Up north where glaciers are melting
One of the last things I did in Seattle before the cruise to Alaska was to buy a ski cap. Black acrylic with a thunderbird design. It wasn’t cool in Seattle. It was uncomfortably humid. In 48 hours, it would be 56 degrees and rainy as the MS Eurodam cruised the Alaskan inside passage.
When I left El Centro during the first week of September the thermometer was dancing around 107 degrees Fahrenheit. I longed for cool and a little rain. Remember that stuff that falls from the gray skies? There are places in the US that actually experience rain. Even California has rainy places. However, it was bright sunshine and smoke from forest fires in Sacramento. Seattle was cloudy, and I missed the worst of the smoke and ash by a few days.
It rained for about a day. The sea was choppy and the ship rolled. Surprisingly, it didn’t bother me, though; I had the Dramamine at the ready. When the ship starts to rock and roll, I feared being seasick. The sickness is compounded by the thought that the dining room is serving the best meal I would have all year. I don’t have very good “sea legs,” yet; I was spared and ate well. A year ago we recommended that a friend take a cruise with her family. She was seasick from the moment the ship left the dock in San Diego to the time it returned from Ensenada, three days of misery. She’s a lifelong Imperial Valley landlubber. Yet, many from here cruise the high seas and enjoy it.
On the Alaskan cruise, our first stop was Juneau, Alaska’s state capital. We’ve visited before. I once arranged a visit to the University of Alaska, Southeast in Juneau and met my opposite number at the university. He gave us a tour of the campus, which given the gigantic size of the state, conducts lots of long-distance learning through closed circuit TV broadcasts and computers. He described to us how weather rules in Alaska. He’d fly out to a conference, but his return would be delayed days beyond what he had planned since a storm front would move in and the aircraft couldn’t land.
An odd thing about Juneau, population 34,000, is that even though it’s the state capital, no roads connect it with the rest of Alaska. Access is limited to boat or airplane. Alaska Airlines has frequent flights. Plus, there are float planes and plenty of ferries. Coastal Alaska, indeed, relies on an extensive Marine Highway System. The ferry system runs from Bellingham, Washington in the east all the way to Dutch Harbor out in the Aleutian Islands.
Juneau was full of highly discounted, end of season, T-shirt shops. Coffee never tasted so good on a cool, rainy day at a local shop with free Wi-Fi. And there were alternating views of thick clouds and beautiful scenes of cruise ships at the Juneau docks from Mt. Roberts, 1800 feet above the city. You get there by aerial tram. The next day, we cruised Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. It’s unfortunately true that most glaciers are receding regardless of what the White House and the EPA might say these days. Glacier Bay was once packed with glaciers, but now the cruise ship can sidle up to what remains of several receding glaciers. The Johns Hopkins glacier is growing inexplicably. Glaciologists have full research agendas trying to figure this out. The reason to go to Alaska is the natural wonders that define the state. Glacier Bay is a special place on earth.
My favorite port on this trip was Sitka which was the capital of Russian Alaska before the US bought it at a fire sale price. Sitka has a small Russian Orthodox Church with a traditional onion-shaped dome. It’s full of orthodox icons, and I enjoyed talking with the docents there. I’d like to summer over in Sitka. However, annual rainfall is over 80 inches. If you don’t like the weather in Alaska, wait a few minutes. It’ll change.