Journal Entry #7 - Sitka to the day after Hubbard Glacier

I'm sitting in the Garden Lounge, which has big windows and comfortable chairs, looking out at a cute little container pier, being serviced by two medium-sized forklifts, in the outskirts of Sitka, Alaska. They are unloading containers from a big barge, the size of the pier, and probably the barge that the pier was built for. The containers all say “Alaska Marine Lines.”

The cruise ship terminal is just a chain-link fence away: a set of big, long, new buildings with tin roofs and a lot of big beams, holding dozens of booths and shops selling local stuff (I think – I didn't actually pay much attention). The ship pier can handle two big cruise ships, and here we are: the Queen Elizabeth and a substantially bigger Norwegian Bliss. There are two other ships in port, but they're anchored in the harbor, in sight of town, and passengers tender in. We're five miles from town.

I would guess that getting two ships worth of passengers to town would be a difficult challenge, but except for what I thought was a shortage of big signs to guide us right off the ship, they did a pretty good job. A whole fleet of buses shuttle back and forth over the five miles, and we did not wait very long at all in either direction. We did walk back and forth between stanchions a long way before reaching the bus; I overheard and older lady with a wheeled walker who said, “I feel like I'm at Disneyworld!”

The mountains in this part of Alaska are not like the ones we saw yesterday (see below), but smaller, with no snow, more like what we saw in Japan – Lots of individual peaks, rather than ridges, heavily forested with tall, dark conifers. The coast is complex: lots and lots of small bays and islands large and small, inlets and peninsulas, all making for a bewildering maze it is probably easy to get lost in. We were here on the Alaska Marine Highway ferry in 1986, and one of the things I remember is how many bald eagles we saw on the way in. They're still here (not the same eagles, of course); I can see at least one in a tree and two soaring above us as I write this.

We docked between 8:30 and 9:00; I got out on deck for the very end of the process. We – and especially me – have been plagued by sleep issues that I won't go into, much worse than when we last wrote. So we got tied up and squared away, and then soon after the Norwegian Line (NCL) ship came in. When we were finally ready to go, the NCL ship was just starting to disgorge its passengers, so there were a lot of people streaming up to the terminal. But, as noted, we were on the bus pretty quickly, all told.

Our two goals in Sitka were 1) something to help me sleep and 2) wifi. No reliable wifi – or, for that matter, cell reception – at the cruise terminal, five miles out of town. We were not at all as lucky as we had been in Seward in this regard. We were told that Sitka is using its cruise ship money to, among other things, provide free internet all up and down its main shopping street, which was closed to traffic today. Great! We went into a coffee shop, ordered coffee, sat down and – no internet. We asked, and they said, “Oh, no, when there's this many people in town it gets overwhelmed and shuts down.”

So we packed up our stuff and hit the street again, and finally found the pharmacy and got what we needed. Then all the way back to the public library, where we sat on benches in the lobby and used the free wifi. Nothing interesting shopping-wise. Two guys sitting at the front of a store, playing guitar and harmonica; they sounded pretty good but there didn't seem to be much interest. (Hundreds of tourists swarming the streets.)

Finished our internet business (including paying the propane bill for the Truro house and making my excuses for not being able to attend an advisory committee meeting tomorrow – fun times!) and, before we went back to the shuttle bus stop, stopped into the small Russian Orthodox church in the center of town. Wood clapboard, painted mostly grey, onion dome. Inside, it was all open – there was no second floor, and the onion dome rose above the nave, the largest, by far, part of the church. The walls were covered with icons, both three-dimensional and painted – many were elaborate paintings enhanced by shaped metal overlay, defining the central figures in the icon, and many of the halos were actually many-pointed metal tiaras. It was dark, and hard to see some of the icons on the walls, especially high up. An elaborate altar could be half-seen in the sanctuary, behind the half-opened sanctuary doors; only ordained priests allowed through the doors. Also, a lot of stuff piled in the back of the room – no storerooms or closets.

Abbey here: Someone asked the shuttle bus driver if the islands were owned and inhabited by people, and his response was, “most of them”. He also said, as we boarded a repainted school bus, all the other shuttles were deluxe travel ones, “You're on a vintage bus, and you have a vintage driver.” He also told us that the bus had spent most of its earlier life in Denali.

Just saw a seal, I believe. I didn't have my glasses on. (I haven't worn glasses for 3 years, except for driving, and my right eye now has great vision.) By the time I'd grabbed my glasses, the animal was long gone.

