Here There and Everywhere

Expat wanderer

To Yakutat on the M/V Kennicott

Groan, docked at Yakutat early. Although we slept well, we are not eager to
debark at 0600, so we stay on the boat, which is a really fun decision.
AdventureMan discovers the upper aft viewing deck, inside and outside, and we
watch a fishing boat come in, the fisherman scurry up the slippery ladder, the
small tractors set up a weighing station and watch the fisherman upload his
morning’s catch, and see it graded, weighed and sorted all in a matter of
minutes. Three huge loads! It’s a hard life, being a fisherman, a lot of heavy
lifting and working in the rain and stormy weather. 00YakutatFisherman

00YakutatFishermanDocks

00YakutatFishermansCatch

00YFishermansHold

00HaulingUpCatch

00CraneCatch

00OverviewCraneCatch

00BeginningDumpCatch

00DumpingCatch

00IcedCatch

00SortingAndWeighing

00Catch2

00Catch3

Yakutat is a small town, a fisherman’s town. Departing Yakutat:

00DepartingYakutat

The rest of the day we are out in open water, and it is grey, grey, grey. I have to give the birders a lot of creds; they are manning the observation post in the bow and there are never fewer than three, with their bird spotting scopes.

00FogAndMist

We spend the afternoon alternately reading and walking all the decks to see if
we are missing anything. We are not. It is a dull day, not unlike many travel
days, the difference being that we have a nice private cabin where we can hang
out, re-charge our camera batteries, our phones, our iPad. It’s a good thing we
have the iPad, I can read, I can play Sudoku. I iPad allows me to
take notes (this was actually a note) because THERE IS NO WI-FI onboard. I am so shocked, I pretend to be cool about it but inside I am sort of freaking out. I just assumed there would be wi-fi everywhere. I was wrong.

AdventureMan, ever the gentleman, volunteered to take the upper bunk, but I
insisted. I am nimble on ladders, and I like being able to perch up here in my
lair and look out our window. I saw more Orcas playing the first day, and can
keep an eye out for when the sky lightens and the sun makes an appearance. Local weather people actually call these “sunbreaks.”

00Sunbreak

The cabin also has a generous supply of outlets – each bunk lamp in the cabin has an outlet plug, and then there are two other convenient double sockets.

We reserved a 4-bed with bath because we wanted an outside room – and because we like the convenience of having our own bathrooms. The two unused bunks are
stowed, and we have a large lounge chair, a table, and another chair. The toilet and shower are in a cabinet – lots of nice, hot water – and there is a sink outside the cabinet, with a mirror and another outlet, and separate overhead light. Very convenient, and it feels very roomy.

Years ago when I was off to college, the airlines were on strike and I had to
take the military ship Rose from Bremerhaven to the US and then fly Air Canada
to my university town. Just imagine – a military transport ship full of college
students. It was truly a wonderful time. I told AdventureMan this morning that I remember keeping my suitcase up in my bunk, and dressing up there as we only had like 14 inches between left side bunks and right side bunks, and with four
college girls, that wasn’t much. I can’t remember, but I don’t think we had our own toilet and shower, I think we had to use group ones. This cabin is about 8 feet across and 12 feet long, with the shower and toilet cabinet about 2.5 by 6 feet. It is tiny, but it works. We have a rack of hanging 32 hanging hooks, which might sound like a lot, but you use a lot of different outdoor clothing, layers of clothing; long sleeved shirts, hoodies, rain-gear, fleece, sweatshirts – the weather changes, you can be warm – but soaked.

Lunch is warming and healthy:

00SaladChili

September 5, 2013 Posted by | Adventure, Alaska, Cultural, ExPat Life, Living Conditions, Photos, Road Trips, Travel, Work Related Issues | , , , | Leave a comment

“You Look Like a Happy Woman” on the M/V Kennicott

One of the birders approached me.

“I’ve been watching you. You always have a smile on your face. You watch the scenery and smile, and you look like a happy woman.”

“I am. I am really happy to be here.”

I do like living in Pensacola, I love being near our son and his wife and our two adorable grandchildren, but oh, this is where I was born. The sea is part of my blood, the piney clean smell of the Alaskan air, the clothes – jeans and something warm – this is how I grew up, this is how I am comfortable. I am. I am a happy woman.

