I Love Soggy Sitka

I'm in Sitka, Alaska and have totally fallen for the place. What a great town! I'm staying at the local youth hostel to give my gear and me a chance to dry out. I'm sharing a three bed room with a mother and daughter from Gustavus. I remember meeting the girl at the coffee shop when I was in Guatavus several days ago.

This morning, I went to Sitka National Park and got a great tour from one of the rangers. Early in the 20th century, totem poles were collected from abandoned Haida and Tlingit villages and put here in the park. They are just wonderful to see in the wet, drippy forest.









I stopped by the science center to checkout the cool critters.


This is a crab.


They have one of the few full orca skeletons in the world. Note the tiny vestigial pelvis towards the tail end.


I looked around in the local book shop to warm up and got a kick out of the sign.


Sitka was the capital of Russian Alaska so there is a unique combination of Russian, Tlingit, and American culture here. I climbed the hill to where first the Tlingit and then the Russians built fortifications. This is where the transfer of ownership from Russia to the US tool place. There are mountains behind the clouds, I'm told.


There were a couple of old Russian cannons.


The Russian Eagle is still visible on them.


I stopped by St. Michael's Orthodox church.


Father Michael was in the middle of prayer but invited me to stay and look around.





Afterwards, I had a pint of local beer at The Pub.


Finally, I went to one of the last concerts of the Sitka Music Festival.


The festival is several weeks of chamber music concerts. An excellent quartet of Julliard grads played a Beethoven quintet, an interesting modern piece by an Australian composer whose name escapes me, and an early Dvorak work. The acoustics of the building were fantastic as was the view of the foggy bay through the big windows behind the performers. It's amazing to hear music of this caliber in such a small, out of the way place. What an amazing day! I love Sitka!!
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Location:Sitka, Alaska

Tour de Pluie

In case you didn't know, it rains a lot in SE Alaska. Amazing amounts. And it's chilly. Portland is the friggen' Sahara compared to here. It's the end of June, and the azaleas and rhododendrons are just now blooming. I passed a lovely garden today and the peonies were just buds and the lilacs were barely blooming. It feels like Portland in March. Fifty degree rain all day.

I had planned on taking the next ferry to Haines from Juneau but there wasn't one today so instead, I caught the fast catamaran ferry to Sitka. The trip was great especially the careful navigation through the narrow Peril Strait.


Just to be different, it rained the whole trip though even like that it was quite pretty.


I spent the day in downtown Juneau yesterday. It reminds me a bit of Astoria. It was pretty touristy and crowded, though, since there were five cruise ships in town.


I hit the outdoor shop and bought some warmer fleece and a warmer hat. Just in time for July.

The bike has been having some shifting issues so I took it to the local bike shop to get adjusted. Things are much better and they didn't even charge me. Thanks Cycle Alaska!!


I've been camping and riding a lot in the rain and have definitely gotten better at it. The thing I've learned is that it doesn't matter if some of my gear gets wet. For example, my cooking gear is all aluminum, titanium, and plastic so damp doesn't hurt it. The only things that I really need to keep dry are my sleeping bag and pad and my camp clothes. My tent is waterproof so even if I pack it wet, all I have to do is wipe out the floor after I pitch it and it's fine. I have lots of warm wool and fleece, a great rain jacket, a Tilley rain hat, and a waterproof rain skirt for camp. All in all, I can stay reasonably warm and comfortable all day in the rain especially if there are a few breaks in the rain and I keep moving.
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Location:Sitka, Alaska

Encounters with charismatic megafauna and scroggin

From Prince of Wales Island, I took a ferry back to Ketchikan and then caught the next ferry to Juneau. On the way out, a float plane buzzed the ferry several times.


The coast line continued to be absolutely gorgeous.


We stopped in Wrangell so I took a brief walk and met Brian, a boy selling fantastically large garnets in schist that he mined in a spot near town. Only the children of Wrangell are allowed to mine the gems. I bought a nice piece.


More mountains on the way to Juneau.


I met Silvia and her husband, Jean Jacques on the boat. We chatted quite a bit and just by chance, both Silvia and I were on the deck when I spotted a humpback whale surfacing near the ship. A minute later we both saw it breach- jump almost completely out of he water- right in front of us! We were jumping up and down and cheering in our excitement. A bunch of other passengers rushed over but the whale had disappeared by the time they got there. Silvia named me her whale good luck charm. Silvia and Jean Jacques and I would meet on various boats for several more days.


