Barney and Liz do North America

North America » United States » Alaska » Denali
September 7th 2014

Published: September 7th 2014

Ketchikan

JEWELLERY STORES!!!! Industrial quantities. In 1993 cruise ships started coming in large numbers to Alaska. Fishing villages and mining towns and administrative centres suddenly had up to 10,000 people in town on the one day. The cruise lines set up jewellery stores and souvenir shops in these towns. The tourist season goes from May – September. At the end of September the jewellery stores pack up and transfer to the Caribbean where the cruise ships ply their (northern) winter trade. Alaska shuts down between October and May, college students and mavericks such as Brian, our driver yesterday (retired civil engineer from Atlanta, single, adventurer, spends winter in Breckenridge driving people to Denver airport), come up here and live for 6 months and the towns shut down.

In Ketchikan we had David, our Tlingit guide and driver. He takes us to observe eagles and bears. No bears. Lots of eagles and salmon everywhere – in every body of water we passed there were salmon. Hundreds of them. Included in the tour was a trip to a Tlingit village. It is a comment upon my capacity to stereotype that i had expected some kind of tepee village with elders wearing feathered headdress. It was of course nothing of the sort. Saxman is a “suburb” of Ketchikan. Its major feature is a series of 20 plus large totems. Many of the locals are engaged in the Tlingit craft of carving totems. The head carver, an elder in his 70s, travels all over the world practising and teaching his art.

When we got back to the ship i tried to get to an establishment with free wifi. I ended up in a bar with a guy smoking what smelt like gauloises at the next table. Managed to upload the last blog and check emails before heading back to the ship.

Juneau

Juneau is the capital of Alaska. It is located on the Alaska panhandle and has about 25,000 people. Juneau is the only state capital not able to be accessed by road. There are 3 ways to get to Juneau: by plane; by ship; and by birth canal.

Alaska is one of the most sparsely populated states in the union. And as with Ketchikan, Juneau has jewellery stores – 34 in one street alone. Now the thing that needs to be understood is that the clientele of cruise ships are overwhelmingly rich Americans. And the thing you need to understand about rich Americans is that lots of them actually do match up to the stereotype that we impose upon them. They are rich and loud and don’t necessarily have .........(how can i put this?) they lack taste.

The jewellery is focussed on this clientele. So it’s loud and gaudy and ostentatious. Subtlety is not a descriptor you could apply to the jewellery. Liz who has the eye of an eagle (particularly apt for this trip) when it comes to jewellery and such, discerned a distinct lack of classy workmanship, in fact some of it was just plain shoddy.

Our tour organised for Juneau was a whale watching cruise. Our boat carried about 10 people and had double outboards so could reach quite high speeds. This turned out to be a highlight. It was great to be in such a small boat after our liner. We got to see a couple of whales and even filmed them. What has been great on the cruise is the warmth and friendliness of our guides.

In any event the whale watching was a real highlight; we saw several whale tails!

Skagway

This was a great place to visit. Our guide Brian was one of those truly nice people who takes delight in sharing information about his adopted home (for 5 months of the year at least). There are 980 people in Skagway. It has what we would call a central school up to yr 12 equivalent. They have a student teacher ratio of 5:1. Read that again. 5:1. Every student in yr 12 equivalent has received a scholarship to a major university. Skagway school demonstrates what can be done when the process of education is humanised. 5:1 means that each student gets virtually individual attention. Not only that but the students learn from day 1 that collaboration is a process that works. When there are only 5 others in your yr 12 class there is hardly any motivation to be best in class. Instead they each learn to help each other. It’s a classic cooperative model. AND IT WORKS. On his first day in Skagway Brian was pulled over by the police chief. He was terrified as he needed his driving licence to work. Turns out the Police Chief only wanted to introduce himself to the town’s newest inhabitant. There is limited satellite TV in Skagway so there is a kind of sharing of DVDs by the inhabitants. Knowledge of who has what DVD is shared amongst the inhabitants by a kind of communal osmosis. The town electricity supply comes from a 3 metre water pipe which runs from the top of the adjacent mountain to the bottom. At the bottom is a turbine. Because there is constant water flow, there is constant power on demand. Totally carbon neutral. There is no crime in Skagway. If somebody gets drunk or gets into a fight they are taken to the Sheriff’s office. At the back there is what Brian referred to as an “adult time out room”: a couple of chairs and some magazines.

