slowly she turned

In the afternoon the ship sailed through Tracy Arm Fjord up to Sawyer Glacier. It was the most beautiful scenery that I have ever seen. So many waterfalls and I never knew that a glacier would be so stunning. Blue icebergs and harbor seals. Bald eagles. Fascinated by so many icebergs and the shapes and patterns. Never expected to see the kind of thing even in Alaska in July, and getting so close up to a glacier.

This is where the color of the water changed to glacial water.

[There were so many waterfalls that I gave up trying to photograph them all. It was crowded on the deck and difficult to get shots without heads in them, so a lot of these were shot with my arms extended over my head.]

[Hooray! The sun FINALLY came out and what great timing it was!]

juneau, ak wednesday, july 15

6:300 a.m. on the aft deck. A bald eagle just flew about 10 feet directly over my head. Crows strutting around waiting for someone to drop some food.

We will meet Sherri & her boys around 9 am in town and she will take us to Mendenhall Glacier where we hope to see bears

…….
WOW
what a great morning
what an incredible afternoon!

Short walk through Juneau then met Sherri McDonald and her sons Trey (10) and Clayton (4) for a trip to Mendenhall Glacier. We also went to her house where we saw her studio and then took a little walk on Sandy Beach where I put my fingers into the Alaskan waters and picked up barnacled pebbles and pink shells for souvenirs. Saw a porcupine near the Visitors Center at Mendenhall. Lots of bald eagles near the fish hatchery.

[Sherri is a paper/book and collage artist. Her Alaskan landscape collages are made from lots of tiny bits of handmade papers. She was a gracious and generous hostess who gave us a twelve-year resident’s point-of-view and sent us home with a print and a card of her work. You can see how lucky we were at sherrimcdonald.com.

It was also very nice to spend time with Trey and Clayton. They were very good, informative, and fun guides to the glacier park, which you’ll see in the next post.]

Tuesday, 7-14-09 Ketchikan, Alaska: had a long morning on our feet in Ketchikan, which we chose to explore on our own. LOTS of tourist shops. A few good art shops. The 1st one we visited was near the ship & away from downtown. Elsie [Gale] (says that website will be up shortly) is a Haida weaver and she weaves on a “gravity” loom in which the warp hangs loose from a top bar and she controls the tension with her weaving. It looks very difficult. The spruce root and cedar basketry is stunning and I wished so much to buy a Haida woven hat but they cost hundreds of dollars.

We walked downtown and went through the SE Alaska Discovery Center [one of the visitor’s centers for the Tongass National Forest], then up along Ketchikan Creek where we stopped to pick up some pebbles and to pet a lovable orange cat on our way to the Totem Heritage Center.

Then shopping at Creek St. over and along Ketchikan Creek – bought coffee and salmonberry jelly and spruce tip jelly and birch syrup at Sam McGee’s for gifts or souvenirs. We also bought a T-shirt for me & a fleece jacket for Sandy.

[I found an old Handwoven Design booklet at Parnassus Books there, too – always happy to support indie bookstores. I’ll have more to say about supporting local businesses in Alaska later.]

The houses & buildings are built up the steep mountainside and on wood pilings over the water.

On the way back, we stopped for salmon chowder and cornbread at Alaska Fish House – so delicious, more like stew – smoked salmon and corn in the cornbread. [In hindsight, my favorite meal, and only one of two “local” meals. I would pay money for that cornbread recipe.]

Saw a salmon spawning and a couple of bald eagles.

back on board – had a few drinks in the Observation Lounge, kicked back in comfy chairs with books. [This became our favorite place on the ship to just hang out, read, play cards, and look out the windows.] Met a fascinating couple from Colombia – Andres and Isabell – environmental scientist and economist. Then around 6:30 pm the ship passed through Snow Pass, a narrow place where we saw several whales from the bow.

hot-tubbing mid-afternoon! [run off by obnoxious LA businessman who talked a lot about stuff he didn’t know about, such as how California was bigger in size than Canada. This is why people like George Bush and Sarah Palin get elected to office. Also talked to a Canadian couple long enough about their health care system to convince me that ours is unnecessarily complicated and expensive.]

Dinner at Four Seasons and early to bed – exhausted and happy.