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DATE: July 3, 2002 DESTINATION: Juneau FREE AND EASY AGAIN Aaaah! Peace and quiet again as I lay in bed knowing our guests are gone. No more worrying about cooking and entertaining. We love having friends come join us on the boat but it's always nice when they leave too because then you can appreciate being able to do absolutely nothing if you want. And soon as it always happens you miss their company and wish they were back.
We have coffee and oatmeal & get our things ready. It’s a rainy dreary day so I’m ready to go to Juneau. It doesn't sound like there will be much there that I’ll like from what I’ve read about the place but I must admit it will be nice to stay in a hotel, eat in restaurants and have the bed made up. It will also be nice to be warm and to take a bath or a long shower not having to worry about turning the spicket off while you soap up to save on the water consumption.
"DON'T GO" Bill and Bonnie have tried to call us from Juneau a couple times and finally left a message when we couldn’t connect. The message was garbled but basically, it said "You may want to rethink going to Juneau because it's just a cruise ship town”. Zig and I head down a little early towards the Harbor Master’s office where we are going to meet “Wings” (the local airplane service). They are sending a van to pick us up and take us to the little local airstrip. We wait in front of the office for Larry. The shuttle is late. Paul the Harbor Master comes out to let us know they called and said our flight is cancelled due to fog and weather but that we are supposed to monitor channel 10 on the radio. As soon as the weather improves and they think they can get a plane out they will call us. Paul said we could leave our bags in the office so we wouldn’t have to lug them back down the dock again. We walked over to Libby’s to see if we could get a coffee but she was closed. We looked around town but seemed like nothing was open. Might as well just head back to the boat and wait.
"WINGS" We finally got the call on the radio. They will pick us up at 11:30. They've got a sea & land plane so they said if the fog gets too bad they'll be able to land on water. Yikes!
SMELL OR OIL AND DIESEL A petite lady picked us up in the Wings van. She wore a frumpy rain hat and wasn't shy about lifting and putting the bags in the van. We were her first pick up to get in the van. She says we’re waiting for 5 more people. Turns out it's the guys off the huge tug that came in from Seattle last night. We watched as the tug guys came lumbering down the dock and climbed into the van all except for the Captain who we were still waiting for. He finally comes down the dock wearing a plaid wool shirt, rugged baseball cap, jeans, hiking type tennis shoes and garnishing a thick mustache and longish grey hair. He reprimands the crew in front of all of us for leaving some lights on which "would’ve drained the emergency supplies" he says. That was met with silence from the crew as nobody fesses up. Off we go, the van smelling like oil and tug grease. Their large heavy bags thrown in the back. The five of them all smelled diesel and engine room smells. The driver makes small talk with us as she drives down the little windy road. She says she was originally from Vermont and moved here 22 years ago to live in some non-denominational commune but eventually got tired of that and 12 years ago she moved to town. She had kind of a cold and stoic, matter of fact personality.
We arrived at the Wings office. She drops us off at the front door and drives the van around the back with our bags. The office inside is completely run by women, all small and petite but again, none of these ladies think twice about hefting big heavy bags up on the scales, weighing them and then swinging them onto the cart heading out the door to the plane. We’re all crowded into the small waiting area and though we are strangers we immediately get intimate by having to reveal out weight out loud to the attendant. Each one of us has to step up and fess up. They also weigh all your belongings including Ziggy who was plopped on top of the dog carrier and put on the scale for a total weight of 34.4 lbs. It was a real mix in the waiting area. Besides the tug men, we had some Indian guys (probably fisherman) and an old toothless Indian that may be going to Juneau to see a relative or to get medical treatment, as we couldn't quite make out what was going on with him but everyone was taking care of him because he was kind of out of it. He was dressed in new clothes top to bottom. From the looks of him I'm not sure he's ever been out of this town.
While we waited we could hear the pilots on the radio. One of the pilots had to turn back as the fog was so bad. So, that meant we lost one possible plane that was coming to pick us up. They had a plane on the ground, a sea/land plane as they told us before. They now have to decide who gets to go on the only plane they have because that one flight is definitely cancelled since it can’t get here. They ask me if we have a connecting flight to catch in Juneau and I say “no” knowing full well that that will probably bump us. I hear the other lady offering the fisherman a free (3 hour ride) on the ferry to Juneau and a refund for the airline ticket. They decide to go for it so that’s two free spaces. Now they need one more. We watch them figure it out and I guess they decide to bump the toothless old man. One of the girls writes down what's happening on a sticky note and hands it to him and then explains several times that he won't be able to fly out, that there's no room. He looks dumbfounded. I can’t figure out whether he can’t hear or can’t read or what. She walks away and goes back behind the counter and all of a sudden after reading the note over and over with a scrunched up face he finally figures out what's going on and bursts out with “God dam, what the f#@K! is this god dam stuff? I make my reservation yesterday and wait all day and I get this shit”. They finally come back and tell him that they’ll get him on the later flight but that he’ll just have to wait. He wasn’t too happy but I guess he thought that was better than having to get the ferry so then he was OK. I’m not sure how long he would have to wait or time his flight would be.
