Our Trip to Alaska
May 2004
Our plan was to see the interior of Alaska by land and to cruise the Inside Passage. We knew very little about Alaska except that it's very big, it gets very cold, and it doesn't get very dark in the summer. We expected that it would still be rather cold in late May, and it might also be rainy, so we prepared by taking winter coats as well as rain jackets and rain pants. If it was raining and 33 degrees, we might have to curtail activities, but we were ready for anything else. We found out a couple of things.
1. It wasn't all that cold. The day we arrived in Fairbanks it was 70 degrees. Generally, temperatures varied from 50 degrees or higher in the morning to 60s in the afternoon. The winter gear stayed in the suitcases, and rain jackets provided plenty of warmth.
2. Alaska opens for business about the first week in June. People like us going there before Memorial Day will find some things, like restaurants, not yet open. This can be a little inconvenient but generally just limits tourists to the more expensive hotel restaurants. There was no shortage of gift shops, though.
We flew into Fairbanks on Sunday, May 16th. Fairbanks is not a large city by the standards of the lower 48 states, but it's pretty important to the region, partly because it's about as far north as you can go by paved road. A great deal of Alaska is accessible only by water, air, or dog sled.
This was our hotel in Fairbanks and this was the bed.
Not really, our hotel was very nice, although the restaurant was overpriced,
and we ate at Kentucky Fried Chicken the first evening. A disappointment
which we more than made up for by eating at the Salmon Bake the second evening.
We had two big activities on the second day. The first was a paddlewheel boat ride up the Chena River. We saw how little runway a bush pilot needs for takeoff and landing and why you're safer not riding with a bush pilot. We saw Susan Butcher's dog yard and dogs and a demonstration of sled dogs pulling an All Terrain Vehicle around a small lake (since there was no snow for a dog sled). Susan Butcher has frequently won the Iditarod dog sled race. Hey, people in Alaska need something to do, and dog sled racing appeals to them. We saw a museum type Indian village and saw Eskimo and Athabascan heritage demonstrations. That's where the pictures above really came from.
In the afternoon we toured a gold dredge. Since gold is very heavy, it
sinks to the bottoms of streams. You can get some by digging as deep as
you can and panning or sluicing it to make gravity separate the heavy gold from
the lighter non-gold, using water to help the gold to separate. The
dredge just did the same thing on a large scale, digging out everything in the
stream down to bedrock and processing it in the same way but with large
machinery. As part of the experience, 
we
got to pan for gold. We were each given a poke (sack) with dirt in it, and we
panned it until the gold remained. It was fun. I'd like to try it
where I'm not limited to the small amount they let us pan. Anyway, we got
$9.00 worth of gold, so we bought a $10.00 pendant to put it in.
We even had a chance to see some of the Alaska pipeline. 
It's
40 inch pipe, 5/8 inch thickness, fully insulated. The supports permit a
great deal of flexibility, including thermal and seismic movement.
Supports that penetrate the permafrost have integral coolers with fins on top
for radiating heat and an ammonia operating fluid which circulates by natural
convection.
The next day started out drizzly. This sentence will be implied for almost every day of the trip, so I'll just say it once and get it over with. We went by train from Fairbanks to Denali National Park. The traditional name of Mount McKinley is Mount Denali, and the mountain is in the park. As you are no doubt aware, Mt. McKinley is the highest point in North America. Those who are familiar with mountains will also know that important mountains can create their own weather and make themselves invisible. Mt. McKinley is usually invisible.
We took a bus tour into the park. It was supposed to take 4-6 hours,
but it was over in less time than that, because most of the one road was not 
yet
open. It is the nature of permafrost that pockets of it sometimes melt,
leaving soft spots, and this phenomenon seems to happen under roads. So
there has to be annual road repair activity before the park road can be opened
fully. We saw some wildlife and some scenery, but we did not see the
mountain.
On the following day we considered taking a plane ride to see the mountain but figured: 1. It's really just a big chunk of dirty old rock, 2. You can't fully appreciate a scene on the ground from a window on the side of an airplane, and 3. It would cost about as much to fly out to the mountain as to fly to London. So we were disappointed at not seeing the mountain, but we decided to do some hiking. The best hiking trails are far into the part of the park that wasn't yet open, but we enjoyed a couple of rather easy trails near the ranger visitor center. We found out that the melting under the road also occurs under the trail, leaving somewhat unsettling soft spots, but we didn't sink in or even get muddy.
The following day was spent in traveling by train from Denali National Park
to Anchorage. It could have been done more quickly, but this was an
observation train, and it traveled relatively slowly so that we could enjoy the
scenery. We were delighted on the trip to have a chance to see Mt.
McKinley very clearly and actually
from a closer point than anywhere the road goes in the park. We had an
even rarer treat later when we rounded a bend in the tracks and saw three major
mountain peaks, (left to right) Mounts Foraker, Hunter, and McKinley, in one scene. That view only happens three to five times a
year, according to our car steward. It would have been a great
place to stop the train and let me get on top for a really excellent
picture. We didn't get service that good, though.