Here are some photos from this first day on board the M/V Kennicott:

Humpback whales!
00Humpbacks

View from our cabin
00ViewFromCabin

I couldn’t figure out what this is, or if it is one creature, like a whale, or two, like a dolphin. We often saw things and had to try to puzzle out what we were seeing.

00DolphinWhale

00Scenery1

00Scenery2

00Scenery3

00Lifeboat

00FishingBoatNearPelican

00SunsetNears

00AlaskanSunset1

I mentioned before, the shock of discovering that the M/V Kennicott would not be wired for internet. It was equally shocking that it did not have a tower for cell phone coverage, or however that is done. Ferries in Seattle, just little commuter ferries, they’re wired! WiFi is everywhere. Really, I guess I am mad at myself for thinking all Alaska would also be wired; I just projected my own prejudices and got trapped in them.

But my compass on my iPhone worked, and as you know, I am also a map person. As we were to be heading out into the Gulf of Alaska (which would be North) my compass was reading South, and the afternoon sun was also on the wrong side of the boat. “Do you know where we are?” I asked a guy who looked like he would know as we picked up dinner. “We are going backwards!” he almost shouted! “We are ahead of schedule, so the pilot is giving an apprentice from Michigan a lesson in pilotage!”

We were headed into an inlet that kept getting narrower, and narrower, and when we came to a village, Pelican, the ferry turned around and headed back where we had been coming from. I had wanted to see the mouth of Glacier Bay, but I never saw anything that looked anything like it, not until the return trip. We had some late day fog, so maybe the entrance and glaciers were shrouded. On the way back, we saw so many glaciers that at some point, I can’t even believe I am saying this, it was like “oh yeh, another glacier.”

Screen shot 2013-09-03 at 4.59.50 PM

The green line is more or less the route we took from Juneau to Yakutat to Whittier to Chenega Bay, to Kodiak Island and to Homer – and then back. The first day out, if you look at Juneau, near the mouth to the Gulf of Alaska you will see off to the left a narrow inlet down Chicagof Island to Pelican. That was the side trip we took on our first evening on the M/V Kennicott.

Screen shot 2013-09-03 at 5.26.50 PM

September 4, 2013 Posted by | Adventure, Alaska, Beauty, Cultural, ExPat Life, Geography / Maps, Photos, Road Trips, Travel, Wildlife | , , , , , | 2 Comments

The M/V Kennicott and the Birders

I hesitate to even write this post, but it was a significant part of our first day on board. AdventureMan and I headed for the forward deck just after we had eaten lunch, and found a nice place to watch departure and the whales and the passing scenery. As we stood there, a crowd began to gather, and they were all chirping and grabbleing, and the group got larger and larger and we kind of got shoved aside. It wasn’t intentional, it’s just as the group grew in size, like minded birders, they just backed out, and pushed into us.

Birders. There was a group of birders on board. We like birders. We belong to a bird group! But these birders are seriously focused people. Have you seen the movie The Big Year? These birders were loaded for bear, all decked out in foul weather gear, real rubber overalls and headgear, and had serious huge single-focus lensed cameras and equally formidable bird spotters.

They took over the forward deck.

00TheBirders

Like I say, my emotions are mixed on this, because we like birds, too. We like people who like birds. We don’t much like being pushed aside, and having to climb over equipment set up where people usually walk. For those inside, the best viewing is from the forward lounge, and there were so many of the birders, busy spotting, that you really couldn’t see from the inside, nor could you get one of these prime positions on the forward deck because they would be first up in the morning to get the spot, and they would hang out there dawn to dusk.

One of the birders turned out to be a person who knows a very good old friend of mine – life is funny that way, and you can meet some great people on the Alaskan Ferries.

We had to admire their focus, and their persistence, and their seriousness with which they pursued their passion.

00Birders2

When we hit Yakutat, they were first off the boat, early, 5 in the morning kind of early, the whole flock of ’em, beady little eagle eyes sharply seeking unusual birds for their check lists. You could hear them making bird noises. Back on the ship, someone would say something and all eyes, all binoculars, all cameras would turn in one direction, and people would take their best shots. They manned their prime observation post with military dedication.

They left the boat at Whittier, on the second day. We wished the all success, and we were glad to have access to the front viewing deck once again.