So, it was time to go and they walk us out to the plane. I have Ziggy on the leash. Before they want me to put him in the carrier and then into the plane I ask the pilot if it’s OK for him to sit in my lap. He says "Sorry, no, the law won’t permit" but he’ll put the carrier between us. Well, I thought, if this didn’t break the law, it totally obstructed the two exit doors that we were now responsible for. Oh well. It worked for us as Ziggy was right next to us and scared as could be. The plane was very tall off the ground since it had wheels and platoons. We had to climb up a ladder to get in. The captain and pilot helped us in. He had a scruffy beard and his pilot's uniform was a wool plaid shirt, worn jeans held up by suspenders, a kind of Irish tweed cap and funny little spectacle glasses. He was a likeable guy. The plane was a one prop with unfinished plywood floors. It had 8 seats for the passengers and the seats were nothing more than metal folding chairs. They provided head phones to drown out the noise. After we were all loaded the captain climbed in and said “It’s pretty foggy out there but we’ll poke around and see if we can find a way” and on that positive note we took off. Ziggy to our surprise was fine the whole trip. I was able to stick my finger through the side screen and every so often he would put his wet nose on my finger to reconfirm I was nearby.
BARANOF HOTEL Once at the Juneau airport we rented a car and headed for the town. The town was quite busy with four or five cruise ships in. We found the Baranof Hotel easily. It's just up the hill from the older section of town that the tourists frequent. From what I’ve seen, it looks like the Baranof was the nicest hotel even though built in 1936 it has been renovated to its old style very nicely. The lobby looks very sophisticated for Alaskan standards as we could've have been in London. The room wasn’t ready yet so we left our bags and put Ziggy in the car while we headed down to the madness of the cruise ship crowds to see if we could find something to eat. By now it was about 2:00 and we were starving. We found a little Mexican restaurant and popped in. The food was not great but tasted fine because it was Mexican food and we hadn't had any for so long that anything that made out of a tortilla and cheese sounded good. We talked to the owner of the cantina for a while. He was from San Diego. His parents owned this place but got to the point where they couldn’t take care of it anymore so he left his engineering job and here he is, he said. He says it’s a good place to raise kids (that’s the second person that has said that that lives in Alaska.).
We walked around a little but the town was like a mad house. We got back to hotel and our room was ready. They put us in a room on the top floor in the corner and we had a great view of the hills and thankfully are not facing the noisy street. Darn, there's no bath tub, but there is a shower, and I can run the water as long as I want. We crashed on the bed and took the longest nap. Larry managed to get up to run down the street for his 4:00 barber appointment. I had checked with the hotel about a salon but didn’t care for the girl when I went in as she seemed very uninterested and snobby about doing the color on my hair. So we decided we could color my hair in the hotel room tomorrow.
A NIGHT FULL OF DRUNKS We decided to go to Fiddlehead for
dinner. It was so nice to go to dinner in a nice restaurant for a change,
to have a glass of wine and California style food. Mmm, yum, gourmet
greens with roasted goat’s cheese on top, Larry had a caprice salad. I
had open face vegetable ravioli and Larry had spicy puttanesca. We went
back to the hotel rented a movie the “Time Machine” and then the fireworks
started at midnight and I thought they’d never stop. Did I forget to
mention it was fourth of July weekend! Ziggy was so scared from all the
noise and started shaking. The firecrackers were so loud. We didn’t
venture out to see the excitement as it was cold and rainy and late. All
night people were setting off firecrackers and yelling and wandering the
streets drunk. It was a horrible night. We barely got any sleep and then
Larry was up again at 6:30. DATE: July 4, 2002 COMMENTS:
Woke both woke fairly early. We got
up and went out to Valentines on the next street over to get some
coffee. It’s a little coffee place where you can get lattes and bakery
goods and pre-made salads, sandwiches and soups. We walked around town
and stopped in the hotel lobby gift shop and bought some nice sweat shirts
and hats and got information on the 4th of July happenings around town.
Apparently the 4th of July parade starts at 11:30 and then in the
afternoon across the channel in Douglass there a bunch of activities for
the locals like sand castle building contest which is definitely a race
with time here because you have to get everything done before the tide
comes in and wipes it out. They were going to have dog agility and
Frisbee contests and a big BBQ. They were also going to have something called the "Hungry Caterpillar” contest and the “Medieval Combat Demo” later in the day. We don’t know what they were although they sounded interesting. They also have a big BBQ and give prizes for the parade. We decided we’ll go have breakfast at Fiddleheads and then decide what we are going to do. Larry had sourdough pancakes. Where else would you get something like that than here in Klondike country? I think it's the best restaurant in town and it doesn't feel like a tourist joint as it's filled with locals. After breakfast we decided we should go to the parade and then take the shuttle over to Douglas to see the activities.