We spent the night in Anchorage but didn't see much of it. The following day we took a scenic bus trip from Anchorage to Seward. We saw Beluga whales along the way, although mostly Beluga whales look like sandbars that move. The harbor at Anchorage isn't deep enough for cruise ships, so Seward is a better port. Seward looked like an interesting town, but we didn't have a chance to tour it because we went pretty directly to the cruise ship. We noticed along the way that tourists can see the high points of the city on the Seward's Trolley, which looked like it would be an interesting excursion.
Our ship was the Rhyndam, part of the Holland America fleet. The ship was filled with under 1000 passengers and, it seemed, an almost equal number of crew and support people. We were treated royally in everything. If we hadn't been careful, we could have been eating almost constantly. We did manage to avoid that, because we didn't want to gain 2 pounds per day like the average cruise passenger does. This was a very comfortable cruise. One thing that I hadn't really been anticipating, probably because I hadn't been paying attention, was that most of the cruising took place while we were sleeping. So this was mostly a movable luxury hotel. Except for the first day and the last day, all of the movement took place at night.
The
first night and the first day we cruised from Seward to Hubbard Glacier, which
is in an inlet of the Inner Passage. The glacier is 400 feet tall, 5 miles across
and 76 miles long. We couldn't get close enough to fully appreciate the
size of it, and we didn't see it calving much, although we did see a little bit
of ice
falling into the inlet. But one thing I did appreciate while standing at
the rail to get pictures was that the wind blowing off the glacier is
cold. If I'd known where my stocking cap was in the suitcase, I'd have
gotten it. As it was, I had the hood of my rain jacket providing as much
wind and cold barrier as I could get from it, and I was really feeling the
experience. You might notice from the picture that the glacier has a
bluish or turquoise color to it. This is not distortion -- glacier water
has absorptive and reflective properties that make it appear to be that color.
The glacier near Fairbanks actually looked a rather deep turquoise.
The following morning we awoke in Sitka. As with the other towns we visited in the Inside Passage, Sitka lies in an inlet, with many picturesque small islands around it. The ship wasn't able to dock at Sitka but had to anchor in the harbor and send boats (the lifeboats, actually) to shore. Sitka was the original capitol of Alaska and was the place where the treaty was signed transferring ownership from Russia to the United States. It's a fascinating, picturesque, and historic place, and it has a national park with some really large trees. After seeing the puny black spruce trees that survive on the permafrost in the interior without ever growing very much, the big trees in Sitka were particularly impressive. Sitka also has a college with Presbyterian roots.
The next morning we awoke in Skagway. That town grew very large during
the Alaskan gold rush in 1898 and practically died out when the gold rush
ended. The town supported some military forces in World War II, when there
were fears of invasion anywhere on the coast. It also grew when the Alaska
Highway (The AlCan highway) was built. Since then, it's existed as a
tourist attraction, 
mostly
to tell the tales of the Klondike gold rush. It's another fascinating
town, and we would have enjoyed it more if we hadn't had rain most of the day.
The next day we were in Juneau. Naturally, everyone knows that Juneau
is the current capitol of Alaska. Pictured is the capitol building.
It's as unassuming (boring, really) inside as it is on the
outside, but apparently it does the job. Juneau got its start and most of
its development because of gold in the area. It's the only state capitol
in the U.S. that's inaccessible by road, and the Alaskans would like to change
it to a location that's easier to get to, but they've found out that it would
cost more than a little money, so the proposals to move from Juneau to Anchorage
or some other location haven't had enough support to happen.
The
Mendenhall canyon and glacier are just a few miles from Juneau and a worthwhile
side trip. Given enough time, we could have gotten 
quite
close to this glacier, but we were limited because the bus was returning to
Juneau. The lower right corner of the glacier is shown to the right, and
that is the way it looked, colors and all.
The last town we stopped at was Ketchikan. It's the town the farthest
south in Alaska, and it got its start as a place for collecting supplies for the
gold rush. It rains enough in Ketchikan that they keep track of rainfall
in feet, not inches. It always rains, and we were prepared for a gloomy
day. But the weather cleared in the afternoon, and we had beautiful
weather and a very enjoyable time. We took a duck tour (bus/boat that was 
a
World War II amphibious personnel carrier, designated DUKW). In the harbor, near the fish
canneries, we saw probably hundreds of bald eagles.
Part of the history of Ketchikan is its red light district, now converted
into shops, and it's probably the most quaint and attractive section of
town. They also have a famous lumberjack show, but we
weren't interested enough to go to the show. We just walked around and
enjoyed the town and the good weather.
The last day and two nights we cruised to Vancouver, where we took our return airplane flight. Vancouver would be another interesting place to see some time, but we didn't get to see much of it on this trip. Our return flight was on Friday, May 28th, and we arrived at home around midnight.
So, a general comment about cruising is that it's a nice way to get from place to place without having to change hotel rooms. But the only place where the ship was our observation point for land scenery was the glacier. We cruised mostly at night, and the ship did not closely approach the land except to go to port. We did see some whales at some distance from the ship. Mostly they looked like geysers, but knowing they were actually whales was a nice bonus. We also saw a few porpoises briefly. You normally wouldn't experience that from a bus. Cruising is an experience, it's one of the few ways to see the Alaska Inside Passage, and it's very enjoyable.