I stayed the night in a lovely campground a few miles from the ferry in Juneau.


Jeff Bjorn, a fellow math teacher at Centennial told me about Gustavus and Glacier Bay National Park and encouraged me to visit. This is on the way to Gustavus.


Glacier Bay is about ten miles from the ferry dock.


There is a nice, free walk in campground a quarter mile down a trail.


This is the historic home of the Tlingit native people. This old carving was next to a trail.


I took this picture near my campsite at around 11:30 PM.


I took an all day boat trip 'Up bay' on a rare beautifully sunny day. We saw bald eagles, stellar sea lions, sea otters, mountain goats, coastal brown bears, breaching humpback whales, orca, and a calving tidal glacier. My photos on my nice camera are amazing but for now, this'll have to do. Here are the sea lions.


The white blobs are mountain goats.


This was a coastal brown bear we watched walk across the beach, flipping rocks over.


Here is the glacier.


The next day, the clouds rolled in and the usual rain started up. Matt, a Kiwi (person from New Zealand) and I went kayaking for the day in the mist.


We took a short walk up an estuary where I tried, unsuccessfully, to feed Matt to a sea anenome. I guess they don't like Kiwis. Unfortunately, my iPhone battery died so I don't have photos of our intrepid kayaking sojourn. We had a great time though and Matt did a great job steering our two person kayak. If I was the one steering, we'd still be out there going around in circles.

Matt speaks Kiwi, a close relative of English so most of the time I understood him though there was a need for processing time sometimes. My addition to my international English dictionary is scroggin, what we call gorp. Sounds way better, huh?

Matt, thanks for the company for the last few days! I hope our paths cross again during our journey through Alaska and that you and your buddy stop by my place on your way to California in the fall. Happy trails!

A group of us shared a campfire on the beach. From left to right it's Matt, Belle and Kim, a couple from near Seattle with whom I had dinner and went on the up bay boat trip. Rick from Minnesota is on the right. We picked him and his group up with the up bay boat at the end of their three week kayak trip.


Another member of Rick's party is from Prince of Wales Island and lives two houses down from Stan, the master carver who showed me the Haida petroglyph in his front yard. Small world!

This is soggy Glacier Bay the morning I rode back to catch the ferry to Juneau.


Gustavus has a neat old fashion gas station.


I'm now enjoying a cold brew in a bar in Juneau. I had planned on taking a ferry to Haines tomorrow but there isn't a boat tomorrow so instead I'll head out to Sitka for a day or two and then head for Haines after that.

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Location:SE Alaska

Totem Poles and Prince of Wales Island

Today, I rode a few more miles away from Ketchikan to Totem Bight, a fantastic collection of totem poles in the forest by the ocean.





There was a longhouse, also.


I headed back to Ketchikan and caught the three hour ferry to Prince of Wales Island. One of the many Sitka deer stopped to gawk at my bike.


I tried my hand at some fly fishing and successfully hooked several alder bushes, along with my trophy catch of a cedar branch. I did get my casting down, sort of.


Sam, my bike was having trouble shifting so I did a bit of roadside adjustment. While I was fiddling, Stan, a Tsimshian elder came by to help. Later in the town of Klawock, I ran into Annette, his daughter. She lives right next to the ferry terminal so I asked her if I could camp in her yard the night before I had to catch the 8 AM ferry. She said sure, her house is the one with mailbox.

I stayed at a nice RV park that night and rode to Craig, the biggest town on the island in the morning. The ride was really pretty.


The downtown of Craig was cute.


More views on the ride.


I headed back toward the ferry keeping an eye out for the mailbox. I really felt good on the bike and seem to have found my biking legs. I easily rode up all the hills and even stopped to check if I had a tailwind helping me but it was completely calm. Sweet!

As I approached Hollis, at the ferry terminal, I got a bit nervous about finding Annette's mailbox. I shouldn't have worried.


She has a fantastic place right on the bay.


Here is her view.


She does a lot of fishing and stuffed me full of the most amazing smoked, canned, and barbequed salmon ever.



We drove over to meet her sister Alice, and her dad, Stan, who, it turns out, is a master carver, showed me an old Haida pictograph he has in his yard. As I followed the old gentleman through the soggy forest at twilight, I thought, it's for moments like this that I travel.
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Location:Prince of Wales Island