Day Y4C-11, Saturday, July 28, 2018, Denali to Anchorage

July 31, 2018 rafinmd Leave a comment

It was an early but not terribly early morning with bags due our at 7. I was up at 5 and tried Denali Square for wifi but it was closed and the shuttle up to the main lodge proved necessary.

I was snacking my way through breakfast but joined Roger and sipped coffee while he had his.

We left at 8:30 for the short ride to our waiting train.

We were booked on Chulitna, which turned out to be the very first car on the train. We were near the back of the car but could see a little bit (not much) out the front window. Our bartender Grant and rail guide Darren introduced themselves. Both proved to be excellent.

Our official departure time was 9:15 but we were ready and left about 10 minutes earlier, soon passing over the Riley Creek Bridge.

A half hour we caught up with the Nenana River and followed it for much of the morning.

It took about 1 ï¿½ hours to reach the summit of the railway. In that area the landscape had become quite alpine in nature.

A high point of the journey was crossing Hurricane Gulch, the highest and longest trestle on the line. We did not see the actual trestle but the views from both sides were quite breathtaking.

After the summit we followed the Susitna River much of the way into Talkeetna.

We had one stop where people got off and on the Princess Car, at Talkeetna. One of the landmarks there is the Fairview Inn, visited by President Harding on his way to attend the ceremony for completion of the Railroad.

Continuing into Anchorage we passed the Knik Arm and the Chugach Mountains.

We arrived in Fairbanks a little before 5:30 and were transferred to the Captain Cook Hotel. After Roger and I had our final dinner together he needed to take a nap before his EARLY morning (about 1:45) flight and I wanted to do a little shopping. There was a grocery store (more like a nice deli) where I got some milk, diet coke, ice cream, and an apple, then stopped at a mall on the way back for an IPAD cable to replace one I had lost.

After returning from shopping I worked on the computer while Roger slept. We said farewell and he left for the airport and I called it a day.

As a parting shot you sometimes get the idea that nobody knows you far from home. In this far north region Iï¿½ve been surprised twice. My first trip to Dawson City I was walking back from Diamond Tooth Gerties when I recognized some familiar looking t-shirts. It turned out to be my County Executive and the Chief of a neighboring fire department with their wives (both involved in the fire service). Lightning has struck in the far north again. While walking from the grocery store to the mall I heard somebody calling my name. It turned out to be one of my former scouts. Sean was part of a group of about 4 scouts who were quite close, but he was probably the most serious of the group. He was active in my troop about 5-10 years ago, attaining the rank of Eagle around 2012. What a pleasure to see an old (but now far more mature) face again.

Roy

A quick update.

July 30, 2018 rafinmd Leave a comment

No, I havenï¿½t fallen off the face of the earth. Transfer to the Westerdam was pretty smooth, but Iï¿½m trying to get organized and adjust to the stability of a straight week at sea. I am reunited with the big bag sent from home by Luggage Forward and spent most of Sunday afternoon trying to deal with this.

Left to right it is the bag from home, the ï¿½meet me on the shipï¿½ bag from Fairbanks, the Bag from the Captain Cook in Anchorage, and finally my carryon.

I am now using my larger laptop with a few straight stable days more of room to work and am hoping to get up to speed relatively soon.

Roy

Day Y4C-10, Friday, July 27, 2018, Denali National Park

July 28, 2018 rafinmd 2 Comments

Wow! That last parting shot I misspoke. It should have been 11 different beds in 17 days, not 17 beds.

This was our day to visit the interior of the park. It was a day for an early start with the bus leaving the lodge at 7:10AM.

The trip into the park is on school-type buses. All our group was on the same bus, but there were a number of other people as well filling EVERY seat on the bus and the seats were packed in tightly, making a solid wall of people blocking the view when wildlife was sighted on the other side of the bus.

We make a round trip about 60 miles into the park and back. The first 15 miles are paved but the rest is gravel, much of it winding and mountainous. We turned out to be lucky that we had our first sighting, a bear, before we even left the paved roadway.

Only buses and a few permitted other vehicles are allowed beyond that first 15 miles. The drivers are all in radio communication and clue each other in about wildlife sightings.

There’s something new since the last time I was in Denali. There are several video monitors hanging from the overhead and the drivers have a camera with a very intense zoom they can train on wildlife along the way. It’s not a perfect system as it can only be used after the bus is stopped and secured, and the drivers still must stay on top of traffic so they cannot use it as extensively as would be ideal, but some of my best views came from the monitors, like one of 2 bears in the distance.