September 4, 2013 Posted by | Adventure, Alaska, Arts & Handicrafts, Birds, Character, Civility, Community, Cultural, ExPat Life, Humor, Living Conditions, Travel | , | Leave a comment

Welcome Aboard the M/V Kennicott

When most people think of an Alaskan cruise, they think of the ships the size of small cities. We saw many of them in Juneau, docked, three, four, five at a time, inundating the town. In a town of around 30,000 the population can nearly double when five cruise ships are in port at the same time.

Juneau has a lot of services in place to handle the tourist demands. You can sign up for glacier tours, or whale watching tours, or both right at the landing dock. You can have a fine meal, you can buy tanzanite or brown diamonds, or fine sporting gear just across the street, or you can take a cable car up to the top of Mt. Roberts – right from the dock where you landed.

No. We didn’t do that.

We boarded the M/V Kennicott out in Auke Bay, where the Alaska Marine Highway Ferries come in and out shuttling the locals from town to town. There are ferry routes that are regional, like you can take a ferry to Haines, or Skagway, or Ketchikan, or Petersburg, places on the SE panhandle of Alaska, or you can, like us, take a ferry that goes all the way around the Gulf of Alaska from Juneau via Yakutat, Whittier, Chenega Bay, Kodiak Island to Homer. You can even continue on to Seldovia before you head back. Some years, when the ferry hasn’t broken down, you can take a ferry all the way down to Unalaska/Dutch Harbor, all the way down on the very tip of the Aleutian Islands. Wouldn’t that be a grand adventure!?

It’s all part of the Alaska Marine Highway System, a very practical part of the entire Alaska transportation system which is a lot like Africa. You take a big plane or a big ship to get there, then you take a smaller ferry or a small – even tiny – airplane to get to the more remote places. Juneau is not connected to anywhere. All the highways end. Kodiak Island is . . . well, an island. There are many remote places that there is no way to reach without ferry or tiny aircraft service.

We picked up our tickets at the Ferry Terminal a couple days in advance, and were surprised to see that while the ferry was scheduled to leave at 12:00 noon, boarding said 0900 in the morning.

No problem. We were packed and ready to go, grabbed a little breakfast and coffee, and the shuttle took us out to the ferry terminal, about 15 minutes away. The Best Western Country Lane shuttle makes everything so easy; they take you to the airport, they take you to the terminal, they take people to the restaurants they want to go to, they run you downtown – a trip that costs about $35 if you come in to the Ferry Terminal and want to go into downtown Juneau. The shuttle is one reason why we chose this hotel, and we were so glad we did.

So we arrived, on time, at 0900 to board the ferry and the guy at the counter looked surprised and said “You want to board now?” and I said “It says we are supposed to board at 0900. It doesn’t make sense to me, either, but here we are.” He said “OK, you can board if you want.”

It’s not like an airplane. It’s not like you see “Boarding at 0900” and it means you MUST be there at 0900, in this case, it means “you can board if you want to.” LOL, this is my culture, and it’s confusing to me!

Laurie, the boarding purser, checks our I.D. and checks our tickets and waves us to the vehicle entrance with our rolley-bags, saying “just go in here and take the elevator.”

It wasn’t until after the trip that I learned the M/V part of M/V Kennicott means Motor Vessel, i.e. this is a ship that transports motor vehicles. We love learning new ways how things are done, and the boarding and unloading of the vessel was endlessly fascinating to us. Great technology, and it also requires great planning and execution.

00MVKennicott

We went to the purser’s office to get our cabin, but the cabins weren’t clean yet. He suggested we go up to the forward lounge, have a cup of coffee, he would call us when the rooms were ready.

00PursersOffice

The forward lounge was full of Alaskan art objects. This is a shaman’s mask:
00AlaskanArt1

This is a Haida clam basket (basket weaving is so fascinating to me, all those patterns. How did people figure out, oh so long ago, how to gather living plant material and weave it in these ways? On our trip, we saw baskets woven so finely that you could boil water in them. Imagine!)

00IndianClamBasket

I explored around a little, well, I snooped. While the cabins were being cleaned, I looked in to see the various kinds of cabins. It was so interesting. The majority of the cabins did not have bathrooms.

There were one person little cabins, like a booth, with two seats that would slide down and together, and a table that could be clipped up when a person didn’t want to sit at the table and wanted to sleep on a flat surface. It was a pretty narrow surface, and a room like a coffin, but it locked, and it would be a safe place for one person to sleep and keep their bags safe, too.

