Tuesday, June 1, 2010

We left early this morning on a 49 person catamaran down to Juneau called the Fjord Express to Juneau out of Haines, Alaska. We saw more wildlife on this boat trip to Juneau and cost less than the expensive boat we rode in Victoria, Canada. There were white winged stotters which are sea ducks; a bird they call an oyster catcher and bald eagles and their huge nests. The nests look 10 times the size of an osprey nest and they stand out because they rule their territory. The female is always the larger; they mate for life and live 30 - 50 years. The harbor seals are disguised to look the same as the rocks where they nest and if they don't climb up high enough on those rocks, the orca whales cruise around the rocks waiting for one to make a mistake. The salmon in Alaska can be 1 of 5 kinds: chum- which is good for dog food; sockeye- which is the best eating; King- which is the largest, but not as flavorful; silver and pink- which they usually can and make into salmon patties.

The Lynn Canal that flows up to Skagway and Haines has a very high tide of 18 feet with a full moon; the average being 14 feet. This catamaran was built in 2000 in San Diego. The captain and owner designed it himself. It's sort of like 2 canoes strapped together with a flat space between them. This makes for an extremely smooth ride. His daughter, Anna, was working with him and served us coffee, hot tea and juices with a blueberry muffin. On the way back to Skagway we have delicious salmon chowder that a woman in Skagway makes for him . The recipe is a secret.

The humpback whales eat krill, herring and needle fish. Needle fish are the size of a pencil, always travel in schools and crowd together when they are afraid of being eaten. Actually, that makes it easier for the whales to eat even more of them. Whales need to eat 1200# a day during the 6 month feeding season. When they take a bite they take in 15,000 gallons of water; that's larger than my pool at home! They leave Alaska in October and swim to Hawaii for the winter to breed. When they breed they do not eat at all. The first sign of a humpback whale is the blow he makes; then you wait between 4 to 7 minutes for him to breach. At one point, we saw a shadow to the side of the boat and 2 whales just started blowing. It was late afternoon and sometimes that is the best time to see whales playing around. We were counting seconds to be able to see their tails and all of a sudden the one whale breached. We were just so surprised and nobody was able to catch a picture of it. They did it 3 times and everybody missed it every time!

We sailed past Admiralty Island where a lot of brown bears and grizzlies live. On the shore 60 miles below Skagway we saw Leyman Glacier which called a hanging glacier. At the shore is a gravel beach made up of glacial residue. Further down there was the Kensington Mining company where they still mine gold and other minerals. This mining camp can only be accessed by boat. In the middle of the wide Lynn Canal is an island with a lighthouse built by the Coast Guard in 1906. It's called Eldridge Light House and it's for sale. They say to "be ware"; it has ghosts! In October,1918, the ship the Princess Sofia ran aground on a sand bar in a snowstorm. This was the very last boat out of Skagway before winter set in; so it had a lot of Skagway's citizens on board. They radioed for help, but the storm was so bad the rescue ships couldn't reach them. So they waited 3 days on the reef for the weather to change. At 2 AM on the third day 80 mph winds came up, pushed the ship off the reef and she broke apart. They lost all 329 passengers.

In 1867 we purchased Alaska from Russia with Sitka as the first capital. Before the Russians, explorers, prospectors, miners and other settlers arrived in Alaska the Tlingit Indians owned the land. They had one of the most sophisticated social structures and intricate societies of any indigenous people in the world. Now it is Juneau. The town of Juneau was originally called Rockwell and had a population of 30 people. When 2 men named Harris and Juneau found gold in the Gold River that runs through downtown Juneau; 10,000 people showed up in 1 year. Now there are 30,000 people here. Actually what was found were the largest lodes of gold quartz in the world. You can only reach Juneau by boat up the Gastineau Channel or airplane. There are no roads in or out of Juneau because of the high mountains, Mount Juneau and Mount Roberts. It is the only capital in the world that cannot be reached by a road! Juneau is sometimes called the "little San Francisco". The climate is mild and wet. They usually receive 222 days of precipitation in a year with snow between mid-November and mid-April. They receive 100 feet of snow in a year and only 6 hours of light during a winter day; from 9 AM to 3:30 PM.
Mendenhall Glacier is just outside of Juneau. It formed 3000 years ago during the last little Ice Age. The Juneau Ice Field is 1500 square miles and includes parts of Tongass National Forest. It has been moving one and a half to three feet daily, but melts 2 foot a day; therefore it seems to be moving backwards. A glacier advances whenever its forward flow is greater than its melting rate. A glacier retreats when the melting rate is greater than its forward rate. A glacier is really a frozen ice river and moves under pressure of its own weight. Just since April 16, 2010, it's calved off huge pieces. The crevasses can be as tall as a 10 story building. There are dark gravel trim lines along its sides called moraines. When the glacier moves it leaves behind glacial silt that allows lichens, mosses, dwarf alder trees, fireweed, colonizing plants, deciduous shrubs to grow. That attracts more mammals and birds; then forest develop with the willow, cottonwood and Sitka spruce trees. The visitor center has remote cameras that watch the salmon stream and the beaver dens. There are also short trails out to the glacier.