I remember only one moose sighting. I got glimpses of it but never for long enough to train the camera on either the monitor or the moose. While we got several glimpses of Denali it was mostly shrouded in clouds with just one clear view of both peaks.

Most of our other wildlife encounters were with caribou. The first one was lying down with just the antlers sticking up.

A rare sighting (the first of the year for the driver) was a gyrfalcon perched on a nearby tree.

Twenty minutes later we had our second caribou sighting, a pair of them who appear to be crossing one of the rivers.

I think my favorite caribou picture came about a half hour later. It was far in the distance but a magnificent silhouette making it’s way up a steep hill.

We had 2 rest stops (same places) in each direction. We stopped only briefly at the second stop outbound with hopes of a good view of Denali at our turnaround (no such luck) and had a more extensive stay at the outer stop on the way back. It’s on a river. Many of Denali’s rivers were originally fed by glaciers and are very small with wide silt fields.

We had 2 additional caribou sightings on the ride back. The first was grazing in a meadow on my side.

The last one was on the other side of the bus up on a steep hill, a magnificent animal. We returned to the lodge about 3PM.

Before returning to my cabin I walked over to the nearby Princess property (I stayed there 2 years ago), and reviewed their menus before deciding L liked one of our own restaurants better. Despite the late darkness we had quite a quiet evening.

I’ll backtrack a bit on my parting shot. I have always felt that customs people are pretty reasonable if you cooperate with them but was still surprised at one encounter I saw in Fairbanks. One of our party had brought an apple in from Canada. She obviously answered “yes” on her food question and the immigration guy had noted what the food was on her form. She was directly ahead of me in the customs line and he sail “Let me see the apple” He looked at the little sticker on it and said “yes, it’s from the US, go ahead”. I would never have believed that much cooperation from them was possible.

Roy

Day Y4C-9, Thursday, July 26, 2018, Fairbanks to Denali

July 28, 2018 rafinmd Leave a comment

I slept late this time, getting up between 5 and 6. Bags were due out at 6:40, and we were given 3 options all of which were used. Roger sent one bag to Anchorage with the other going to Denali. The third option was to send bags straight to the ship. I did that with my smaller bag while the big one went to Denali.

I took a half hour walk in the city about 6, and Fairbanks is quite sleepy at that hour. The Chena River runs right though the center of town.

Departure from the Westmark was 9:40, and we had a little tour before leaving for Denali. While it did not generate the same legends as the Klondike, Fairbanks is rich in gold. While mining started out small, the real boom was the first half of the 20th century with gold harvested by massive dredges. We toured one.

The site was about 10 miles from town. We accessed the dredge via a short train ride where guides gave us information as traveled quite slowly for about a third of a mile.

The best view of the dredge was from the train as we approached.

There was a collection of mining equipment scattered around the property. As we came to our destination, Mandi was perched on a grader.

Once at the site we were given little bags of dirt and an opportunity to pan for gold. My yield was about $6, the lowest count of anyone in our group who had actually gotten gold. The highest yield was $30. I was given a little candle as a consolation prize.

After the panning we got a chance to go inside the dredge for a look at the inner workings.

As we returned to the bus we got a look at the Alaska pipeline. About half of the route is underground like most pipelines, but where there is permafrost it is elevated on towers designed not to melt the ground underneath.

The inside of the line is kept clean by ï¿½pigsï¿½ that flow though the pipe scraping deposits off the pipe walls.

When we left the dredge we stopped in the center of Fairbanks where there was time to get lunch. Our stop was near the end point of the Yukon Quest, the annual 1000 mile dog sled race between Fairbanks and Whitehorse,

The ride to Denali was a little under 4 hours, with a stop midway.

Arrival at the McKinley Chalet Resort was about 5:30. Itï¿½s a huge, sprawling complex. We are in the ï¿½Canyon Lodgeï¿½ more or less in the middle of the property, but itï¿½s just a block of rooms with few other facilities. The main lodge is up a steep hill (at least thereï¿½s a frequent shuttle), Thereï¿½s also a ï¿½Denali Squareï¿½ complex in the opposite direction, a little more accessible. It has a nice plaza with fireplaces and a guitarist, as well as shops and a large restaurant. We had dinner in that restaurant a Mandi had planned a social but the wind was a bit too strong to do anything.