There were two person roomettes, they also had a little table and two bunks that attached to the wall unless you wanted to sleep, in which case they came down.

There were four person cabins without baths and four person cabins with baths. If only two people were in the cabin, the unused bunks were attached up to the walls, and you had a couch to sit on during the day. The outside cabins had nice large windows, big square ones.

There was a solarium up on top designated for campers. There are a LOT of campers in Alaskan, not just Alaskans, but also visiting campers from all over the world. The solarium gives them a safe dry place to pitch their tents. There are also big lockers where they can stow their gear.

People are also allowed to camp in the aft lounges, upper and lower, but the signs ask that you only roll out your sleeping gear between 8 at night and 8 in the morning, so that all the passengers can use the lounges during daylight hours.

This isn’t a cruise ship. This is transportation. This is how people get from one place to another, how they take their kids to boarding school when their village is too small to support a school. This is how high school teams might travel to their away games. These are working ships.

00KennicottShipsDirectory

When the purser announced that people could come check in to their cabins, I went, but I ended up at the end of a long line. I saw people get assigned and then the purser would hand them a set: one pillow, two sheets, one pillowcase and one blanket. (@) (@) ! No! No! I did not sign up to be making up bunk beds! Enough democracy!

Lucky me, those sets were for the roomettes, and you don’t even have to rent them, you can do without them if you prefer. I think the rental per night for the set is $3.00, but they also have it broken down, so if you just want to rent a pillow and pillow case it might be $1.00 per night, or just a blanket. Our cabin is beautiful and spacious. We have a big window, and dolphins romp by, and beautiful mysteriously foggy islands. We have our own toilet and shower, thanks be to God, and a washstand with plenty of clean towels. This is heaven. 🙂

The food is not elegant, but neither is it institutional. It is a giant step above McDonalds, or any of the fast food outlets. These are the menus posted in the hallway leading to the galley (kitchen):

00GalleyMenu1

00GalleyMenu2

00GalleyMenu3

00GalleyMenu4

There are a variety of food stations – drinks of all kinds on the left, a salad and soup station on your right. Every day there were three soup choices, a soup like chicken noodle or French onion, a smoked salmon or clam chowder, and a chili. There were four prepared salads, and a big bar with greens and accoutrements; carrots, tiny tomatoes, peas, etc.

00GalleyWithFoodStations

There was also a deli sandwich and pizza station, where the lady would make you what you want.

There was another station, the hot station, where you could order several different hot things. There would be three main meal choices at every meal, like beef stew, salmon steak or pork fried rice, for example, and a veg and a starch. They even had brown rice.

00GalleyHotStation

After you paid, cafeteria style, you enter the dining hall. It’s a working ship, remember, so it’s not just paid eaters who eat there, but also there is a microwave available for people who bring their own food. I saw one young man who had the BEST food, the first day he had a cucumber with salt and pepper, and bread. At breakfast, he had brought his own granola kind of mix. (Then he was gone, it’s a ferry, and people come and go.)

There are families with children warming up spaghettio’s, and single women with bowls of Ramen. It’s all very democratic, everyone sitting in the same dining hall.

00DiningHall

There is always a large display full of desserts; they must have specialized in desserts, very tempting desserts. AdventureMan succumbed one meal to a piece of Coconut Cream Pie, and I yielded to a Blueberry Pie at another meal.

They also had all kinds of condiments, in case you like a little kick with your foods, the more common ones, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise you pumped into small containers, but there were also things like Thai chili sauce, Tiger Sauce, Tabasco sauce, soy sauce – things different people like.

00Condiments

There were several booths with Alaskan wildlife and bird life on them:

00Tabletops

Near the dining hall, across from the gift shop was a small room for small children with a rubber floor 🙂

00ChildrensRoom

This is the bar, which was closed every day until around 5:00 and it was the only place on board that sold alcohol. You weren’t supposed to take it out of the bar. They had Alaskan beer, which is very tasty.