Raymond Williams said that the word “community” was one of the most difficult words to define. For those of us who use and promote the word in terms of social capital and community cohesiveness, Skagway, on a very superficial one day introduction, would appear to tick a lot of definitional boxes.

Brian drove us to Caribou Crossing. It was a 5 ½ hr return trip up and over the mountain adjacent to Skagway and into the Yukon Territory via British Columbia. We had everything: rain, fog, sunshine. Brian genuinely loves this landscape: waterfalls, mountains, snowlines and above all at this time of the year, the four colours: green, light green, yellow/orange, red. The landscape at this time of year is changing daily.

At Carcross we experienced quite possibly the worst lunch i have ever had – a chicken Maryland smothered in commercial BBQ sauce topping (sickly sweet), coleslaw that had zero bite to it and was dry, a bbqed potato slice devoid of life and flavour, and tea made with water that has that horrible chemical taste caused by the buildup of minerals in the urn. This was topped off by a donut overcooked and dry.

The only thing that could save the Carcross experience was a ride on a dog sled. This was great. The woman who runs Carcross camp, Michelle Phillips, is the world dog sled racing person. They do races of 1000 miles with routines of 7 hours on and 5 hours off. The dogs can consume up to 10 000 calories a day. The race starts with 16 dogs and you must finish with a minimum of 6. Vets along the way check the health of the dogs and any injured or unhealthy dogs are removed mandatorily. The health of the dogs is everything. Prior to a race the humans spend days sleeping with the dogs to ensure the dogs are in tune with the human requirements. There were 2 women who were apprentice dog racers. They come up to Carcross and live for months for food and board in order to learn from world champion Michelle. The dogs are bred to, and love to, race. The cacophony of dog barking when we arrived

The elephant in the room when it comes to our holiday is of course that the nicer and warmer and friendlier your waiter/guide/driver/bartender is, the more likely you are to leave a larger tip. Attached is a photo of a sign in one of the buses we went on. The irony of employers pleading for customers to tip well so that the employees can earn a living wage and not starve is obviously lost on the employer. At some point in the not too distant future the filthy rich are going to have to realise, as did Henry Ford a hundred years ago, that unless you pay your employees well they will not have the income to buy your products – that paying your employees well is enlightened self-interest. I fear that like the global warming apocalypse that approaches, unbridled self-interest will see the rich cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

“HISTORY - Papa Hegel he say that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can’t even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.” – The Hipcrime Vocab Chad C Mulligan

Having got that off my chest let me tell you now of one of THE great culinary experiences of my life.

For dinner the night of the Skagway visit, we had booked to have the CRAB SHACK feast. In Australia our most common crab is the blue swimmer. Yes we have mud crabs with their huge claws but blue swimmers are the crab ordinaire for most of us. Blue swimmers have claws and legs of about 15cm. We had king crab legs of 40 cm – four of them! It was a treat for the palate with this wonderful sweet crab meat in seemingly industrial quantities. A true highlight amongst many on the trip thus far.

Glacier Bay

From liz:

Up here they sell a very rare gem called ammolite; only found in Alberta, it is the fossil ammolite that has opalised, with deep colours as opposed to our opal that tends to be more subtle. This is so rare that at the end of season sales they drop prices up to 70%!t(MISSING)o get rid of it rather than take it to Caribbean to sell or keep it for next year, and yes, they just happened to get another shipment in yesterday...... One ring I looked at was $600, and the sterling silver mount was quite badly done. Carvings from very rare fossilised woolly mammoth tusk are also everywhere; obviously easier to get hold of than I expected!

In Glacier Bay today – we feel very privileged to have seen 2 glaciers, absolutely awesome in the literal sense. They are as far into the bay as you can go. The inlet in front of the first, Johns Hopkins, is only opened in September (how good is our timing!), to allow for the whelping seals to stay safely away from orcas and cruise ships through summer. One mile across the face, 12 miles long and rising 150 ft above water , it calved several times while we were watching. Even small amounts breaking off sound like thunder. The second is the Margerie; 1 mile across, 21 miles long and 250 ft above the water, it towered over us. They are both stable glaciers; that is, they are not shrinking, making them 2 of only 12 of Alaska’s 10 000 glaciers that are not retreating. Absolutely wonderful to see. I can now tell my stage 3 HSIE class that the blue colours in the Antarctic ice are for real!