Wifi is annoying. There is none in Canyon Lodge, and the lounge in Denali Square where they have it is fully restaurant most of the time. That really means going up the hill anytime the internet is wanted.

Our cruise tour is almost over. Itï¿½s wonderful but anything but relaxing. In the 17 days since leaving home Iï¿½ve slept in 17 different beds. For a cruise tour Iï¿½ve really decided the way to do it is cruise last (Or better yet cruise at both ends),

Roy

Day Y4C-8, Wednesday, July 25, 2018, Dawson City to Fairbanks

July 27, 2018 rafinmd 2 Comments

I started my walk later this time, following the street the Westmark is on towards the river. The sun came up above the mountains about 7:30. The street ended at the Klondike River with a platform overlooking the confluence with the Yukon.

I walked the path on the dike following the rivers back into town. The front street has been closed off; signs said it was for upgrading the waste water mains. It looks like a big part of the job us installing pipes with a lot of insulation.

A pretty elegant courthouse was built in 1901 but has been unused since the territorial capitol was moved to Whitehorse.

A little further along the bank was the stately Anglican Church.

After breakfast I continued working in our room until the 10AM checkout deadline.

Between checkout and departure there was time for a visit to the Dawson Museum. I have noted that the old Dawson courthouse was closed soon after it opened. Trials in Dawson are quite rare now and in an unusual move one of the rooms in the museum has been restored as a court and is used today when there’s a trial in Dawson.

A railroad was built in the area in the heyday of the mining boom. It is gone now but the museum has an annex with equipment from that era. It only opened at 11:30 and we were leaving for the airport at noon so I had only the briefest of peeks inside the train shed.

The flight to Fairbanks is just about an hour. Holland America seems to have chartered a 737 that’s primarily theirs for the summer. The 40 of us were the only ones on the flight, leaving each of us pretty much a row of 3 seats to ourselves.

Dawson airport has a gravel runway, quite unusual for jet aircraft. Ours was equipped with a plate under the nose gear to deflect stones and some extra piping around the engine to keep dust and debris away from the engine.

We left Dawson at 12:50, gained an hour moving to Alaska time, and landed in Fairbanks at 12:40.

The rest of the day was largely lost to me. I have had a swollen bump on my leg that has not gotten any better since Toronto, and this became the time to check it out. The Doctor thought it might have been a clot and ordered an ultrasound of my leg. There was good news and bad news. The good news was that there was no clot and the medical verdict is that it is nothing to worry about. The bad news is that there isn’t really anything they can do about it and I will just have to live with it until it runs it’s course. It also means I did not write a word in the afternoon and the internet went out all evening. I’m still a day behind and will have limited chance to post from Denali.

My parting shot today comes from the Dawson Fire Museum and is a continuing comment on the slow pace of change in the far north. I noticed on one of the engines that seemed quite modern a 7-digit emergency number. When I asked the guide about 911 in Dawson, it had been installed just a year ago. Change comes but the pace is certainly slow.

Roy

Day Y4C-7, Tuesday, July 24, 2018, Dawson City

July 26, 2018 rafinmd Leave a comment

For or the second day in a row I was out for a walk before 5AM. While I saw a few things they did not include the sun, open businesses, or much in the way of people. There is an old sternwheeler, the SS Keno on display but it was closed to visitors for renovations.

There are 3 roads out of Dawson. We came in on the North Klondike Highway. The other route, the Top of The World Highway, starts out by crossing the Yukon River on a small ferry. The ferry runs essentially 24 hours but traffic is pretty light at 6AM. It did make one crossing as I watched.

On the way back to the hotel I passed a deserted Diamond Tooth Gerties.

The sun had come over the mountains just briefly when I stepped outside about 8.

It was a pretty quiet morning with a short walk with Roger. Near the end of the walk I visited the Dawson Fire Museum. In the panel shot the bottom row is the equipment they are using today, with some 50’s era equipment in the middle row, and the oldest equipment on top. The 2 steam pumpers were originally horse drawn. Late in their service the horses were replaced with the Catapillar tractor. Its a volunteer department except for a full time chief.

There was one afternoon activity, a Klondike cruise on the paddlewheeler Klondike Spirit.

We sailed down river first to a First Nations Village, Moosehide. It is primarily a ceremonial village now but is preparing for a gathering and there was a fair amount of activity there.