We gathered up our rain outfits including Ziggy's and joined the crowds to see the parade. We managed to find a spot under a gazebo so we were protected from the rain somewhat but turned out to be the gathering place for a bunch of drunken Indians. The parade started out with the fire fighters and their big red fire truck and then it got log jammed for what seemed like forever. We finally got bored and walked down the street. We ended up going to Soapy’s to get our emails. We still had a card with credit left from the last Soapy's at Ketchikan. They must have one in every town where the cruise ships come in. They are always packed. We got our emails, looked at our financial info and left a short email message to tell everyone where we were and that a real email would follow soon when we got to Sitka.
The parade is even more pitiful when we come out of Soapy's so we decided to get the car and drive out to Mendenhall Glacier. The glacier was pretty impressive as they all are but this time it was crowded with tourists unlike like our last adventure when we were the only ones. We now feel thankful and appreciative of what we've been able to see on our own with the boat. We took the trail walk to a lookout and took some pictures. There were a couple canoes sightseeing in the lake in front of the glacier. It was hard to get a decent picture because there were so many tourists.
Drove back by Auk Bay and then headed over to Douglas to see what’s going on. We didn’t want to get trapped by taking the shuttle over with the rain and it was so cold. By now it was late and the traffic wasn’t too bad but when we got over the bridge into Douglas the main road was roped off and looked like things were winding down. There still were crowds of people but it didn’t look too interesting so we turned around to go back. It was worth coming over the bridge though to get a beautiful view of Juneau from that side of the channel. It’s amazing how the cruise ships just dominate the little town. We went back to the hotel and crashed after having tea in the bar. We tried the Hangar on the wharf for dinner. It was kind of a rowdy bar and dinner place. It took for ever to get a table so we ended up eating at the bar. We had a great view of the harbor, the sea planes taking tourists on short sightseeing flight and of course the monster cruise ships docked in the port. The service was sooooo slow it was awful. Larry had Alaska King Crab Legs, I had a miserable spinach salad drenched in some goopy dressing and terrible steamed clams. Crashed again at the hotel.
ROOM SERVICE FOR TWO BUT SERVICE FOR ONE Decided to order room service for breakfast. When we got our stuff the bellman only brought silverware for one person and one coffee cup. We packed up, checked out and decided to see the town. We put our stuff in the car and walked up the hill to see the cute residential area.
We stopped at log school cabin which was built to show people what log schools were like as it wasn't old inside. We poked in the window as it was closed and looked uninteresting. Walked further up the hill and saw the Russian Orthodox Church built in 1894. It's the oldest original Russian Orthodox church in Alaska. It had the onion dome and was painted a crisp blue and white with an adjoining house the painted the same. The garden had blue irises to match and a white picket fence. Further on we came to the Wickersham house on top of the hill. We enjoyed seeing the residential area. There are some unique little homes and lots of beautiful gardens and cute gates all joined by small walking paths and wooden vertical staircases everywhere. Houses are painted different many colors with contrasting trims and many of the roofs are just covered in moss. They have many different kinds of chimneys tops poking up out of the roofs all over the hill. We walked past the governor’s mansion which has two prominent totem poles out front. It is a typical Georgian white mansion and built between two forking roads on the steep hillside. We stopped at the bagel shop in town
near the h
OLD GOLD MINE AND MUSEUM We got back in the car and decided to
drive up the hill to see the mining museum. You reach the road at the
very top of the residential area and then meander behind the town through
beautiful woods and hiking trails until you finally reach the end. We
parked and hiked up a trail and crossed a huge stream with a boardwalk
built over it leading to the old mine and museum. There were some people
panning for gold in the stream. After a small hike through the woods we
arrived at the old buildings.
We then walked up the hill to see the
old train engine and mining cars. They were almost in complete ruin and
rusting badly. The tracks are still there but definitely in need of a
major repair or restoration. Another rotting building out back was in
such bad condition you couldn't investigate. Ziggy found a porky pine and
fortunately minded us for a change when we said to "stop" because the
porky pine had turned his back and was spreading all his stickers out
ready for Ziggy. The porky pine then took refuge in one of the railroad
cars and was cowering there while we left him alone. That was a neat
place to visit.
Back in town we stopped the Alaska State Museum. It had some great Indian and Eskimo artifacts on display. It was really amazing to see how the indigenous people lived, rather survived in this extreme wilderness. Really an excellent show of arctic photos too.
