Sheroes: Seward to Vancouver

Our last day in Alaska, the ship docked early in the morning in the port of Seward. I was in the glass-sided elevator, going down for disembarkation, when one of the other passengers pointed out the window to a harbor seal. Just swimming around, enjoying itself. It was a nice end to the cruise!

It had rained overnight, but the weather in Seward was quite mild. Just as well, as we weren’t sure how we were going to spend the day before our bus to Anchorage in the evening. Seward looked quite small; the downtown is visible from the cruise terminal, around a bend in the waterfront. Right away T. spotted a sign in the terminal for “Alaskan Bag Lady.” We figured we could use her services.

The Bag Lady’s deal is that for $8 per large bag ($6 for ours) she would lock the bags in her van and deliver them to the small boat harbor later (where all the buses leave from). So we were free to wander around town, unencumbered by our large backpacks. They are really quite comfortable when we’re wearing them, and don’t feel heavy, but for $6 we were more than happy to check them for the day. A free shuttle bus also runs from the terminal so there’s really no excuse not to spend the day in town.

I really liked Seward. It’s the starting point of the historic Iditarod Trail, which predates the modern dogsled race. Alaskan Native villages were connected by the trail for centuries; historically, it ran through the (now abandoned) town of Iditarod. Today, Seward is quite proud of the Iditarod Historic Trail. You can watch a film about it, back to back with a film about the 1964 earthquake and tsunami, for a small donation at the library.

Seward public library and community center

If you are ever in Seward, I cannot recommend the library highly enough. It’s a delightful building, with big windows to look out of—if you can tear yourself away from a good book, that is. The facilities are good, there’s free WiFi, a sunny garden, and a museum downstairs that charges $4. Otherwise, it’s free. Had the weather been worse, we probably would have stayed there all day.

We also got a delicious lunch of crab chowder, salmon L.T. (a variation on the B.L.T. sandwich), and Alaskan beer. The only difficulty was adjusting to having to pay for meals individually, as we’d been spoiled on the ship! When we got back to the harbor the Alaskan Bag Lady was waiting for us, and turned out to be quite a character. She showed us where everyone brought their catch to clean fish, and where the leftovers went, much to the delight of mammals in the harbor. We even saw an otter thanks to her.

Sadly, we had to leave Alaska, which meant a flight out of Anchorage International Airport. To get there, we’d booked a bus that took us on the Seward Highway, classed as a scenic byway. It was, and there are probably times when you can see a lot of wildlife out the bus windows. The mountains are glaciated (i.e., non-volcanic) and reminded me of mountains in Wales or Scotland. They were reflected, crystal clear, in the lakes of Chugach National Forest. And closer to Anchorage, sunset on the Turnagain Arm just seemed to go on forever. The only problem was we couldn’t stop and take pictures.

Out the bus window--not great

Our bus driver did her best to enlighten us with commentary. Did you know, for instance, that Alaska has three million lakes, and most of them don’t even have names? That gives you some idea of the scale of the state.

The bus would have taken us directly to the airport, but we had to stop in downtown Anchorage so T. could get a pin at the Hard Rock Cafe. If she hasn’t told you about her habit I don’t want to spoil it for you, but suffice it to say there are three cities we’ve been to that have Hard Rock Cafes but, for one reason or another, we did not get a pin from them. They are Athens, Cape Town, and Chiang Mai. Guess I know where we’ll be going back to if we ever circle the globe again.

So we ended up in a taxi driven by Rocky Chongkuk, whose son is over in Europe with the  Air Force. I thought, I am really going to miss these characters. Like Hawaii, Alaska is far enough from the other states that it kind of has its own thing going—a really casual thing. I mean when we got to the check-in desk for Alaska Airlines, the woman asked for our names. Our names! She might never have asked for our I.D. at all, except that we were flying back to Canada so she needed to check our passports. Eventually.