The Yukon was a major artery for commerce into the 1950’s. When the North Klondike Highway was completed the business for steamboats dropped to zero. Each fall the boats were pulled out of the river before the freeze; one year they were pulled out and never moved back to the river. We passed the Julia S, one of the more visible remnants was on the shore alongside out path.

We continued upstream past the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers before returning to the dock.

As we disembarked we passed one of the winches used to pull boats out of the river. Many were steam driven but the one we saw used horses to haul the boats out of the water.

Dinner was at the Aurora, a hotel a block from the Westmark. I hadnt noticed it at the time but the power went out while we were eating. It stayed out for about 2 hours. We think Diamond Tooth Gerties 8:30 show was cancelled due to the failure.

My parting shot is a very sad one. My countys fire service has been a combination of career and volunteer personnel for over 50 years. The first career fatality came Monday in a fire near our station. I did not personally know Nathan Flynn but he leaves behind a young family. Rest in Peace Nathan.

Roy

Day Y4C-5, Monday, July 23, 2018, Whitehorse to Dawson

July 25, 2018 rafinmd Leave a comment

I need to learn that in the Yukon sunrise time has little to do with when one sees the sun, even on a clear day. I woke early and started walking about 5, in plenty of time to see a sunrise. I walked and walked and walked but no sun in evidence. We were roughly across the street from the old terminal point of the WPYR. The station was there and a track was there but no train service. About a mile section of the road now is home to a streetcar which runs limited hours.

The Yukon River ran behind the station. It was quiet and peaceful in the morning but the current was quite rapid.

As the tour is currently configured we fly from Dawson to Fairbanks, leaving only 1 long day of coach travel. This was it, 332 miles from Whitehorse to Dawson. We met in the lobby and boarded the bus about 8:30.

While we have about a 15-minute stint on the Alaska Highway, almost all of the trip is on the North Klondike Highway. It’s mostly a fairly decent 2 lane highway, except for one construction area and some areas affected by permafrost. We made several stops but the first was a couple of hours into the trip. Before we got to it, Kyle noted that we were near the site of a massive fire about 50 years ago that burned for a year. At one point the firefighters were trapped and needed to take refuge in a lake for about 2 hours while the flames passed them by. While many trees have regrown, there is still a very prominent stand of burned out trees.

Our first actual stop was a place called Braeburn Lodge, a small café which served HUGE cinnamon rolls. It was also a stop on the “Yukon Quest”, Canada’s answer to the Ididarod. It’s an annual race between Fairbanks and Whitehorse.

Another memorable stop was 5-finger rapids, a group of islands in the middle of the river. There were several rapids, each with it’s own set of challenges. Some were either too narrow or too shallow to be navigable but some boats would be drawn into them anyway resulting in virtual certain destruction of the boat. At other times an upstream boat would be drawn into the same passage as a downstream boat, resulting in a collision. Often industrious First Nations people would arrange cables to guide ships into a safe channel, a vital help to the boatsman and nice source of income for the helpers.

While stopped at 5-finger we encountered a bicyclist. It turns out he was headed home after starting out at the end of the Dempster Highway on the Arctic Ocean. It’s a dusty gravel road; that guy was a real hard-core trekker.

A few miles after that stop we encountered construction with a mile or 2 of one-way traffic traveling in convoys on a dusty gravel road. The bicyclist would have come through that patch.

Our lunch stop was at Minto Resort. There was a dining room and buffet café (soup and sandwiches) , as well as picnic tables overlooking the Yukon.

Mandi wanted a group photo. After it was taken she posed with Kyle for a picture of our 2 fearless leaders.

Our last stop, about an hour before Dawson, was the Tintina Trench. I’m not sure if it’s an old river valley, a huge fault line, or a little bit of both but it’s quite pretty.

Just before Dawson we got our first sighting of the Klondike River and passed the Dempster Highway. Dawson is a pretty compact town, unfortunately most of the streets are gravel. The Westmark is HUGE. We were in a satellite wing, a second floor walkup, and wifi is only in the lounge. We went down by the river for dinner and were pretty well read for bed soon afterwards.
As a parting shot I was last here in 2002, then on a land tour with a Canadian Company. We had flown to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories and flown to Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic Ocean for a day trip. There was a bit of drama in that flight as due to a loading area one of our planes dropped down on it’s tail as I watched from the other plane. Our plane then had to make a second trip to pick up the other plane’s passengers. The next day we had an unforgettable 2-day drive down the gravel Dempster Highway(457 miles) to Dawson. I saw in the guide book that the Dempster has just this year been extended to Tuktoyaktuk. Change is slow in the high Arctic but it is happening.