On Thursday we had the privilege of experiencing Glacier Bay. As Liz says cruise ships are only allowed in to Glacier Bay in September. The glaciers are mammoth constructions of nature. Will post some pictures but this was truly nature at its most grand and spectacular. It is only in real life and only by drawing comparisons with the 15 storeys of deck we were standing on that you get a feel for the scale of the glaciers. Those stable glaciers that reach the salt water move 2 metres per day, every day of the year. 6 metres per day x 2 km wide x 80 + metres high x 365 days of ice dropping into the sea. You work it out. Many glaciers have ceased to be stable and are now landlocked. They are called Hanging Glaciers. They are receding at an alarming rate because of global warming.

The glaciers are amazing things. Many a very “dirty” because of the rock and gravel they “pick up” as they move. In some there are the most amazing blues from sky blue top aquamarine. Beautiful. Others had what appeared to be Tyre tracks in them cause by the rocks and gravel. Glaciers grind soil and rock as they move (at glacial pace).

College Fiord

It would be impossible you would think to top Glacier Bay. That is until the next day we sail into Prince William Sound and on to College Fiord. There we saw in quick succession something like 10 glaciers. At the end of the fiord is the king of the glaciers. 250 feet high, going back as far as the eye can see and 2 miles across when it reaches College Fiord. It is massive. One of the difficulties in viewing these glaciers is that you lose completely your sense of scale. The Park Rangers who come on board give us the dimensions: 2 miles wide, 250 feet high. But from the ship which is itself 17 storeys high it is impossible to properly “see” the glacier with any kind of normal perspective. Words can’t fully describe the majesty of the experience. The photos i put up will also struggle to convey that experience. For us this has been a truly magical experience.

Saturday

I write this in a 15 minute window prior to departure. Our train awaits. As does a 1 hr departure ordeal. This is our first cruise. Quite probably it will be our last – for the foreseeable future at least. We have thoroughly enjoyed our cruise. The last 2 days could not have been undertaken except on a cruise ship and possibly on this cruise ship. There are services galore on this ship from casino to spas to beauty treatment to bingo to open air cinema to a kids/youth space to shopping to restaurants to gym to.... We saw a New York/Puerto Rican comic the other night. He had this great line about the food available. He reckons he saw a guy going back for “fourths” at the buffet. “They’re not going to make any money out of me.” Food is the one constant on this ship (and any cruise). It is available 24 hours a day and you can have as much as you want (unless you want to do formal dining). We tried to stay disciplined and made sure we ate lots of fruit and veg (as opposed to pastries, cake, desserts without number ....). I found the gym helped. I managed to get there on all but 2 days. Plus the shore excursions meant you did a fair bit of walking. Liz’s choir gig was a treat and overall we’ve enjoyed the experience.

I am now writing this on the train from Whittier to Denali National Park. It’s 10 hours on the train. We are in the upstairs “bubble” car caboose on the train. There is no wifi. Our Amtrak train from Vancouver to Seattle had it. We just passed through Anchorage. There is a very famous waterway here called Ship Creek. I asked our American companions on the other side of the table and he agreed: “without a paddle”.

You’re not going to believe this. Emily, our train supervisor/guide comes from Oregon. She has a degree in Environmental science. She is heading to PORT STEPHENS in December. 6 DEGREES!!!!!!

So we will hopefully catch up with Emily and her boyfriend when they get there. I love this stuff when it happens.

The scenery is spectacular. Just passed Mt McKinley, the highest MT in the US named after President McKinley the second president to be assassinated. Pres. Garfield came here to drive the golden spike for the railroad in 1902 or thereabouts, had dinner and set sail and promptly died that night. Maybe Sarah Palin should have taken notice of the portents .

Just crossed over Hurricane gulch trestle bridge. 300 foot high. 10 mile speed limit.

Denali occupies a fair whack of Alaska. It was the first national park in Alaska and is approaching its centenary.

The trees are changing colour very quickly; snow has dusted the peaks of a few mountains. The aspen and beech are bright yellow against the grey green of the spruce, and a small plant called fireweed is a brownish red. We’ve seen beaver lodges and red salmon in rivers, but no bears or moose or caribou. But we tasted reindeer sausage today – just like salami or cabanossi!

Barney and Liz do North America

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