00ForwardLounge

This was lunch our first day on board, Smoked Salmon Chowder and a shrimp salad:

00SalmonChowderAndShrimpSalad

After every meal, we walk the decks, and, in fact, other than climbing in and out of my bunk, most of our exercise was walking, walking, walking, and climbing stair up and down. It didn’t do us any harm 🙂 The scenery is ever changing. Our first day out, we pass the same humpbacks we had seen on the whale watch the day before, spouting, someone always can be counted on to shout “Thar she blows!” The Alaskan waters team with wildlife; sparkling fish jumping, dolphins, seals, sea lions, otter – we saw them all. I would be typing up notes in our cabin, facing out the window, and I would see a couple dolphins just zipping along, so graceful, just doing their dolphin thing.

September 3, 2013 Posted by | Adventure, Alaska, Arts & Handicrafts, Beauty, Cross Cultural, Cultural, Customer Service, Entertainment, Exercise, ExPat Life, Local Lore, Road Trips, Travel, Wildlife | , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A Whaling Adventure with Captain Alan on The Scania

This is what we were waiting for – a trip out to see the whales! We researched all the companies offering these outings, and Adventures in Alaska caught our attention because of the maximum number of people they carry – 12. On our trip out, there were 7 customers, Captain Alan, and his brother Andy.

Other whale watch trips were leaving at the same time – with twenty five or more passengers seated side by side in rows INSIDE. On The Scania, there is an upper deck, a lower deck, and an inside cabin and you can move freely up and down and from side to side for the best view, and the best angle if you are shooting photos.

Once we were all aboard, we zoomed down the coast, hoping to see Orcas, and there they were! It was such a thrill.

This is what other boats looked like:
00WhaleWatcher

Passengers have to shoot from inside:
00WhaleWatchers

Leaving Auke Bay en route to the Orcas:
00LeavingAukeBay

Captain Alan moving out to insure that we see Orcas:
00CptAlan

Our first glimpse of Orca
00FirstGlimpseOrca

At first we saw dolphin . . . and then we saw Orcas moving really fast and then some commotion and then . . . no more dolphin. The Orcas are feeding:

00OrcaTailFeeding

Orca diving
00OrcaDiving

These are my favorite moments of all – the baby Orca was just irrepressible, dancing, twisting, diving and twirling – so entertaining, and so cute!
00OrcaBabyGyrating

00OrcaBabyTwirling

We also saw Humpback whales, sea lion, and eagles. It was a truly grand day.

00HumpbacksBlowing

00HumpbacksFeeding

September 3, 2013 Posted by | Adventure, Alaska, Beauty, Cultural, Entertainment, Environment, ExPat Life, Travel, Wildlife | , , , | 1 Comment

Grandma’s Feather Bed Restaurant, Juneau, Alaska

We saw people shuttling to Grandma’s from our nearby hotel, the Best Western Country Lane. Country Lane is spacious, near the airport and Alaska Marine Highway Ferry Terminal, and just 8 miles of Juneau city center.

00BWCountryLaneRoom

00BWCountryLanesKitchen

00Fucshias

00BWCountryLanesFucshias

Grandma’s Feather Bed is both another Best Western Hotel and a restaurant, but it has the feeling of a B&B. It is quaint and inviting, without having an old lady feel to it:

00BestWesternGranny's

This is where we ate:
00BWGOurTable

A view of the restaurant
00BWGranniesRestaurant

This was one of my best meals of the entire trip, and I am so sorry I forgot to photograph when it was all pretty on my plate. It was two or three halibut cakes on a salad. The salad dressing was exquisite, the halibut cakes were mostly halibut, perfect, and they were served with a sweet red pepper coulis that was to die for, very fresh. You can see a halibut cake remaining on the side of the plate, LOL.
00RemainderHalibutCakes

Cole slaw:

00ColeSlaw

AdventureMan had the salmon burger, which he said was also delicious, and also coated with the same delicious coulis.

00BWSalmonBurger

September 3, 2013 Posted by | Alaska, Cooking, Eating Out, Hotels, Living Conditions, Restaurant, Road Trips, Travel | , | Leave a comment

The Berry Patch Cabin in Eagle River Camp Grounds

As we were hiking through the Eagle River Camp Grounds, we could hear a dog barking, barking as if he were having a lot of fun. We saw a cabin, and one of the park rangers playing with a big brown happy dog. We walked over; he had just finished cleaning out the cabin and it was empty. He asked if we would like to take a look.

I hope you are sitting down. The rental of this beautiful cabin, per night, is $45.

This is the interior. You can see where people can sleep, downstairs and up. Maybe room for 8 – 12 people.