Roy

Day Y4C-5, Sunday, July 22, 2018, Whitehorse, Yukon

July 24, 2018 rafinmd Leave a comment

It was a fairly early morning with breakfast close to 6, and meeting in the lobby at 7. We boarded our but for the next 2 days about 7:30 for a very short initial journey to the platform where the White Pass and Yukon Railroad loads people for the journey out of the valley. While others got buses with bears or moose on the side, ours had Orcas. Seems a bit odd for a land tour.

The rail journey was about 2 hours through a very steep valley. Along the way we passed a red caboose at Dayton now used by the US forest service followed by a look at a raging Skagway River.

A few minutes later we got our last look at Skagway.

According to our guide about 35,000 people worked on building the railroad with 35 deaths. A memorial to the 35 stands at a point where 2 were crushed by a landslide. Soon after that we passed Bridal Veil Falls,

About 20 minutes later we entered our first tunnel. A tall steel truss bridge was part of the original line. It was replaced by a second tunnel and shorter bridge about 1969 when the line started carrying heavier loads of ore. While no longer used, it is still quite pretty.

There were several curves where we could get glimpses of our locomotives. One was especially good.

Shortly before the summit we could see traces of the original trail of 1898. I was surprised at how narrow it was, especially with people needing to go up and down several times to carry the required ton of supplies.

The summit is also the border between the US and Canada. There were 2 slightly separated points. Right at the border there was a marker and US and Canadian flags and just past that a Mountie Cabin where travelers were checked for the required supplies before being allowed to pass. Beyond the summit the landscape was mostly a rocky plateau.

Our transfer point came about 10 miles later. Before we got off the coaches Canadian officials came by and checked everybody’s passports. Once Mandi and Kyle picked us up we went back through the border crossing a second time. Some buses were waved right through (perhaps those just turning around and going back to Skagway) while they boarded our bus and collected all our customs forms.

We made several stops on the journey to Whitehorse, the first being at the sign where we went from British Columbia into the Yukon.

Our lunch stop was at Carcross. Some people had box lunches and there were also some local items available. Roger got a bag lunch while I used the Fritos we were given on the St. Phillip. I think we both got ice cream at Carcross. The WPYR has a few trains that continue to Carcross, and in addition to a station there is an old steam locomotive on display.

We made 2 additional scenic stops on the way. The first was Emerald Lake, and then at an overlook viewing Miles Canyon just before we got to Whitehorse. Deep in the canyon there was a trail with a small foot bridge.

We were in Whitehorse around 2:30. I took a walk in town, buying a few apples and visiting the old paddlewheel steamer SS Klondike. Right now the upper decks are closed for restoration but about 2/3 of the ship is open including the engine room and some crew cabins.

On the way back I passed the Yukon’s assembly building. Dinner was at Tim Hortons, a sandwich for Roger and Chicken Noodle Soup for me. We called it a night pretty quickly.

I’ll take my parting shot from Mandi. I knew she was a teacher and was sitting beside her as we waited in the lobby. I asked her what she taught. Eighth grade science. Next question was if she had experienced any undue pressure in what she taught. She had not but followed up with “I was once offered a position in a neighboring state but declined because I wouldn’t have been allowed to teach evolution. I always knew that kids were shortchanged on content when politics entered the syllabus but had never considered the effect it would have on hiring good teachers. I see that as a double whammy.

Roy

Day Y4C-4, Saturday, July 21, 2018, Disembark MS Volendam, Skagway

July 23, 2018 rafinmd Leave a comment

I was up again by 4:30. I was in time for sunrise but there was no such thing as we were surrounded by steep cliffs on both sides of the Lynn Canal which had it’s own visual charms.

We tied up at Skagway’s railroad pier by 6AM, looking out from the aft decks at the town of Skagway.

Breakfast was from the Lido Marketplace, on the early side, waffles for me. Skagway has a tradition of placing ship emblems on the rock wall facing the railroad pier. One that caught my eye was the Ryndam with Captain Jonathan Mercer (World Cruise Captain extraordinare) now nearing retirement.

It was an early day as all the cruise tour passengers meeting at 7:30 on the Mainstage. We had a quick farewell from Cruise Director Tom, a presentation from a park ranger, met our Journey Hosts (ours is Mandi), and left group by group. We were the last of the 5 groups to leave.