Anchorage is not like other airports. For one thing, there is a lot of taxidermy. Everywhere you go in the airport there are stuffed birds or animals, and I have to admit, I don’t see the appeal. I’m not against hunting, and I certainly don’t have a problem with eating what you kill (like the Alaska Bag Lady who told us her boss had a bear-hunting license, so they split a bear). If you’re going to eat meat, there are worse ways to produce it. But a trophy on the wall? Don’t get it, myself.

But there are also kind of charming things, like a vending machine that sold wool socks, hats, and other warm things. All made out of buffalo wool, if you want to call it that. And then there’s this picture of the late Susan Butcher.

I mentioned the modern Iditarod. It is one of the only athletic events in the world in which men and women compete together in the same race—as do male and female sled dogs, sometimes on the same team. And so it was that in a period of six years, the Iditarod was won by a woman five times. Four of those victories went to Susan Butcher's team, which also held the Iditarod speed record from 1986-92.

Now since we’d sailed up from Vancouver, you’d think we could fly directly back there from Anchorage, but it was not to be. The airline flew us all the way back to Portland, for a connection that took all night. I liked Portland, as you know, but falling asleep on a row of airport seats is not the ideal way to experience a city. Still, I don’t doubt the signs at PDX that claim it’s “America’s nicest airport.” There was the no sales tax, for one thing. And when a latecomer hurried up to the gate (where we were hanging out) to catch his flight, the gate agent said to him, “Don’t worry.” Don’t worry? Is this an airport, and are we still in the United States?

Not stuffed, then

If I thought that was a nice note to leave the country on, imagine what it felt like to land back in Vancouver. T. came with me through the citizens’ line, indicating that she planned to stay in Canada about four months. “What’s the purpose of your visit?” an immigration agent asked.

“Traveling around,” I said.

“Thank you.” And we’re in. No stamp, nothing but a beeline for the airport Tim Hortons, where I stood in the doughnut line and started talking to a woman whose son lives in Brisbane. (She noticed my Gold Coast shirt.) She’s from Toronto. I already felt like I was home.

Baby snowsuit

It was rainy in Vancouver. I’d thought that was normal, but our Airbnb hostess said that it had been dry all summer (the parched grass was evidence of that). It rained most of the time we were there, though. We spent one rainy day shopping, first for the inevitable Hard Rock pin, which in Vancouver means a slog to a casino in the suburbs, and then at Mountain Equipment Co-op, a cross-Canada delight.

We don’t shop much because we just don’t. Also the budget, plus the one-in, one-out rule of items in our backpacks. But we’re in Canada now and don’t expect to be wearing shorts and T-shirts all the time.

The rain didn’t stop us from traveling around town. Buses in Vancouver must be the friendliest on earth. Nearly everyone says “Hi” and “Thank you” to the bus drivers, and nearly all the drivers are friendly in turn. It is just as well, because some of the places we went, like Lynn Canyon, took quite a long time to reach by public transportation.

Lynn Canyon is kind of hidden away in North Vancouver, which is part of the appeal. You would never know you were in a city there, hiking through the woods. Unlike a slightly longer suspension bridge that charges tourists more than C$40, the bridge at Lynn Canyon is free.

Then we went the other way, south of downtown, to Granville Island. There’s a public market there, with an international food court. Naturally, we ended up with fish and chips.

We went to Chinatown and back to Gastown, where we’d stayed at the Cambie Hostel for one night on our way up to Alaska. We even stopped at the hostel bar for a beer. Moosehead, union made in New Brunswick.

Very polite plea for recognition, historic Chinatown

At Canada Place, where we’d boarded the ship, it started to rain again. But you could still see the mountains, and we got a rainbow.

The day the weather finally broke, we went back to Waterfront and walked along the Coal Harbor seawall and all the way around Stanley Park. Stanley Park is the rainforest heart of Vancouver, and probably interesting in the middle. We did see the famous totem poles, but otherwise stuck to the seawall.

I have to say that I was not that impressed with Vancouver. Considering I’ve always heard what a wonderful city it is to live in, I expected a Portland of the north, and for biking that may be true. I get that it has both the ocean and the mountains and, for a Canadian city, a moderate climate. If you like rain, that is.

