Alaska August 2017 with August Gregory

Big Picture Alaska- August 5-15, 2017

This is the first of what we hope will be several trips with the grandchildren. August turned 12 in November and we gave her the choice of where to go on her special trip. Luckily for me, August chose Alaska and this is the specific Alaska itinerary that fit the schedule.

Connie and I flew on Thursday August 4 from Richmond to Seattle via Atlanta. August was already in Jackson Wyoming with Leesa and the rest of her family visiting Phil and Betsy.

The flight timing was such that we arrived a couple of hours earlier than August. I picked up our bags and went to the Marriott at the airport while Connie stayed within the secured area to meet August.

Our trip was aboard the National Geographic  Lindblad Sea Bird. As I write this I am still in Alaska without an internet connection but I believe you can go to expeditions.com, daily reports, destination: Alaska,  ship Sea Bird, and the dates August 5-14 to see daily photos of this trip and some commentary from the naturalists on the ship with us.

August 5, Ketchikan, Alaska- The Ketchikan airport is tiny (town is 13000) and most of the outgoing passengers are fishermen carrying rods and sending out their flash frozen fish (mostly salmon of various kinds and halibut) with their baggage. 

National Geographic/ Lindblad met us and took us over from the island where the airport is to the island where town is. We used the Cape Fox Lodge as our base for a few hours- NG had a room reserved for all the incoming Sea Bird passengers. (The changeover days always have a lot of idle time while the crew on the ship gives the ship a thorough cleaning of the common areas and the staterooms.)

August, Connie, and I walked into town via Married Man Trail (in former days it went from the main part of town to the red light district) along a creek where we could watch some salmon struggling up some pretty fast falling water.

The day we were in Ketchikan was the day of the blueberry festival. A lot of the town people were in a roped off area, most looking and some selling Alaska trinkets. We did find the blueberry pie but didn't get any. There is a huge general store for souvenirs and expedition gear- John Wayne had visited and had his photo taken next to the same polar bear as is currently in the store.

Ketchikan is big cruise ship destination and we saw one of the Disney ships there.

We made the usual stops at the bookstore and the yarn store and then took a tram back up to the Cape Fox Lodge.

It was now time to board the bus for a long wandering ride to the ship (allowing more time for the crew to get ready for us). On the road our first bit of Tlingit culture was the sight of a dilapidated house- they believe what they take from nature should go back to nature when not in use.

We went a totem pole park, and we learned about the figures on the poles and the concept of a potlatch. We also "met" the 84 year old expert carver- with about a five year backlog of orders.

On to the ship and the usual dilemma about where to unpack everything, followed by the "abandon ship" drill and a buffet dinner.

Our group is 51 passengers with a full ship being 65. It is mostly people very interested in photography (the NG marketing department calls this itinerary "Big Picture Alaska") all carrying big lenses, sometimes more than one big lens.
As I fill in the blog text with photos, I send a huge thank you to these photographers who contributed wonderful pictures to the guest slide show at the end. This blog entry has some of mine and Connie's but many of theirs. The really good ones are theirs; the inferior ones are mine. Thank you Jack, Kelley, Steve, Davol, Maxine, Ralph Lee and many others.
 There is a 20 year old college student and an 11 year old boy so August is pretty much on her own. But those boys have lots of personality and like to play card games so we will be ok.

August 6- Misty Fjords National Monument- 3750 square miles of backcountry, 2.2 million acres.

Of course Alaska is the largest state but we saw a map of it laid across the usual map of the lower 48, and Alaska, from the farthest west Aleutian Island to the farthest part of southeast Alaska where we are, covers the whole spread of the lower 48 from coast to coast.

One last bit of background- Seward bought Alaska for $7mm from Czar Alexander II in 1867 after many attempts. This turned out to be 2 cents per acre- "Seward's Folly".

The first thing for today was a "DIB" ride. (When we started with NG Lindblad the inflatables were Zodiacs but around 2010 or 2011 the Coast Guard changed the rules and the Zodiacs could not be registered under the big ship's name- so to comply with the Jones Act (?), they had to get US made inflatables (Demarre Inflatable Boats) (soon to be phased out now that Zodiac makes a US hull). This ride was thru Owl Pass to look at the granite cliffs (forming Owl's eyes), to watch the ship come thru the pass, and to take in a tall waterfall flowing over metamorphic rock. 

2 new birds- Mew Gulls with a white window on the wings, and Marbled Murrelets, which are tiny diving birds, and manage to go under by the time you finish saying "there's one".

