It also occurred to me that many younger tourists may either take cruise ships or kayaks.
The scenery around the Malispina was magnificent, the same that one would see from a luxury cruise ship but at a fraction of the cost. Occasionally, along the shore one could discern small wood cabins presumably used by hunters or fishermen, but perhaps residences of Indians -- or settlers who had given up jobs in the big city. One's mind wanders far and wide amidst the kind of beauty that unfolds along the Inside Passage. We passed Petersburg in the night and stopped at Wrangell in the late morning for several hours. Apparently, Wrangell is the only town in Alaska to have been under Russian, British, and American control. It was originally a fur trading center but later hosted a sawmill and salmon cannery. We arrived at (very) low tide; all the small vessels in the harbor were lying on the shoals, on their sides or bottoms. There was, as in most towns in Alaska, the obligatory totem pole farm. It was no less interesting walking through the town center, with its rustic structures and occasionally artsy window decorations. We found a tourist map and followed the suggested route, which took us to Chief Shakes Island and its Tribal House of the Bear, an Indian community center with totem poles. There was also supposed to be a beach with hundreds of petroglyphs, but it was on the other side of the ferry pier. Relying on the map, which we assumed was drawn to scale, we decided to walk the long way round, which should have been about two miles. Unfortunately, the map substantially understated the distances along the road and magnified the size of the town. This led us to believe that we could encircle the island in about as much time as it took to wander through the village. Not so. An hour later along the road we began to have visions of waving goodbye to the ferry, but as it turned out we were in no danger. During our trek, we came across a house with an hf quad antenna, but nobody appeared to be home. There was a rather large dog reposing near the front door, with eyes fixed menacingly on me as I approached the gate. It was not wagging its tail. Exercising no excess of bravado, I left my QSL card on the windshield of the car in the driveway and we continued our walk. We walked past the airport and found the petroglyph beach, an intriguing sight. There were large rocks by the thousand scattered across the beach on which Indians centuries before had made their marks in the form of intricate designs, for religious or social reasons. We took some photos and finished our walk, with enough time before castoff to make an inquiry aboard the Malispina about whether we could see the bridge and meet the captain.
Very much unlike our earlier experience aboard Le Conte, the captain was gracious and invited us to see the bridge and stay with him for as long as we wished. He and I talked about our jobs and generally hit it off very well. He introduced me to the ship's engineer, who was a technician-class Amateur, AL7KH, Gene. We of course got the grand tour of the engine-room, which included a real-life emergency when an oil fitting sprung a leak and they had to shut down a generator and quickly repair the rupture. Later, the engineer loaned me his 2 meter HT to use during our stay on Ketchikan. Actually, I used it to raise the Ketchikan repeater when we were still about 5 miles out, which provided some new friendships that proved helpful during our stay. We stood with the captain as he guided the Malispina to its dock, which seemed to me like trying to maneuver an elephant through a tomato patch. It was done with the skill obviously borne of hundreds of similar dockings. The Malispina gently touched the tiny pier below as deck hands fastened the huge mooring ropes to prevent strong shifting currents from altering our position.
We arrived at Ketchikan early in the evening and followed the other passengers, those not in vehicles from aboard the ferry, to several blue buses. All of the buses seemed to be headed to places other than where we wanted to go. Considering the size of Ketchikan, this seemed anomalous, but true. We ended up taking a taxi, at some rather high fare, to the Dupris B&B, located on the water not far from downtown and about two miles from the dock. The B&B was a two story home, with the bottom level rented on a daily basis. The owners were quite cordial, offering us all sorts of tourist information and leaving us with a refrigerator full of breakfast goodies. I made a quick general call on the local two meter repeater and was immediately greeted by three locals, one of whom came directly to our B&B and took us to a local seafood restaurant. KL7IWC, Bob, was a Coast Guard employee whose job was to repair buoys throughout the inland waterway area. His stories of emergency repairs under horrific winter conditions at sea made, for once, thankful I am not bigger and stronger. After all, one cannot do that sort of job without considerable physical endurance. In any event, he also took us on a tour of the Coast Guard facility, and showed us part of the island tourists do not generally see. By now it was getting dark, and it was time to get to bed and prepare for our sightseeing the next day.