Maybe, T. suggested, we were just jaded after coming from Alaska. Maybe after seeing stunning views every day, the like of which we’d never seen before, a city was just going to look like a city. I can see myself going back to Vancouver, but only as a base for something we didn’t get to explore, such as the Sea to Sky highway to Whistler, or the coast around Prince Rupert. Or Vancouver Island, which I had really intended to get to one day.

Why didn’t we? Well, partly because the ferry to Victoria turned out to be a more ambitious day trip, in terms of time, than I had realized, but also because of the budget. Which I had blown on a day at Vancouver’s first annual Skookum Festival, in Stanley Park in the rain. And why had we stood in the mud at the front of a festival stage, at our age? Because, on the day we arrived in Vancouver, I saw that Buffy Sainte-Marie was playing there.

Buffy, or Dr. Sainte-Marie as we perhaps should call her, is a Cree from Saskatchewan who grew up and launched her career in the U.S.A. She has probably done more than any other artist to raise awareness about Native issues in North America, but my lifelong admiration for her goes far beyond that. When I can't find words (it has happened), Buffy Sainte-Marie’s music is what I turn to. It goes deep in the soul, and I would venture to say that hers is a prophetic voice. At 77, she is still winning Junos (Canada’s highest music awards) and rocking the house.

Buffy never wanted, in her words, to be "that Indian girl who makes us cry” about the wrongs of history. Even her most hard-hitting songs, some of which she’s re-recorded on her latest album, are primarily about the state of communities today, and what practical action we can take to improve them. "No matter where you came from," as she said to us.

I didn’t know the newer material but I was foot-stomping and singing along with the rest of the crowd, to uplifting anthems like “You Got To Run” and “Carry It On.” And then there was “Up Where We Belong,” which won Buffy a songwriting Oscar, or “Until It’s Time For You To Go” which was recorded by Elvis Presley (she successfully kept her rights to the song from Elvis’s “people”). I got a kick out of her biographer’s introduction which also included Buffy’s years on Sesame Street, during my childhood. She broke ground there by breastfeeding her baby son on TV, but what I will always remember is that she was the only character who believed Big Bird when he told her of the existence of his friend whom no one else could see. In this as in so many ways, Buffy was a pioneer. We could see Mr. Snuffleupagus, and eventually, the show stopped sending the message that adults would not believe when a child told them the truth.

If you’ve felt bummed since 2017, I highly recommend Medicine Songs, the new Juno-winning album. It is good for the soul. Only Buffy could write the theme for Soldier Blue, a movie about Americans’ brutal history with indigenous people (in theatres for a few days under Richard Nixon), and make it an inspiring song about love of country. 

“When the news stories get me down

I take a drink

Of freedom to think

Of my [North] America from toe to crown”

—“Soldier Blue”

Here's the antiwar song that got her blacklisted from radio during the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

Alaska tips, and a glorious dog story

Alaska is just huge. I knew it was the biggest state, but we sailed up along the southeast edge of it for a week and barely touched the interior. If you got further into the state you could find places wilder than any left in what Alaskans call “the lower 48.” 

Alaska sits between the world’s second-largest country, Canada, and its largest, Russia, which as Sarah Palin was fond of saying you can see from Alaska. (There is a point in the Bering Strait where this is technically true.) Together, they take up most of the northern reaches of the globe. Of all the territories and provinces in Canada, only Nunavut is larger than Alaska, at more than 2 million square kilometres.

I learned a lot about Alaska on the ship, thanks to our on-board naturalist and storyteller. There are a lot of things to do on cruise ships and learning is one of them. Choosing your own adventure is one of the pleasures of cruising. For example, I used the fitness center and yoga class, and there’s a show after dinner every evening, family-friendly although there weren’t too many kids on our ship. We made several of the shows, things like “Hits of Broadway,” where some very hardworking singers and dancers did a medley of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Les Mis, and some of the recent musicals based on hit songs. I thought the talent level was very high—and hey, it’s all included.