BACK TO HOONAH It was time to head back to the airport to catch our little plane back to Hoonah. This time we left in a more typical commuter plane which only took 14 minutes instead of thirty. Ziggy did fine again and they let him sit nearby. They are really friendly people. They dropped us right at the harbor.
DECEPTION CURRY I cooked dinner or the boat that night. We had Thai chicken curry that I got the recipe from the Canadians but I think I'll call it Deception Curry. DATE: July 6, 2002 "THOSE CALIFORNIAN'S ALWAYS CHICKEN OUT" Spent the morning cleaning the boat. An older couple that we met in Port Mc Neil came by and said hello. They were much friendlier this time. They said that most boaters from California are always get in a hurry to cross Queen Charlotte Strait and then have a problem in the bad seas and usually chicken out and go home. I guess maybe they thought we were going to be one of them but we earned their respect they said since we didn't turn around and go back. They decided to invite us for a glass of wine at 4-5.
B We got the dinghy out and investigated the little island that is just off the entrance to the harbor. It is supposed to be where the Russians used to anchor in the early days. It is now a grave yard with wonderful old grave stones. Many are very unusual and interesting and others so old they are just falling apart. Some were marked with old totems while others had carved stone markers to represent angels and eagles. The graveyard was lush and covered in wild flowers. It was a beautiful place. The islands beach was littered with huge empty clam shells. I picked up several to take home. The other side was a graveyard for old abandoned wooden boats.
OLD CANNERY AND SHORT CUT TO ACE HARDWARE We motored over towards the other side of town to see the cannery which is beautiful and well kept. We would have loved to walk around and investigate but it was getting late and we were tired. On the way back we stopped at the dinghy dock by the grocery store. You walk up this ramp and it goes right into this old warehouse which is their Ace Hardware. It is one long open hall on the wharf lined with goods and each side and reaches all the way to the grocery store. We picked up a few more grocery items and carted them back to the dinghy. I don’t know why the rest of the boaters don’t bring their dinghy to the store as it's so much easier than walking up the long road carrying all your groceries. Larry dropped me off at the town dock on the way back so I could walk back to the boat and take my time seeing the old buildings that I missed before. It's such an interesting place. The residential area is mixed with all these old wooden buildings that are falling apart and many are empty. You wonder about the past and what it was like. The dirt roads are lined with wild flowers and vines and plants are growing up over everything. There's much to see and learn here but not enough time.
Larry walked up the dock to meet me at the harbor office. Guess I had the boat key so he couldn’t get back in the boat. We decided to have a sandwich at Libby’s. It was pretty darn bad. I’m tired and take a nap and decide to stay on the boat instead of going over for cocktails. We've got another long day tomorrow as we'll be heading out early.
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The
harbor is dead quiet and the morning rain is gently making a pitter
pattering noise on the deck floor above us. Larry gets up early as usual,
puts some coffee on and reads the boating guides books about our next
leg. I’m so tired. I would just like to stay and enjoy the bed and the
peacefulness of being by ourselves again but I know we have to catch the
9:00 AM flight to Juneau so I get up.
NO
SECRETS AMONG STRANGERS
MAD
INDIAN
"SEE
IF WE CAN FIND A WAY"
The
pilot took the water route, kind of a zig zag path between the mountains
and once he crossed over land only because he must have seen far enough
ahead to feel comfortable to get to the next water route. We flew very
low the whole trip, just above the water. We got their safe and sound
although I was a bit nervous.
4TH
OF JULY IN JUNEAU
A
SOAPY'S AT EVERY STOP
MENDENHALL
GLACIER IN THE COMPANY OF TOURISTS
POKING
AROUND TOWN
otel
for coffee and tea. It’s an interesting place. It's an old bakery with
so much cooking equipment and ovens that it’s an eye full. They had
bagels of all kinds, fresh homemade bread, cookies, cake and a million
kinds of coffee and teas. I order tea and I had to get a jar down from
the shelves filled with many different types of tea. You have to get your
own spoonful of tea out and put it in a strainer and then pour water over
it into your cup. I loved the place. There was art all over and funky
signs and posters telling of upcoming events. It's what you'd call a kind
of a crunchy granola place. We ordered two huge cookies for later, one
molasses and one called a snicker doodle. 
Greeting
us at the top of the trail was a huge white dog. He was beautiful dog and
belonged to someone on the museum staff. We went into the first warehouse
and were greeted by an odd but friendly woman with a funky purple hat and
old fashioned spectacles. She was wearing a flowing loose flowered tunic
and skirt and big clumpy shoes. She said she was minding the place the
charge is $3 per person. She was friendly and willing to answer any
questions. It's a great place with lots of interesting huge boilers and
crushing machines and many little displays with the history placards and
old sepia toned photos. 
"STOP!
IT'S A PORKY PINE!"
EAUTIFUL
OLD GRAVEYARD
