5 25 Juneau

Juneau, state capitol of Alaska. The old part is on a narrow peace of land between the channel from the sea and the mountains. It gives a new meaning to both living at sea level and mountain living. The island on the other side of the channel is the residential area.

Talk about a steep walk home. Hate to have to lug a bunch of groceries up this hill.

with this we bide adieu to the Alaska part of the cruise. from here we go to Victoria, B.C. and then back to Seattle and the real world.

5 24 ICY STRAIT POINT HOONAH

Above is an eagle, sealion with otter on back and bear totem.looks more like a frog to me. Icy Strait Point and Hoonah, (village by the cliff) was settled by Tlingit Indians after a glacier chased them out of Glacier Bay. Their are two clans, the Eagle clan and the Bear clan. They have to marry outside their clan and have to be careful who they date in the other clan because they maybe to closly related after all this years. We saw lots of eagles and lots of whales, but none of them close enough to get good pictures. The whales were close enough to be plainly heard when they came up to blow. unfortunately all they looked like to the camera was floatin logs. The water fall below was one of many we passed on our walk into town.

This is a young eagle sitting on a levee being babysat by a small bird, probably keeping an eye on him so he wouldn't get to close to its nest.

A couple of lovely seascapes to close.

5 22 KODIAK

Kodiak, where we got close up and personal with one show off of and Eagle

We met him crossing a bridge on the way to a coastal walk with some very beautiful scenery.

Kodiak was first settled by the Russians, hence the Orthodox Church of St. Herman, the first Russian priest to come to Alaska.

Kodiak has a Russian Orthodox seminary. They recruite local natives to come to the seminary and give them free tuition and room and baord for them and their family for four years. At present they have ten students in the school. they start at different times and so they graduate one at a time, I quess always at the head of their class. This is thier chapel inside and out.

5 21 VALDEZ

Today we went to Valdez, a town started with a lie. During the gold rush of 1898, someone put an ad in the newspapers saying there was a faster route to the goldfields from Valdez. There wasn’t. Thousands of people came and tried the longer harder route and many died. The town prospered. Of course it is also the end of the Alaskan Pipeline and where the Exxon Valdez sailed from. It was not affected by the spill. A very strange thing happened to us at the museum. Some local ladies were going to perform a cancan at the museum, so Arleen went in to find out more info. When inside, the executive director of the museum said “Are you from Telluride?”. Totally shocked, she said yes, then the director, Kathryn Hurtley said “Are you Arleen?” Well turns out she was the director of the Telluride Council for the Arts. Both Arleen and Duane dealt blackjack at her casino nites and she remembered. How cool is that, meeting someone from Telluride in Valdez, Alaska. We spent most of the day at a bakery using the internet and watching and listening to the locals. Lots of fun. Duane took a walk around the dock area.

This is what they call Skunk Cabbage in Alaska. It is the first thing bears look for when they come out o hibernation in the spring. it serves as a Laxitive and helps them clean out their system and get things flowing again.

We weretreated to a Cancan dance by some of the younger resdents of Valdez. The one in the center is Maggie, the owner of The Magpie Bakery. Arleen spent most of her time there working on the blog and internet and getting Maggies' receipe for sugarfree truffles. Duane took a nice hike around the Habor island taking pictures.

Hard to see but right in the middle of the picture below is and eagle in flight, alittle black between two white spots.

Ships and snow with waterfalls in between. such is life in Valdez. The pipeline comes into Valdez on the other side of the bay and they are not sure how much longer the oil will keep flowing so tourism and fishing are again becoming important to Valdez,s economy.

The view as we leave Valdez. It is that little smudge of smoke to the left hand side of the picture. We never see the port as we arrive early in the morning and are never out of our cabin in time. What a lovely place to live. It looked like that in all directions.

An Iceberg on the way out. Not quite of titanic portions but still gets the captain's eye.

The Tidewater glacier the iceberg came from. Its clear in the backbetween the two dark selves of land. The ice in the foreground are more icebergs on the way out. Obviously this glacier is still advancing. We think this is the Columbia Glacier, one of Alaska's largest.

Sunset out of Valdez. and the only Cobra we saw in Alaska.

5 20 SEWARD

Seward was like a homecoming. We had spent 7days there at the end of our first Alaskan cruise in 2002. We returned to the B&B we had stayed at and visited with our hostess. We told her how much she had done to make our stay very memorable. Then we went in search of places we had not been before. We wandered up a canyon and met a young lady and her dog and had a great visit with her before heading down to walk on the beach looking for rocks and shells.

Seward is a lovely town of about 4,000 that has many cruise ship visits per week. The downtown is sweet with shops that are a little friendlier than your general tourist town. The people are very friendly. Some of the shops were not opened yet, since this is the beginning of the season. We were surprised to see that there were some for sale signs on both businesses and shops. We were told that tourism was down and some businesses were having a hard time of it. Seems to be the same all over.

Arleen hiding behind her camera in front of a beautiful waterfall we missed on our first visit

Arleen hiding behind the dog we played with

5 18 SKAGWAY

Skagway is where the 98er's started out to the Yukon to find gold. There were 5 ships in port that day, so the town was overrun with people. It looks a bit like Telluride. We did not spend much time in town, too many folks.

This is an interesting building with the front all of driftwood. The building was built by the Arctic Brotherhood. Interesting, isn't it.

We was a movie at the forest service store.

We took the train ride up the White Pass, where most of the miners passed to go north.

beautiful views on the train.

Luckily this tressel is no longer used. Arleen almost cancelled the trip when she saw this tressel.

Another bridal view falls.

5 17 GLACIER BAY

The day dawned and we were worried about the weather. We were unable to go into Glacier Bay on our first trip to Alaska in August of 2002, but today the clouds were high and no wind. There is not much to say about the bay, you just have to look, and look and LOOK.

We are entering the bay. Yes those are icebergs, little ones.

No, that is NOT an Orca on the deck.....It is just the best way to watch the scenery when you have been on your feet for 4 hours, running from one side of the ship to the other.

Look closely....On the lower rocks are two white mountain sheep.

Now the bear is easier to see. We saw some other bears, but they were too far away to get a picture. This bear was near the Grand Pacific Glacier (named after our ship, the Pacific Princess...ok, not really)

Most of the icebergs were clean ice, like this one

but some were filled with dirt and rocks. This one was particularly interesting,

We had some ondeck entertainment during the day.

Then we got to one of the main legs of the Bay. This picture was our first view of 2 glaciers. On the left is a blue glacier and straight ahead is the Grand Pacific Glacier, which looks like a wall, since it is totally black from the dirt and rocks carried down from mountains. This dark glacier moved forward so fast that the natives that lived below it said it moved as "fast as a dog could run". Scientific studies have shown proof that this was true.

Blue glacier

close up. Look at the cracks and the holes.

This glacier has receded up the valley

Look at the beautiful colors on this rock and how it reflects in the still water. Gorgeous

Look at the colors in the rock. Looks like someone painted it.

Not too shabby, huh?

Later in the year the glaciers calve more, but we were lucky enough to see some. It is not easy to catch one on film, but Duane lucked out (actually you lucked out since Duane got the picture)

Just another pretty picture

Up the other leg of the Bay is Johns Hopkins Glacier. We couldn't go all the way in to see it close up since the area was closed to protect the harbor seals, who were about to have their cubs on the icebergs.

We did get this close, tho

Here is our advertisement for Princess.

The sunsets here are awesome. And it lasts for hours.....I mean HOURS! At 1 am the sunset was still going on.

This was taken earilier in the day, but it, too, is beautiful.