Juneau, our next port of call, is the state capital of Alaska. But like other cities in the southeast, it has no road access. To get there, you have to sail or fly (or in winter take a dogsled or snowmobile, I suppose). There is a highway through town itself and our excursion took us on a bus down this, where we watched for birds perched on the light poles in rows. In Juneau, when we spotted a bird, it was a bald eagle.

We started out on a whale watching boat. It offered snacks like salmonberry jam and smoked salmon, and the tour organizers offer you money back if you don’t see whales. But we did!

Humpback whale

Flame, 55 years old, identifiable by her fluke

The excursion continued to the Mendenhall Glacier, which calves icebergs into Mendenhall Lake. They let people actually go ice climbing on the glacier, which I was surprised about and wasn't sure I fancied. But we were there for an hour and had time to hike to Nugget Falls and view the glacier from there.

Mendenhall Glacier

Nugget Falls

Would I go on this excursion again? Absolutely. Whale watching is a must-do if you’re calling at Juneau. Even though whales are wildlife, the boat crews know where to go so they pretty much do guarantee seeing some. I never expect to see the number of whales up close that we saw ten years ago, in Provincetown, but this was pretty special too. And again, the good weather meant clear views of the beautiful sea and land, even when we weren’t spotting whales.

After lunch I took the “tram car,” which is kind of a cable car that goes to the treeline of Mt. Roberts. It’s very convenient to passengers because it goes from the cruise ship dock. It also costs $34 for an all day pass! Now, I like how it’s run (another corporation of local people, with a Native crafts shop at the top), but there’s no reason you should give them that much money. At the top, there’s a notice saying it’s $10 one way, presumably for hikers taking the tram car down. Well, personally I’d rather take it up and then hike the 2 1/2 miles back down to town. So at the bottom, ask to pay $10 and hike back down. Should you get to the top and not feel like hiking down, pay another $10—you’ll still be ahead.

View from alpine loop trail

Oh, and pack your trekking poles. I forgot my stick and couldn’t do the steep hike without it. Fortunately there was a half-mile alpine loop I did instead. 

From the top of the tram car

I also saw a red squirrel up there. As with the Sitka black-tailed deer spotted on the side of the road, I don’t have pictures.

Skagway, our last port of call, has the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park, a branch of which we’d visited in Seattle.

We walked past the false-fronted historic buildings and got a bus tour to the “Klondike Summit.” We briefly crossed into Canada but did not even reach customs, and U.S. immigration didn’t look at our passports on the way back. Had we been backpackers hiking in from the Chilkoot Trail rather than well-heeled cruise passengers…

Northern B.C.

The views were fantastic, but nothing was going to top the wildlife. And the second part of our excursion was about sled dogs. Now, I thought it was interesting to hear from a real-life musher (she’s been doing it for 19 years but didn’t look old enough) and meet the huskies.

Dogsled demonstration

But would I book this excursion again? No. Very little of the sled dog session was an actual demonstration, and because it wasn’t on snow, it didn’t seem very real to me. I thought the bus tour was all right, but the views of the pass would have been just as spectacular from the White Pass & Yukon railroad, and it would be a cooler and more historical way to travel. If, like me, you like trains, spring for a railroad tour—or just book another hike, which you can also do in the area.

Hubbard Glacier with icebergs in foreground

The next morning we sailed into Disenchantment Bay. Celia, the on-board naturalist, was on hand talking about the mighty Hubbard Glacier and the icebergs we were seeing all around us. The crew said it hadn’t been clear enough to see the mountains around the glacier since June; even members of staff were running out to take pictures.

Icebergs (the tips thereof!)

Glacier "calving" an iceberg

We saw the whole face of the glacier, six and half miles wide, from the legal limit of one mile out. It’s not always possible for the ship to sail that close and turn around, so you can see the whole thing without ever leaving your spot (deck 4 in our case). Celia said the icebergs we saw falling from the glacier were from as high as 300 feet.