About the Russian Orthodox church - 3 stories: there was a fire in 1966, furnace blew up across the street, and must have been many volunteers pulling all the icons and a 400 lb. Chandelier out of the church before it too burned down. Fortunately as well, the building had been designated a national historic site several years before, and all the measurements and particulars were known so that an exact replica was built. (Unlike the 2 fires in Worcester, NY.)

The other 2 stories have to do with the icons of saints themselves. One was on a ship from Russia, which crashed and sank on rocks nearby. 30 days later, children playing on the beach found it, standing upright in the sand, and not water damaged. The other story is of a bishop, holding up an icon of some saint, and stopping a tsunami.

The chandelier that was saved

The docent, a history teacher in Sitka, said that one of his high school students was going to college at SUNY Oneonta, he thought. He told another story about when the US bought Alaska from Russia, and the Russian flag was to be lowered. They couldn't bring it down, so they arranged for a Tlingit native to shimmy up the flagpole. He was supposed to respectfully lower it down, but he just cut it off and dropped it. When the flag fell, it impaled itself on a spear or sword. Apparently this part is not included in the reenactment movie that was made.

Gary again. There is a National Historic Park in Sitka, which we visited in 1986; as I remember, lots of totem poles, explanations regarding how to read them, lots of stories, and a walk in the woods. I was feeling really poorly, so – not this time. Back to the ship, to a comfortable chair in the Garden Lounge.

There was a day between Seward and Sitka, and that day was all about the Hubbard Glacier, of which we have just short of a gazillion pictures. I woke up at 10:30 (which suggests the extent of the sleep issue) and got up on deck as we were entering the very wide bay, at the head of which the Hubbard Glacier meets the sea. We were looking at the highest coastal mountains in the world, according to our resident expert, who also let us know that Hubbard is one of the few glaciers which is advancing more than retreating; lots of really moist air finds itself moving onshore and turning to snow further in. The Hubbard Glacier is 76 miles long, and seven miles across where it meets the bay.

The color of the day was white; the mountains on both sides of the bay (but especially to the north) were blazing white, snow-covered, in the bright sun. The sky was cloudless. The glacier was white, as were the mountains immediately on either side; you could see a little of that blue tint on the face of the glacier caused by the crystalline nature of ice that was formed under tremendous pressure.

White, bright, white. Even the other cruise ship in the bay was white. We got close to the face, but not as close as the other ship, which was smaller. Everyone was taking pictures, including much of the crew. Many were assembling elaborate selfies, from many angles and in many poses, featuring themselves with the glacier behind. One woman spent most of the time we were there doing nothing but that.

The ship did a “pirouette,” according to our naturalist on the PA, so that everyone could see, so even those of us in the cheap seats got a great view. It was actually two very slow pirouettes, after which we steamed into the sun and left the bay in peace.

Whiplash time travel to last night, the evening of our stop in Sitka. Our itinerary for the next few days was: Ketchikan, Alaska tomorrow, sea day the next day; arrive in Vancouver the morning after. As we were getting under weigh, the Captain came on the radio, said “Hello, headquarters...” No, wait, that's from a 60's song about Vietnam. The Captain came on the PA and told us that the Canadian authorities were requiring an additional inspection of the ship, and instead of going to Ketchikan the next day, we'd be having a sea day, and then the next day we'd stop in Victoria, British Columbia, for the inspection. The next morning - the last morning of the cruise - we'd cross to Vancouver.

Abbey and I have been to Ketchikan twice, and didn't really see the need for a third time, so it was OK with us. Others felt differently. But we wondered what in the world had happened – both Cunard and the Canadian authorities knew we were coming up to a year ago, and just the day before decided that we needed this extra inspection? Did they know something we didn't know? Was one or more of these huge bureaucratic entities incompetent? I suspect we'll never know.

So – here we are on a sunny sea day, nice weather, able to be out on deck for an extended period of time, especially if we avoid the wind. Around lunch time we watched a “Gold medal winner!”, a chef on the ship, carve a 300 lb. block of ice into an eagle, with hand-tools, mostly chisels (but no mallets – he worked the chisels by hand). Off to port is a mountainous coast, far enough away to be kind of a silhouette, but close enough to display its height and ruggedness. Soon we'll go down to hear the naturalist (who just got on in Sitka; her plane to Seward had been grounded by bad weather) talk about the Pacific Northwest and the Inside Passage (which we'll miss entirely). Abbey/Mom will ask her how whales sleep.

Since we won't be back in the US until well into our air flight, we won't be able to download flight info, boarding passes, etc. to make the passage through the airport easier, unless we want to pay $20 to turn our phones on.