Journey to Alaska

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The teen crowd has mushroomed into 3 sports teams and they are all camping on the same deck as me… a big slumber party with teen boys and girls. This is going to be a long night indeed. Every square inch of the floor is covered with sleeping bags, but they are getting off in Juneau at 6 am. I am happy that I staked out my own aisle because some aisle because some of the aisles are 4 girls deep with their legs hanging out in the walkway. At this time the girls should be done braiding each other’s hair and doing their scavenger hunt which entailed them running around the ship. Squeals are coming from all directions so maybe if I close my eyes they will all go away. I bet that the Elder hostellers didn’t bank on it. But seriously, am I old and grouchy at 23? I remember riding the ferry when I was young and running around the deck playing hide and seek and ignoring all those grouchy people. So, Grandma Breena will take a deep breath and shake her head… youth these days, why when I was a kid… hahahaha!

The ferry has gone from 199 this morning to 299 with a capacity of 800. If I think that this is crowded, I can’t imagine what it is like in the summer. In Bellingham on Friday, there was a security checkpoint before you get in line for the ferry. There was a truck from the 50’s that broke down in line and it had to be pushed to the security checkpoint! It was a riot. Today I watched it get off in Wrangell and it drove off without a hitch. Wrangell looks like a nice town, beautiful fall colors in an otherwise grey colorless day. When we got to Petersburg it was too dark to see anything except the huge harbor of commercial fishing boats - Petersburg is home to the largest commercial fishing fleet in Southeast Alaska. We are definitely in Southeast Alaska because it is pouring rain. The temperature has dropped 30 degrees since we left Bellingham.

Monday Ahh! The last day is almost the sweetest. We hit Juneau at 5:30 am and all the kids got off to start their school day. Now we are traveling the last 6 hours to Haines, AK, my final destination. The rain has finally stopped and the clouds have lifted partly revealing a lot of snow on the mountains. It is so beautiful; the rays of sun are highlighting the new snowfall. A near miraculous event occurred so unexpectantly when I stepped outside and about 50 yards away were two killer whales! They are my favorite animal and I have been looking for them all summer. The one day that I didn’t go out on the salmon straying project they saw them. It’s amazing that things will happen when you least expect them. There are two types of killer whales, the resident pods feed on salmon and live in pods of many animals. The transient pods number only a couple of animals and they feed on marine mammals. I am fairly certain that these killer whales were transients, but without a cute little sea otter hanging out of its mouth I couldn’t be certain. Best of all no one else saw them, a private treat for me. Saturday I saw a group of 30 Dall’s porpoises. They look like a small dolphin. Anyway, they were dancing and jumping in the sunny sparkling waters. It was really fun to see them playing with each other.

At breakfast, I overhead this ‘Hostile Elder’ complaining that she was disappointed in her trip to Alaska and she wasn’t coming back. She was complaining about the weather, but hey! This is a temperate rainforest! The only thing you are able to ever forecast is rain and lots of it. And that is when I glanced over and saw that she is from Texas and everything clicked. Texans as a whole are the most aggravating people and I am happy that she doesn’t like Alaska, there are already too many Texans here. Her whining is ruining my trip.

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