After a while you need to just stop taking pictures and enjoy the view. But pack your camera for Alaska—and be sure it’s charged for this part of the trip!

What else would I pack? Binoculars, if you have them. We made do with looking through T’s telescopic lens (when she had her camera), plus being lent binoculars a couple of times by nice people. But there are times when, from the equivalent of an 11-story building, even a whale will look pretty far away. And you’re more likely to see bears from a distance than as close as we got! You won’t want to pay what they charge for binoculars on a cruise ship, believe me.

And a couple of towels!

A swimsuit. We always have ours and I was glad to have a couple of opportunities to use the hot tub.

It might seem unlikely that you would use a swimsuit on an Alaska cruise, but I always say throw it in. It weighs next to nothing and it’s better to have it and not need it (which I don’t say of many items anymore!)

If I were going on a cruise again, I would definitely take some “chic” clothes to wear on what used to be called formal night. We weren’t going to buy and carry such things just for this, in the middle of our backpacking years, but I really enjoyed the dress-up option the one other time we cruised. It's nice on a ship because you can unpack in your stateroom once, hang up your clothes or put them in drawers, and yet visit different destinations throughout the cruise. And, you don’t even have to carry your own luggage on and off the ship. So I don’t think in general you should pack as light as we did. As it was, I had my trusty jewelry--my African elephant necklace that I wore up (and down) Kilimanjaro.

Layers. I’ve gotten a little bit obsessive about this, but I don’t plan ever to buy a winter coat again. Keeping warm is more efficient with layers anyway, and you probably already have everything you need. In Alaska we hiked in T-shirts, but I would definitely take along a shirt made of wool or some technical material, for hiking when it’s cool or wet. We needed rain jackets and pants for wet or windy weather, and I was glad I had a fleece, for warmth in between shirt and jacket. I wore a sweatshirt sometimes around the ship, a cap with a visor when it was sunny or rainy, and a warm hat and gloves when it was cold. I never pulled on my down jacket until the day we spent hours on deck looking at the Hubbard Glacier, but it sure kept me warm then. It’s also the lightest, most packable item of winter clothing imaginable. 

I was also glad I had sunglasses. You might not have the sunshine that we did in Alaska, but at sunset in Juneau before we sailed away, we were having beers up on deck, sunning ourselves on lounge chairs! No wonder the glaciers are melting.

The last night after dinner, I went to one more talk by the storyteller. He shared an anecdote of Alaska that I (and you may) have read in much more detail elsewhere, but I want to close with this, because I think it is the greatest man-and-animal heroic story of all time.

Most of the advances of modern civilization have come with major drawbacks. That’s not true of the discovery of vaccinations. Vaccinations have freed generations of children from diseases that used to kill them. Less than a hundred years ago, however, things most of us were vaccinated against in childhood regularly caused death, and this was the case in January 1925 in Nome, northwest Alaska.

Diphtheria was starting to kill people and Nome’s one doctor had only some antitoxin that had expired. There hadn’t been time to ship more out before the port of Seward (where our ship would finally dock) closed for the winter. An epidemic would be devastating; the influenza epidemic of a few years earlier had killed 50% of the Native population of the area, as Alaskan Natives lacked any resistance to diseases like flu and diphtheria.

The solution was a dogsled relay, whereby 20 mushers and about 150 sled dogs transported some antitoxin found in Anchorage all the way across the Alaskan interior to Nome on the west coast. They traveled 674 miles in five and a half days, within the time frame before the serum would expire. The musher and lead dog who actually pulled into Nome became famous, but it could not have been done without all the other men, many of whom were Athabascan Natives, and their teams. Sled dogs, who love nothing more than to run, laid down their lives on "the great race of mercy." And mushers suffered severe frostbite, one of them while feeling around in the snow for the cylinder containing the antitoxin, which had fallen in poor visibility. 

togo and seppala
PHOTO BY GEORGE RINHART/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Leonhard Seppala’s leg of the relay, the number of diphtheria cases in Nome was 27 and rising. There was enough serum to treat 30 people, so Seppala’s team set off on the longest and most hazardous leg, through a storm across the open ice of the Norton Sound. Togo, the lead dog, led the team in a straight line through the dark. With a gale force wind chill, the temperature was estimated at -85 degrees Fahrenheit (-65 C).