00BerryPatch1

00BerryPatch2

From the table, this is your view:
00ViewFromBP

Sign on front of cabin:
00BPSign

View from your front porch:
00ViewFromBPFrontPorch

You have to bring in your own equipment, including propane to run the heating stove, and your own bedding. There might be running water. You would need all your sleeping gear, food prep, and there are many electrical outlets in the cabin for charging up all the electrical gadgets you probably can’t use. I think we did have phone coverage in the area. 🙂

Although it feels remote, you are not that far from Juneau, and there are major grocery stores even closer. There is a Fred Meyer – where you can pick up just about anything – near the airport.

I dream of bringing our grandson here with us one summer. We’d have to be sure he was old enough to be careful about bears, and any other wildlife. At the same time I dread the logistics. Maybe if I think about it for a couple years, it can become do-able . . .

September 2, 2013 Posted by | Adventure, Alaska, Arts & Handicrafts, Beauty, Building, Cultural, Customer Service, Eating Out, Environment, Exercise, ExPat Life, Living Conditions, Road Trips, Wildlife | Leave a comment

A Trip “Out the Road” to Eagle River

 

One of the things AdventureMan and I did in Juneau was to drive every road. It’s not hard. You drive all the way south, and all the way north on Douglas Island, then you drive out to Thane, then on the Juneau roads, up behind in the basin, and then “out the road.” Everyone in Juneau knows where “out the road” is.

 

When I was a kid, the road got bad just past the airport, on the way to Skater’s Cabin, which I thought was on Auke Lake, but discovered is really on Mendenhall Lake.

00Glacier and Lake

You had to go out the road to get to the airport. You still do, but it is only like six minutes, the road is so good, unless you hit a deer (which we saw happen) and have to stop and call Fish and Wildlife Rescue. You can’t leave an injured animal on the highway.

So we have a morning, and it is not raining! The sun is even peeking out now and then! It’s a beautiful day, we dress warmly and head out the road, out driving all the roads. Look closely, and you will even see blue sky in the photos 🙂  We drive the Lena Point road, looking at all the cabins where we used to go picnicing, then to Amalga Bay, with it’s beautiful still lake and reflections.

00AmalgaBay

You’re just going to have to bear with me as I show you photos with a lot of green in them. It’s not that Pensacola doesn’t have green, but it doesn’t have Alaska greens. I remember in Germany, a long time ago, years ago, having a discussion with AdventureMan about how many different shades of green there are, and ever since then, he has reminded me of that conversation. This year, on this trip, he said “Now I know why you are so sensitive to greens!” Alaska is full of greens, and mostly they are blue greens, and oh, I love the spectrum of blue-greens. 🙂00AmaglaBay2

00AmalgaBay3

As we approached the end of the road, there was heavy road construction going on. Winter is coming, to quote Game of Thrones, and in Alaska that means a short window for all the road reparations that can happen as a result of brutal, icy, rainy, snowy winters. The construction traffic controllers told us it would be about twenty minutes before the pilot car would be back to lead the next line of cars over the broken, rocky, off-road paths, and we decided, in our little 2 wheel drive rental, that we would forego that pleasure. We headed back for Eagle River Picnic Grounds, which were beautiful and serene:

 

This is one of the covered picnic cabins, heavy duty timber

00EagleRiverPicnicShed

 

You can see one of the ferries departing nearby Auke Bay from the ferry terminal00FerryDepartingEagleRiver

00EagleRiverCampsiteView

We head on a little further to the Eagle River Camp Grounds. We are in love! This place is beautiful, with hidden campsites with cabins and campsites for RV’s, but all hidden from sight. No indoor plumbing, but the public restrooms are clean and well kept. You can hike around, there are many trails.

 

Salmon spawning in the stream – the ranger tells us a mother bear and her two cubs were by earlier, but we missed them. You can smell all the rotting salmon on the banks and know that the bear are eating well.00MoreSalmonSpawning

An old dock, long gone, from Eagle River – and look at all those beautiful greens in the background 🙂00EagleRiverCampSites

Seagulls feasting on salmon the bears left behind. Bears are not very efficient eaters; they strip parts of the salmon and leave a whole lot:00SeagullsFeastingonSalmon

A Stellar’s Jay, the kind I grew up with. The Jays in Pensacola are more white with blue markings and much bigger. But look at the blues on his feathers, so intense, so radiant!