In the afternoon we went to Walker's Cove where August kayaked and Connie and I paddle boarded. 

One more new species in the afternoon- Bonaparte's Gull-mature ones have an almost all black head and immature ones have a gray head with a black eye patch.

After dinner the ship and staff arranged for us to go by Eddystone Rock, a volcano funnel that withstood the glacier age, right as the almost full moon rose. It turned out we had a bit of a wait because the moon had to clear some mountains but the semi pro photographers in the group (85% of the passengers) got the shot they wanted.

August 7- Bailey Bay (the best way to see where we went on this cruise is to look at our map or the map in the expedition reports- we did a lot of ups and downs because of the different fjords, peninsulas and islands)

At Bailey Bay the three of us opted for the "challenging" hike along Shelokum Trail, which is about a mile and a half or two miles, steep in places, thru thick Sitka Spruce and hemlock forest to a lake and a beautiful waterfall. 

My compliments to the staff for a very accurate description of the difficulty of this hike- it was challenging. 

We learned about berries to eat (salmon-, rasp-, and blue-), about Devil's Club which has big maple looking leaves and thorns under the leaves on on the stalk which have a bacteria on them that invariably causes an infection if you accidentally grab it, lichen and moss, Skunk Cabbage, and how the hemlocks come in first but eventually get crowded out by the spruce. Devil's Club is a member of the ginseng family and is used for a salve by the local native Americans.

What we didn't know at the time is that on the last night there was going to be Alaska Jeopardy and I should have paid more attention to be ready for the Botany and Trees and Shrubs categories.

The rest of the day was spent cruising and looking for whales plus we had a photography workshop on Buttons and Dials.

Being with all these photographers and listening to the lectures made me step up my game in picture taking (marginally).

August 8- Le Conte Glacier and Bay followed by Petersburg

This glacier is the southernmost tidewater glacier in North America. Our morning consisted of DIB cruising among the huge icebergs. The bergs were very photogenic but also they were aground. We arrived at low tide and so as we cruised the tide was coming in, causing some of the icebergs to float again and roll around seeking to rebalance.

After lunch we arrived in Petersburg, which was established as a refrigeration station for the fish catch because of the glacier nearby. 

It is definitely a working fisherman's town with a big fleet of trawlers  and other fishing type boats. A lot of the smaller boats up here are metal hulled rather than fiberglass, and I think that is because of the logs and other debris in the water that might pierce a glass hull.

 NG Lindblad keeps a small cache of bicycles on shore here and so we went for a 5 mile bike ride right along the shore for most of it. Then we walked the town visiting the hardware store for knitting needles and the brand new library for internet. After that I walked the docks looking at the boats and talked to a woman fishing for herring at the dock. She came up here a few years ago to fish and bought the lodge. She was catching the herring (four at a time just like we fish for them) to use for halibut bait for her guests.

I found a trawler called Betty, Shenandoah, and Stillwater.

That night dinner on the ship was a Dungeness Crab feast. We sat at a table with 4 vegans who spent the whole time talking about how and when and where they became vegan and how much good it was doing them. It was a little awkward sitting next to them while we were piling up crab carcasses. 
Before dinner Julia taught about sea otters and the crabs they eat:

August 9- Tracy Arm and the South Sawyer Glacier

On the way to our morning activity we spotted about 5 orcas swimming along, but we could not get very close.

Another morning of DIB cruising among the ice coming off the glacier. This ice was floating in deep water and the bergs were thickly packed with many, many, harbor seals hauled out on the ice and swimming around the bergs and around us.

 It was pretty cold out there in the ice so close to the glacier face, but, luckily, the CoCo boat full of Vikings was working in the neighborhood:

 On the way back could see three mountain goats in the craggy cliffs. What was unusual was seeing 5 or so other boats (40-75 feet) anchored in the same spot. Some were running glacier tours but a couple were private. We are only about 40 miles from Juneau so it is not a huge surprise. 

We have seen a few of the big cruise liners so far but at a pretty good distance. There must be limits on where they can go compared to where we can go so for the most part it looks like we have Alaska to ourselves.

After dinner tonight the botanist on board, Julia, gave a presentation on post glacier forest development. Should have paid more attention to be ready for Jeopardy.

August 10- Glacier Bay and the Johns Hopkins Glacier

If the trip had ended today I would say this was definitely the best day. As an example, when I walked out the door to go to breakfast, there was a sea otter lounging on the surface.