Not a single vial was broken when Gunnar Kassen’s team brought the serum into Nome, and the town was saved. It is Balto, Kassen’s lead sled dog, who is immortalized in statues, but when he and the other dogs became part of a sideshow they were rescued by a fundraising campaign by the children of Cleveland, Ohio, and spent their last days at the Cleveland Zoo. My grandmother, who would have turned 100 this week, was a little girl in Cleveland in 1925. I wonder if she was among those putting their pennies in the collection? It's certainly the kind of story she would have liked.

T. with husky puppy

Only years after the serum run to Nome was it remembered that two thirds of the distance was covered by Alaskan Native mushers.

With the advent of air travel and the snowmobile, dogsledding almost died out in Alaska. It was revived in the 1970s with the Iditarod, a race from Anchorage to Nome. Iditarod is an Ingalik word meaning “distant place.” Although the Iditarod does not follow the same route as the historic trail, it has revived mushing and honors the history of sled dogs. None were more glorious than the teams that saved thousands of lives in Nome, when there was no other way to get there.

Southeast Alaska

T has already written an account of our cruise through Alaska, asking if I would go again. Well, of course I would. But I thought I’d do this post a little differently, writing about the people we met, and what would I do again, or not do. And what would I recommend to anyone who wants to travel to Alaska this way?

The first people we met, before we even boarded the ship, were the staff greeting people on embarkation. The ones I talked to were all Filipino. Cruise line staff are from all over the world and you can tell this from their name tags, but I noticed it because one of them said to me, “You should get our flag next!” They were talking, of course, about my daypack and all its flag patches. Guess we need to go to the Philippines.

Getting checked in took three times as long as it took other people because somehow, our nicknames were on the booking, instead of our legal names. Check-in requires your name to match what's on your passport. Note: Never put your nickname on anything even remotely official. At best, you’ll have more forms to fill out and they will have to reprint your key cards, as they did ours. Your key card (they call it a “Sea Pass” on Celebrity) is your key to everything on board. You use it instead of a room key, as a way to pay for extras, and to get off and back on the ship. After all that mine still had my incorrect middle initial on it, but at least U.S. customs and immigration weren’t looking at key cards!

So we cleared immigration back into the U.S., even though for most of the cruise up the Inside Passage we were still in Canada. T. mentioned that if you look at a map, it seems pretty clear that Alaska belongs with Canada, not the other states with which it is not contiguous. Tell that to the Americans who, we are told, bought Alaska from the Russians when Russia was short of dough. Alaskan Natives, the people who’ve actually inhabited Alaska for tens of thousands of years, were probably surprised to hear that their land was owned by either. By the standards of the States, Native people still make up a significant proportion of Alaska’s population today: 14%.

I got lots of comments throughout the trip about my flags and all the places we have visited. You might be surprised to find backpackers on a cruise ship at all, and it certainly is an exception to our usual way of travel. Our original goal had been to go with some friends from England, because the one time we were on a cruise before, we enjoyed it so much more knowing others on board. The great thing about a cruise (one of them) is that every activity level is catered for, and each person can do as much or as little as s/he wishes, everybody joining together back at dinner or on deck. But in the end, our friends couldn’t make it, so we talked to strangers and luxuriated.

I recommend talking to strangers, especially if you’re traveling solo or as a couple. This is useful anywhere, but especially on a cruise. You’re on this ship for a week with the same people, and even though there are thousands of them, once you’ve shared a meal you do keep running into them. Our first evening in the restaurant, Maria (a shout out to our hostess) asked if we would be happy to share a table with others, and we always say yes. 