We had our breakfast and set out on a walking tour of the Creek Street Historic District. There is a zigzagging boardwalk above pilings over Ketchikan Creek that also support some 30 'sporting houses' which operated -- apparently quite profitably -- from the turn of the century through the mid-1950's. This, we were told, was the most notorious red light district in southeast Alaska. During Prohibition, Creek Street offered liquor and women to the fisherman and allowed patrons and smugglers to exchange cargo or escape through trap doors that led to muddy creek banks. The most colorful of the houses was Dolly's House, preserved as it was when it was closed in 1954. Dolly, its owner, lived quite a long and successful life; she died in a local nursing home in 1975. The admission fee of some $5 seemed a bit steep, but we didn't have many opportunities to visit well preserved brothels during this or any other trip, so we paid. As it happens, the house is really quite interesting because it contains clothing, furniture, and innumerable relics from the period. Continuing along the boardwalk we came to a lovely area of shops, and an area where pink salmon could be seen swimming up the creek. There is also an old church and a hatchery. By the time we saw all of this, it was time to return to the B&B and pack for our flight to Skagway, our next stop.
Taking a flight from Ketchikan, an island, is a bit complicated because the airport is across the waterway on another island. This means that one has to calculate departure based on mini-ferry schedules, airline schedules, and taxi transit times! Somehow we had missed hearing about the mini-ferry, or even knowing that the airport was not on the main Ketchikan island, but our Coast Guard friend gave us a lift to the mini-ferry terminal in time to catch the last boat to make our flight. It began to rain at about the time we headed for the mini-ferry, not entirely a surprise because Ketchikan gets up to 200 inches of rain a year - which means that weather forecasting is relatively easy. We were fortunate in having had most of our touring day in Ketchikan under dry conditions. In fact, this was the only rain we had on the entire trip. We boarded our Alaska Airlines flight to Juneau, where we would change planes for Skagway.
Our jet's arrival into Juneau was uneventful because we had already experienced the excitement of the approach when we arrived from Anchorage some days before. Our flight to Skagway was unusual and memorable both before takeoff and in the air. Prior to boarding, we each had to have our baggage weighed -- and then state our body weight. The purpose, of course, was to be sure that the small, six seater airplanes would not be overloaded, I suppose in part because there could be weather surprises enroute. The discretion exercised by airline personnel with regard to passengers' stated body weight was less than perfect but, on strongly worded prodding by Nina, was adequate to assure that I never saw what was entered on her ticket! I sat in the co-pilot's seat, which gave me a perfect opportunity to photograph the marvelous sights below as we flew at 1,500 feet along the Chilkoot River and Lynn Canal. We stopped enroute at Haines, which is near the world's largest American bald eagle preserve in the Chilkat Valley, to drop off some passengers, and arrived at Skagway a few minutes later, around ten in the evening. It seemed by the bright sunlight to be no later than mid-afternoon. The small plane approached Skagway by flying along a steep set of hills, making a sharp u-turn past the airport, and returning to touch down from the opposite direction. This gave us a chance to see some of the terrain that served as the staging area for the gold rush that commenced in 1897. We got a lift from one of the airline employees to our hotel, the Gold Rush Lodge, which at it turned out was located only a few hundred meters from the runway.
Skagway is unlike anywhere else I have been. It offers more knickknacks, junk, kitsch, and objets d'art than any other place I have ever visited. The cruiseships come to Skagway every day, bringing thousands of tourists to wander about town searching for souvenirs and curiosities. It is illegal for non-natives to deal in ivory, but the natives are not restricted. They spend much of the year producing ivory works for the retail outlets, which of course then find their way to the homes of tourists who subsequently wonder why they spent so much on their trip. Fortunately, Skagway is not just tourist shops. Its main drag, Broadway, looks much as it did 90 years ago, when the Klondike rush occurred.
In 1897-98 some 20,000 fortune hunters arrived by ship from Seattle and either made their way to the White Pass (via Skagway) or Chilkoot Pass (via Dyea) in search of gold -- or, as some have noted, 'stripping the golden fleece' from those who had already found it. There were at one time some 80 gambling halls, a thriving red-light district, and wolf packs of thieves, the most notorious of whom was Jefferson Randolph 'Soapy' Smith. He was a scam artist who employed a gang of ruffians to control the city. He had a shootout with civic leader Frank Reid in July of 1889 which left both men dead. Today, the Gold Rush Cemetery on the outskirts of town features the graves of Soapy Smith, Frank Reid, and many other early settlers. Skagway is also known as the Garden City of the North because of its lovely Victorian homes. One wonders while walking through outskirts of Skagway what some of the residents of these homes do for a living. I suspect they are associated with the tourist shops. Informal discussions with several shop owners revealed that many of them vacation in southern California or Florida in the winter.