Today Ranger Molly from the Bartlett Cove ranger station came aboard. She brought with her maps showing the extension of the glaciers here during the little Ice Age in the 1600s-1700s and then the rapid retreat (200 years and 65 miles). The map shows the glacier face of many glaciers at different dates to the present. The ground is rebounding and the land is reforesting.

Johns Hopkins is not accessible to the big cruise ships- they all go to Margerie Glacier in the same area. 

As the ship approached the glacier, we passed a rocky island with Steller Sea Lions hauled out on it. One could tell we were near sea lions before we saw them because of the smell. Along the same stretch we also could see pigeon guillemots, pelagic cormorants, tufted and horned puffins, and black oystercatchers (described by the naturalists as a "crow smoking a carrot"). As the ship got closer to the glacier we had to creep along and shift directions a lot to avoid coming too close to the harbor seal pups laying on the ice in the area.

We continued cruising in the area for the rest of the day. Along with Ranger Molly we had taken on a native interpreter named Lee Vale for the day. He shared stories, myths and songs of his Tlingit culture throughout the day. The Russians, American government, and the Presbyterians should all be very ashamed of their behavior toward his people, but Lee was just telling the history, not asking for sympathy or retribution. One of his myth stories was about two Tlingit brothers who got carried too far to sea and eventually followed the humpback whales to Hawaii. One stayed there and one later went back home. Lee said this legend has been verified by finding similar artifacts in Alaska and Hawaii. I really enjoyed talking to him one on one about his and his mother's journey back to the Tlingit culture after having been deprived of knowledge of it for so long.
This is probably a good spot to show a photo of the typical thing going on on the bow most days:

The rest of the day we spent working back to Bartlett to let the ranger and the interpreter off the ship. But it was not boring: First we saw a mother and cub brown bear (same as a Grizzly in the lower 48) on the water's edge and followed them for quite a while. Then we saw a series of mountain goats, especially one trying to get across a really wide fissure in the rock. Then lastly we saw a single black bear along the edge then in the water and then coming out of the water with his fur dripping and ebony black.

 Before the ranger left the ship she distributed badges to the new qualified Junior Rangers on the ship who had completed the requirements and taken the pledge:

When we got to Bartlett we had time for a short walk after dinner thru the forest, mostly for a little exercise. However on the way back we passed a mother porcupine and baby and then a big male one who flared his quills at us when we got a little close.

August 11- The Lynn Canal and the Chilkat Peninsula

The Lynn Canal is a 75 mile long fjord that runs from Skagway (Chilkoot Pass and the Gold Rush) to Juneau.

Out the window in the morning was one of many glaciers with another beautiful waterfall.

We stopped on the west side of Chilkat at a place called Moose Meadows to meet a local guide and go for another hike. Pearl of wisdom about taking a hike, applicable to this trip and elsewhere:

On this one we learned how to tell fully grown spruce from hemlocks by the bark (needles is easy - single spiky = spruce; flat soft =hemlock)- a spruce trunk looks like potato chips and a hemlock trunk looks like bacon. If a tree has horizontal bands of bark, and there aren't many of them here, it is either cottonwood or birch. We saw plenty of fireweed, false azalea, and little dogwood (male 4 leaves, female 5) in additional to bane berry ( to eat one is not good, to eat 5 is death) and a tiny white orchid.

While the ship made a small repositioning move, we saw Dall porpoises- really speedy and playful.

The afternoon activity was kayaking in Twin Coves. There was no wildlife to speak of but I found a cool spring bubbling into the kelp and talked to some fishermen in a jonboat about their catch- halibut, skate.

Saturday, August 12- Haines

Today we split up for most of the day with Connie and August going flightseeing over the glaciers and me going to another Tlingit cultural Center followed by a river float through the Bald Eagle Reserve. The water was all recent glacier runoff, milky green, and 37 degrees. We must have seen 25 eagles and several nests.
Connie and August's activity:

My visit to the cultural center and then the float thru the eagle preserve:

My guide was Tom Lang, a local author, humorist, and Bali resident for half the year.

While Connie went for a bike ride August and I went to "town" (2500 people) to visit the Bald Eagle Foundation (excellent, small but thorough display of stuffed local animals and fish) and then the library. We missed visiting the Hammer Museum because it was closed for the day. To wind the day up I did another dock walk to look at the fishing boats. The best name was on a seine netting boat- the InSeine.
Haines:

More playing cards with Rafael and Roman after dinner.

August 13- Icy Strait, Fox Creek, and Inian Islands

This was a really great day among all the other great days. 