T. already wrote about our English-Tasmanian tablemates but I also want to mention the other couples, Michiganders, of whom the women had known each other since second grade. One of the men (they were both named Bill) talked to us about when he was a young man and spent some time traveling around Italy. Then in 1971, he was drafted to fight in Vietnam. “Unnecessary,” Fred said of the war.

“They’re all unnecessary,” said the other Bill quietly.

Lunchtime in the buffet was often busy. We would sit with whoever had spare seats at their table. One day this was a couple of Indian heritage who live in Florida, but told us they were originally from South Africa. We mentioned our travels there, and to Mauritius. Like everyone else who’s been there, it seems, they raved about how gorgeous Mauritius is. Another day we sat with two widows who live in the same gated community in Arkansas. “I took the Greyhound bus once,” one of them recalled. “Never again!” She explained that was because of where Greyhound buses stop in cities, i.e., downtown areas bearing little resemblance to her community. There are no businesses where they live—“only banks,” the other woman said. I am sure these women have basic human compassion for unfortunate people, but they seemed very fearful: of drugs, guns, people they don’t understand.

They had such a different view of the world and its dangers than we do, yet by the end of our conversation, we all agreed that the horrible people shown on the news must be exceptions, and that the world is not really like that. Moving between the world we’d just traveled in, of Greyhound buses and their passengers, and the passengers on cruise ships was illuminating, because they are really the same world. Everyone, as T. is fond of saying, holds a baby the same. Everyone has the same basic needs. Some people make choices the rest of us don’t understand, like sleeping outside. But everyone wants a choice…

You may have gathered that the majority of passengers were retired, or nearing retirement age. Not everyone, though. Another evening we had dinner with a young couple from Maryland, plus the woman’s father. They'd had a very adventurous day around the Mendenhall Glacier, hiking for eight miles and actually climbing on the ice, which is not something I’d want to do. It was hard to know what either man thought about the experience, as the woman talked the whole time. Quite easy to carry on a conversation with her, though.

Would I get a “stateroom” (cabin) with a verandah again? I was out on the verandah every chance I got, sitting or taking in the view. If you were cruising the Mediterranean, it would be a pretty safe bet. But paying twice as much seems steep unless you have a lot of good weather, which would be unusual in Alaska.

As it happened, we did have unusually good weather. Except at our first port of call, Ketchikan, where the weather was normal. That is to say, rainy. We did our first shore excursion, which was a hike in the Tongass National Forest. It’s the U.S.A.’s largest national forest, covering much of southeast Alaska.

Would I hike the rainforest around Ketchikan again? Yes, because it’s the best thing to do around there, if you want to see wildlife and get to know the landscape of Alaska. As it happened, we only saw small wildlife, such as the distinctive banana slug.

But that’s the thing about wildlife: there are no guarantees. We also saw spiders, huckleberries, an edible berry called salal that I tasted (forgettable), lichens, hemlock, Sitka spruce, red and yellow cedar.

Muskeg, a distinctive boggy landscape of North America

I would say book the longest hike you have time and energy for. We walked for two hours or so but with constant stops to be told about plants, etc., and the trail was very smooth and gradual, so it wasn’t hard. With any luck, you’ll see more animals than we did. Of course there were the salmon.

We ate supper relatively late that night, so had a table to ourselves. The people at the table next to us, befitting the late hour, were speaking French. I couldn’t eavesdrop effectively but I did hear them keep saying “baleine.” Had everyone seen whales but us?

Well, yes! Not that evening, when the captain had told us whales were likely and we’d shivered on deck for what seemed like hours (hence the lateness of our supper). No, the next morning in the buffet, we were just eating breakfast when a woman excitedly said there was a whale, and kindly handed me her binoculars so I could see. Neither T. nor I had our camera, but I got a good view of the whale diving down, with its fluke (tail) in the air. Then to top it all off, we saw an orca (once called “killer whale”) jumping very close to the ship. No pictures, but there they were when we weren’t expecting them, showing off right outside the windows.