There is the Trail of '98 Museum, and the park headquarters and visitor center in the recently restored White Pass & Yukon Route depot building to offer perspective and the history of Skagway, and Alaska in general. Though we did not have time for it, the narrowgauge White Pass & Yukon Route railway operates from Skagway on a 41-mile round trip course over Dead horse Gulch, Bridal Veil, Pitchfork Falls and Inspiration Point enroute to the 2,885 foot summit of White Pass. There are walking tours that take you among the old structures behind Broadway, and several evening shows offering reviews of Alaskan history; we really enjoyed a spooky reading of the Cremation of Sam McGee, by Robert Service. Our one full day at Skagway was about right, and it was time for our maritime tour of Glacier Bay.
We awoke early, at about 3:30 a.m. and in full daylight, to make our flight to Gustavus for our Glacier Bay tour. We could practically walk to the airport, but the tour operator gathered us at about 4:00 a.m. and off we went, the first on the minibus along its route through the hotel sweep of Skagway. At the airport, our luggage was weighed and we were again asked for our body weights. Because there were about eighteen people leaving from Skagway for this tour, there were 3 airplanes. After all the weighing and calculating, we were told to board any of the planes with our baggage. So much for the careful science of loading. Again I arranged for the co-pilot's seat, and the view was spectacular. We flew south along the Lynn Canal, then hung a right up and over the high mountain pass separating Lynn Canal from Icy Strait, and landed gently at Gustavus, a one and a half hour flight. The bus was waiting to take us to Bartlett Cove, and we were soon aboard our Spirit of Adventure tour ship. We had organized the full tour package from Skagway to Glacier Bay and back to Juneau; it would have been difficult and expensive to piece together the elements of transportation independently.
The day on Glacier Bay offered an important adjunct to the sights of Alaska we had seen. We witnessed humpback whales breaching (jumping out of the water, or nearly so), and saw any number of birds, including Puffins by the thousand, as well as incredible views of glaciers calving and an array of sea and mammal life. One anthropologically distressing aspect of the trip was the several cigarette smokers aboard the tour ship. It seemed that no matter where I stood I was downwind of one or two chain smokers, and I felt that were I the owner of the ship I either would have thrown them overboard or forbidden smoking. There were beautiful sights and everyone on the tour, some 75 people, were enormously impressed with what we saw. While it was quite warm at Bartlett Cove, it was near freezing near the glaciers, so we were pleased we had brought our gloves, sweaters, and earmuffs! Nina had purchased a pair of fisherman's gloves at Valdez with partially removable finger tips to allow better tactile contact, a convenient benefit in taking photographs in winter conditions. There were people aboard from all over the world, including a German photographer whose work appears regularly in professional nature journals and whose optical lenses were larger than some of my radio antennas. Many of the other tourists were retirees who spend their summers travelling to unusual places in North America, hiking and experiencing nature at its best. We returned to port, reversed the process and boarded a jet at Gustavus for our flight to Juneau, connecting then to Anchorage.
We arrived again at Anchorage late in the evening and were met by KL7PJ, who took us to his house for tea and then unloaded us at the Arctic Tern Inn, where we had stayed earlier on the trip. Enroute to Chuck's house, we saw a young moose wandering across several of his neighbors' lawns, much like a stray dog or cat would do where I live. It was just another of those Alaskan experiences that makes it so different from what we are accustomed to.
The next morning Chuck, his son and grandson and I embarked on a trout and salmon fishing expedition on a drift boat along the Kenai River. It is a tricky matter to catch anything because you have to be there 'when they are running.' We drifted for about six hours and caught absolutely nothing, but the views were enough to make it all no less than spectacular. Floating down the Kenai, over minor rapids, through forest-framed passes, below snow capped mountains is a heady experience even without a boat load of salmon. Nina remained home with Marge and helped prepare a gourmet dinner for our quasi-triumphant return from the wilds. That evening we were honored with visitors KL7MF, AL7MZ, and KL7Y, and were given several pounds of home smoked Sockeye salmon by Roy, AL7MZ. The timing worked out well because our flight to Seattle was scheduled to depart at about 1 a.m. Chuck gave us a lift to the airport, and the next thing we remember is being home.
Our trip to Alaska was an exceptional visit to a very different kind of place, a near surfeit of natural beauty, clean air, and contrast. For us, it was an ambitious tour, barely two nights in the same area; trips by car, train, boat, propeller and jet aircraft, and helicopter; visits to mountain, sea, plane, and glacier; open spaces, quiet roads, friendly people, new experiences, and fond memories. It is said that it is not how far one travels but how deeply one travels than mines the gold of experience. That adage is ideally applicable to Alaska!
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