Whales and Sea Otters and Calving- Oh My! Alaska Part 2

While we don't want to stretch out our Alaskan Adventure too much, so much happened in it that we decided to break it into three parts- the first was the last post, about the first few stops; this post will cover the rest of the cruise, being Skagway, Glacier Bay National Park, College Fjord and Whittier, and then the last part.... the most exciting part of the whole trip..... will be the time we spent with Steven, his fiance, Tammy, and Tammy's family, who joined us on the last day of our adventure for a wonderful day of bonding.

Skagway is a fun little town, and by little we mean really small- as one of the locals told us, it has one grocery store, one hardware store, one bank, and 27 jewelry stores!  It was blessed with a deep harbor, which explains it's genesis and why it is a typical stop for cruise ships (and by the way, almost all of those jewelry shops and the many, many souvenir shops in town, and in all ports in Alaska,  close up after the "season" and the employees work the rest of the year in the Caribbean). The population of just over 800 doubles in the summer; part of Jack London's Call of the Wild was set there.

In 1896 gold was discovered in the Yukon, in British Columbia; Skagway was the closest place to bring in a boat ( a guy with incredible foresight built a dock in Skagway and make a claim for 160 acres a decade earlier).   The gold rush that followed swelled the population of Skagway to as much as 30,000; prospectors would take a ship to Skagway and then climb the Chilkoot trail to the gold fields- some 500 miles away; by law the prospectors had to bring at least 1,000 pounds of supplies with them to survive the arduous climb. Many decided to pass on that adventure and settle in Skagway instead.  Eventually an Englishman convinced investors to build a railway line to the Yukon, and the White Pass and Yukon Railroad line was created; by the time it was finished the gold rush was done (it lasted less than two years) and the population of Skagway had fallen dramatically. The railway line survived until the late 20th century carrying ore, and then closed. It was reopened recently to carry tourists and based on our experience, is doing very well since almost every seat was sold on the train. Leah and Alan took the train while Ruth and Danny stayed back and sunned (again the weather was incredible). Here's a few shots taken from the train:

It's a narrow gauge train and has to be to go around the cliffs like this! 

A glacier creates this waterfall and river; it's right on the Alaskan/British Columbia Border; one side splits and winds up in the Pacific in a few days; the other side goes towards the Atlantic and takes months to get there. 

This was a bus driver; Leah and I liked his hat.

Skagway has retained its character as a turn of the century, Western style, bar and bawdy type of town: 

Some of these buildings are original; the sidewalk is wooden planks. The power lines probably were not there in the 19th century but the mountains behind the town sure were! 

The Red Onion Saloon where you can get old fashioned food- we had a beer and a hummous appetizer Note the bedpans decorating the back wall. 

Yes she's real but she's just soliciting for a show about the "old days".

 While Skagway was a lot of fun, we were anxious to go to Glacier Bay the next day. Glacier Bay is a national park. That morning Rangers from the Park Ranger Station boarded our ship by climbing up a rope ladder; they spent most of the day with us as we cruised through the Bay. One Ranger was stationed on the bridge and would narrate what we were seeing; we had a balcony and sat in comfort watching everything and hearing the narration over our television. Here are a few shots of Glacier Bay in general (note that this was the only day with fog and a little rain in the morning; by midmorning the fog had burned off and people were sunning on deck again): 

Because most of the Glaciers in Glacier Bay extend to the lake ("tidewater glaciers"), there is a lot of "calving" which is when a large section of the Glacier breaks off of the Glacier and falls into the lake. This is typically caused by the Glacier expanding and moving, not merely melting.  It is really something to see; a big calving will be preceded by a thunderous clap and then the ice breaks off and tumbles into the lake, forming large wakes and creating many icebergs. Again, we were lucky on this cruise because the largest calving of the cruise occurred just as our balcony was directly in front of Margerie Glacier: 

 

The other great thing about Glacier Bay was all of the wildlife we saw.  We saw plenty of whales, but typically that simply means that we saw them spout, and sometimes see their tail flip:

On this cruise, however, we were lucky because several times the humpback whales breached (jumped out of the water) which the Ranger said was very unusual that close to a ship. We were lucky to get a couple of pictures.

There were also dozens of sea otters; many swam right next to the ship; this one practically swam onto our balcony! 

Sea otters swim on their backs; note this one is carrying her pup on her stomach 

The next day we sailed to College Fjord, a group of several glaciers around a lake. Each of them is named after an Ivy League College (except Princeton). According to Wikipedia (forgive me for using Wiki for my reference): 

The fjord contains five tidewater glaciers (glaciers that terminate in water), five large valley glaciers, and dozens of smaller glaciers, most named after renowned East Coast colleges (women's colleges for the NW side, and men's colleges for the SE side). College Fjord was discovered in 1899 during the Harriman Expedition, at which time the glaciers were named. The expedition included a Harvard and an Amherst professor, and they named many of the glaciers after elite colleges. According to Bruce Molina, author of Alaska's Glaciers, "They took great delight in ignoring Princeton."[

A bunch of Glaciers on the SouthEast Side

One on the NorthWest Side 

Here's Harvard Glacier, for Steven 

Here's Yale Glacier, right next to Harvard Glacier 

 We left College Fjord as the sun was setting- what time was that, you might ask? About 11:30 at night- look at this totally unposed picture of our family looking disbelievingly at the time and the lack of total darkness!

After leaving College Fjord, the ship put it into high gear to get us to our final destination, Whittier. There isn't much to say about Whittier outside that Princess docks its ships there and it's about an hour from Anchorage depending on the tunnel (see our next post about the tunnel).  Here is the Princess train taking many of our cruisemates to Denali National Park (they had to get off the ship before 6 in the morning- but not us!)

We got off at a civilized 8:45 and met Steven.  Finally the five of us together again!

Next Post:  Our Week with Steven and Tammy and Meet the Rams!!!