About halfway through the cruise was our second port of call, Icy Strait Point. This is the only privately owned port in all of North America. It’s run by a corporation of Tlingit shareholders (pronounced “Klinkit,” they are one of the coastal Native peoples) including Liz, our guide to the Spasski River Valley, and Cookie, our bus driver, who grew up right down the street from her. Clearly, this is not like other ports of call, with their luxury stores, hotels, and chain restaurants.

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, one of seven denominations in Hoonah

Hoonah is a village of 760 people, about a mile and a half from the port. We took the shuttle bus into town.

Reggie the bus driver helps a passenger.

Hoonah is a real village, with no discernible concessions to cruise ship passengers other than a small museum and souvenirs for sale. There's a handy mnemonic for remembering the five species of Pacific salmon, and everyone in Alaska wants to tell it to you. Thumb rhymes with chum; with your index finger you can sock yourself in the eye; the king is bigger than the other four, but never stands alone; you may put silver on your ring finger; and your pinkie is the pink salmon.

I thought Hoonah was lovely. I couldn’t find a mailbox so the woman in the grocery store (there’s just one, woman and store) said she’d put it in their mail. 

A proud Native veteran of the U.S. Navy makes his--or her--feelings clear.

So anyway, back to our hike with Liz. It was just a little way down a boardwalk and she urged us all to keep quiet, to increase the likelihood of seeing bears. If you’ve seen T’s pictures you’ll know what happened next.

T. photobombed my picture, but it does show how close we were when the mother bear walked in front of us.

Luckily Michael and George were there, carrying rifles. They’ve never had to fire a shot, even in warning, but Liz said these gentlemen come along to make visitors feel better.

The bears were amazing; even Liz hadn’t expected us to get this close. 

And just because I could--my feet in the Gulf of Alaska!

She wore a raven bracelet on one wrist and an eagle on the other; we saw both birds while we were in Hoonah. A local woman was kind enough to alert us to a juvenile eagle that was in a nearby tree, and we waited long enough to see it fly.

Liz said the Tlingit have no word for goodbye, because they believe our paths are bound to cross again some day. I hated to say goodbye to Hoonah. What capped that day as the best of the cruise, though, was even more unexpected than the bears. At about 10:00 that night, the captain came on the intercom and apologized for the late announcement, but said the northern lights were visible off to port side! Once again, we don’t have any pictures, but the verandah came in handy for the aurora borealis as well.

Would I go to Icy Strait Point again? You’ll realize by now that it was a highlight of my trip—certainly my favorite excursion on shore. A couple of important caveats, however. The first I’ve already mentioned: wildlife is wild, and you never know what you are going to see, what the weather is going to be like, etc. We had what by all accounts was an exceptionally close encounter with the bears. In fact, in researching this blog I found people complaining on TripAdvisor that they had booked this identical tour and not seen bears at all. Of course, they were disappointed but they seemed to think wildlife was guaranteed. You should go to a wildlife sanctuary or zoo for that experience.

There is certainly potential to see bears at other locations in Alaska and I would recommend taking any hike that promises that potential. The hikes are guided and safe, and you will not be sorry if you do see a bear! The other caveat about Icy Strait Point is that most cruise ships don’t call there, because (as far as I could see) there is only room for one ship. All the other days, there were at least four other ships in port with us. Liz told us that they like to keep Hoonah the way it is. That’s what makes it exceptional, also.

This post is now long enough, so this is probably the time to bid a formal farewell to my London 2012 jacket. It was the one piece of gear I had with the actual Olympic Rings (since I volunteered at the Paralympics), and it’s lasted much longer than I thought it would. It’s been clipped to my backpack on five continents and kept me dry on a very rainy day in Hue, Vietnam. But, the rain resistance finally wore off around Ketchikan, and we can’t afford to carry anything extra around. So it has joined some other items in a clothing donation bin. I hope it keeps the wind, at least, off someone who may not have any jacket otherwise.

Onward to Skagway

When we return, more Alaska!