The three of us chose to go for a hike with Linda along a trail more used by bears than people. The hike started with Linda showing us a bear skeleton on the edge of the water that was discovered by a previous guest who forgot to go to the bathroom before the hike and withdrew to the woods. When he saw it, it was fresh.

The hike was up and down, felt a lot like bush whacking thru tall grasses and Devil's Club. Along the way we saw a couple of bear tracks and a couple of trees where the bears reach up to roughen the bark and then give themselves a back scratch.

 The big payoff was a clear creek with pink salmon swimming upstream and a waterfall.

A note about the weather- Thru August 11, that is, for about a week, we had very unusual weather- clear skies, sun, starting at about 50 or 55 and getting up to about 70. Even so it was cool, especially on the water. After the 11th we had more normal Alaskan weather, 50s, misty and cloudy.

In the afternoon of the 13th August and I went on a DIB cruise among the Inian Islands. There the current is forced thru narrow channels and so there is a huge upwelling of nutrients from the bottom. Also when it was most choppy, it also chose to rain hard. August and I were rewarded by an amazing show by the Steller Sea Lions- they were hauled out on many of the rocks but also were very curious about the DIBs and came very, very, close. We also got to watch a sea otter which was totally unperturbed by 30 or 40 seal lions all around him. Factoid- Sea Otters have developed a pocket under their forelegs so they can carry a rock with them to crack the crabs or clams they catch.

Tonight was the night of shame too- my team in Alaska Jeopardy got beaten by about three answers, all relating to Botany and Trees and Shrubs. At least we lost to the other team led by another W&L guy, Jack Kotz, W&L class of '59, an expert photographer, author, and former chemistry professor.

August 14- ABC Islands (Admiralty, Baranoff, and Chichagof) and Pavlov Harbor

Truth be told, Jeff, the expedition leader, and the rest of the team were undecided about what to do for this day in the morning. The choices were Elfin Cove, where Connie and the girls went in 2009, a town of 250 in summer and 23 in winter, or Pavlov Harbor. The team said they had been to Pavlov for 8 or 9 years without seeing a bear (this is the same place where Connie and the girls went hiking in 2009 and did encounter a bear). Jeff decided to try again. 

We went in the DIBs about 500 yards from the boat to a small creek and there, on some rocky watery shelves right before it runs to sea, were salmon and 2 then 3 brown bears. At first they were a couple of hundred yards away at the foot of a nice 15 foot waterfall. All 4 DIBs lined up at the mouth of the creek, basically obstructing the whole mouth, and watched the bears for an hour. There was also a couple from a small boat also at anchor who came ashore and set up camp chairs to watch the bears in a line with us. The two were young bears and would spar when they caught a salmon. One time they ran toward us to a distance of perhaps 30 feet but they were only paying attention to fish and each other. During the bear time twice I saw bald eagles flying over us and pointed to them, but everyone was so absorbed in the bears that an eagle meant nothing.

The next planned activity included listening to a presentation by Ralph about the great places he has been on assignment for NG ( great photos and stories and a good ad for future trips) and watching for whales while we go to Sitka via a very narrow strait late at night. I thought they were tricking us a little about the whales since we went a couple of hours without seeing anything. Then Linda called those interested up to the bow and we could see two different pods of whales at some distance off Angoon. The pods eventually came together and very close to the boat to put on a show of bubble net feeding and full breeches. 

Amazing!

The map of our whole trip:

August 15- Sitka

This is the other killing time day to help the crew clean the ship, but it was worthwhile. First we visited an extremely well done Alaska Raptor Rehab Center and got to see eagles and other raptors up very close. Raptors means excellent eyesight, talons, front facing eyes, hooked beak- eagles, owls, falcons, osprey, hawks, and kites. Then we went for a short hike to a stream with more salmon, learned about the Russian Tlingit Wars at the National Park Center, saw the Russian Orthodox cathedral, and visited a few shops. Town was full of tourists- big cruise ships come in regularly. 

To wrap up this blog entry is hard, because while it is very long, I have had to leave out so much wildlife, scenery, geology, beautiful photos taken by our fellow travelers:

And, I think August liked the trip:

Add the link to the Nat Geo/ Lindblad Guest slideshow for our trip, but it is on Quicktime and probably won't play here:

Flew to Seattle for the night and then on to Richmond on the 16th. While in the Marriott restaurant we met Tatanya from Turkmenistan. She left in 2003 as a political refugee and can't go back. We enjoyed telling her about our visit there last year and Connie liked practicing her Russian.

Link to Daily Reports, Photos and more when I can figure it out