 

00StellarsJay

 

We love Eagle River campsites so much you will see more on our way back out through Juneau 🙂

September 2, 2013 Posted by | Adventure, Alaska, Beauty, Birds, color, Exercise, ExPat Life, Living Conditions, Photos, Road Trips, Travel, Wildlife | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The North Douglas Road

AdventureMan spotted this along the North Douglas Road as we explored all the routes that do not lead out of Juneau. Juneau can only be accessed by air or sea; there are no roads in or out of Juneau that connect to anywhere else. There is talk of “A ROAD” and people will ask you whether you are for it or against it. What do you think?

It is possible that Juneau has maintained much of its character and values by being somewhat isolated. On the other hand, perhaps this isolation has restrained Juneau from achieving its full potential.

Once the tourist season is over, there are to big things. Skiing and the Crimson Bear basketball games. Who would think that high school basketball would be so engrossing, but in a small town, the Crimson Bears are king.

We loved this gateway, made of old skis:

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August 24, 2013 Posted by | Alaska, Public Art, Travel, Values | 2 Comments

No Internet??? No Wi-Fi??? No Phone Service???

No, I have not abandoned you.

When my son asked about communicating with us from Alaska, I confidently assured him “oh, Alaska will be like Africa! Land lines are so expensive to install, there will be cell towers everywhere, and besides, my iPhone is covered everywhere! I can use the internet.”

Oh Pride, Intlxpatr, Pride. You speak whereof you do not know!

Our time in Juneau was a lot of fun. From the moment we arrived, it was just so smooth. The airport is small, like Africa. You can be in and out of the airport in minutes. We picked up our car; it was so easy, the reservation was waiting, and the car is out in the small lot. It is a car a lot like our own and we really like it. Not five minutes later, we are in our room at a nearby hotel, and it is a nice room, and of course it has Wi-Fi, that’s how I sent the earlier entries.

I called an old friend of my Mother’s, a friend I remember well from my childhood, she and my mother would laugh a lot together, and our families travelled together, out on a big old Coast Guard cutter fishing in Alaska, or out to islands where we would pick berries, or out, just out, because it was a beautiful weekend and when the weather is good, Alaskans go outside.

We planned to meet up for coffee, and when we did, she was just like the old days, only older. I laughed and told her I am now older than when I knew her before. She laughed at AdventureMan’s jokes, and she had a beautiful living place near where my family used to live, with a view to die for. It reminded me of Kuwait. I could lose hours looking out her window, if I lived there. Eagles flying by, cruise ships coming in and out, the weather changing on the mountain across the way – it was a magnificent location, and it was all made even better by good coffee, good conversation and a great deal of love based on old relationships.

But we needed to go! We had things we needed to see!

This is the view from our friend’s house in West Juneau:

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My old school:

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Alaskan Indian art, painted over a garage door:

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The beach we used to go to, called Sandy Beach. Occasionally a dead walrus would wash up there, causing no end of excitement to us young people.

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AdventureMan found a piece of the sea glass I love:

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I thought this school above was a lot bigger than this . . . . I remember it being a lot bigger . . . LOL!

This is our old house, many many years ago. It used to have a much bigger front yard, before they widened the road. It also seemed farther from the little grocery store near the bridge that my Mom would send me to, but it’s gotten shorter!

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This is the Baranof Hotel, where my parents met. It used to be a very grand hotel, but it is now a Westmark hotel, and while it pretends to still be grand, it is shopworn and tired, and needs a major overhaul to be back in the game. We ate lunch there – to honor my parents meeting – and it was also a very mediocre meal. The very chipper waitress, Holly, tried to make it nice, but the Capitol restaurant needs better lighting and brighter colors. It was very, very dark.

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Some public art. Later as we passed the same location we heard guys call out “The police are coming!” and saw them approach three men who looked like maybe they were drinking or drugging.

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AdventureMan is so patient with me. When I spotted a quilt shop, he said he was going down the street and to call him when I was finished. 🙂

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The best part of the day was picking up our friend for dinner, and hearing her stories. We loved hearing about Juneau in the old days, and hearing her laugh.

August 24, 2013 Posted by | Aging, Alaska, Cross Cultural, Customer Service, ExPat Life, Travel | 4 Comments