to be sure we had as much time as we wanted there, and a good thing it was too. We arrived there at 2:15 PM and didn't leave until 4 PM. As in Vancouver, we took a tour of the museum with a volunteer guide, a woman who came up from Los Angeles many years ago. (None of our guides seems actually to have been born here.)
She started with some geographical facts. Alaska has eighteen of the twenty highest mountains in North America. At its closest point, it is two miles from Russia. (During the Cold War, relatives living on the two islands-one in Alaska, one in Russia-couldn't even visit each other. When the Cold War ended, Alaska Airlines flew everybody from one island to the other for a giant family reunion.) Alaska would reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific if it were super-imposed on the 'South 48.' It has twenty per cent the area of the entire South 48. It is on top of a layer of permafrost, making well drilling difficult.
The Native Americans (now that we're back in the United States I guess this is the right term) fall into five main language groups: Tlingit, Athapascan, Eskimo, Aleuts, and Yupik. ('Eskimo' was the term the guide used, and I saw it throughout the museum, but I thought the accepted term was now 'Inuit.')
Note: The Alaskan Inuit do not build igloos, but Canadian Inuit do.
We saw the 'Lincoln Totem.' This may actually be one of several. When a chief decided to have a white man carved onto a totem pole, the only picture the carver had to work from was that of Abraham Lincoln.
A chart describes the Pacific Northwest Indian line drawings. They have primary formlines in black, secondary in red, and tertiary in blue-green, and knowing this makes it a bit easier to decipher the patterns.
The Native Americans used only female walrus hide for boats because the male hides are full of scars and holes from fighting.
The Alaskan territorial (later state) flag (gold stars formed a Big Dipper on a dark blue background) was designed in a 1927 competition by then thirteen-year-old Benny Benson.
We did a little shopping. I bought a pin at the Wm Spear Designs. Their pins are different-they have a whole line of medical pins, for example, that look like brains, lungs, kidneys, spines, etc. I got a typewriter/computer keyboard with the motto 'Write hard, die free' on it. |
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