We started with a short Skagway City tour. We made the first of several crossings over the Skagway River on the way to Dyea. While it looks like a great stream for salmon there are none as the river is laden with glacial silt which keeps the salmon away.

At Dyea we stopped at an overlook where we got a birds eye view of Skagway.

Our next stop was the gold rush cemetery which is no longer used but has graves for people who died up to about World War 2. A grave near the edge of the cemetery belongs to Soapy Smith, one of the townï¿½s characters. In many ways a scoundrel, he was denied burial in Skagway, and his grave is about 10 feet outside the town line.

The cemetery was our last stop. We drove up and down a couple of key streets with our guide pointing out where the key sites and resources were and ended up at the Westmark. It was around 10:30 with our rooms ready at 1. We hung out in the lobby for a little while catching up on emails but Roger wanted to take a second trip on the White Pass train. I wasnï¿½t really interested but walked over to the depot with him while he bought a ticket, and we headed back to the Westmark for lunch (sandwiches) about 11:30. While he was on the train I walked around town a bit (well, quite a bit).

At the far end of town the guides had pointed out Skagwayï¿½s new fire station. The guides alleged that the station had cost twice as much as our purchase of Alaska from Russia. They indicated that Skagway was the only town that hadnï¿½t been devastated by major fires and they wanted to keep it that way.

Heading back I was following a couple of blocks from the rail tracks and walked over to them. There were actually a few trains leaving about the same time. Iï¿½m not sure if the one I saw was Rogerï¿½s but it might have been.

The Skagway library was back on Broadway. It was the only place in town with truly free wifi. A few places have it for customers but nowhere else can you just walk in and sign on.

The town has just one real grocery store. Groceries come in on a barge once a week and by the end of the week produce selection is pretty slim. I had hoped to find an apple but there was little if any fresh fruit in sight.

Skagway does have an airport, but itï¿½s pretty limited. There are several flights a day to Juneau with a local operator on a single engine aircraft with about 9 seats, but apparently no interline ticketing. I did see one twin engine aircraft but it was for medical evacuations.

Next was the Alaska Marine Highway dock where the fast ferry Fairweather was docked, running a bit late so I didnï¿½t think of waiting for it to depart. On the way back there was a display of old railroad equipment including a huge rotary snowplow and a vintage steam engine.

I returned to the Westmark a little after 3 after a stop for ice cream. Mandi had a gathering in the hotel about 4 for orientation on what to expect on the rest of the tour, then dinner (steak) in the hotel dining room around 6. I had hoped to watch the departure of the Island Princess and Volendam around 9 but dozed off in my chair and missed it.

My parting shot goes back to the Volendam. I enjoy looking at the various plaques given out by ports for maiden calls and one caught my eye. I think somebody at the port could have used a bit more proofreading. The plaque has the proper title but then the slightly smaller text says “Commemorating the Visit of Celebrity Millennium to Busan”. Oops!

Roy

Day Y4C-3 (Part 3), Friday, July 20, Tracy Arm and Beyond

July 23, 2018 rafinmd 3 Comments

I’ll start this with a map of our route:

https://morethangetaways.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/tracytour.pdf

The trip out was not as good in as the entry and fjord time, but how could it be. We left the glacier about noon, and the snack bar selection was limited, hot dogs, pretzels, and cheeseburger, but the prices were not bad (I think $5 each) and they were not gourmet but good enough.

What we saw on the way out was mostly waterfalls. The first 2 were quite close together. The
r was a tiny cove on our starboard side, just about the size of the boat. On the opposite bank was quite a pretty waterfall.

We backed almost entirely into the cove and the other waterfall was almost directly above us.

Another lovely waterfall on our port side 20 minutes later had a long, ribbon-like descent.

We were almost out of the fjord when we came to the final spectacular falls. It is called Wedding Cake falls because couples often will charter a boat to be married below the base of the falls.

Our trip up Stevens Passage was fairly routine with Captain Dave pointing out a number of the landmarks. On the sail into Juneau from the South there are 2 significant islands that mark key points in the passage. The first is majestic Grand Island, a tall round island about 20 minutes before we leave the Gastineau Channel.

The second is Marmion island. We pass it just after entering the Gastineau. It is quite low slung and a bit hard to distinguish from the cliffs of Douglas Island.

As we approached Juneau we first passed the Seabourn Sojourn. I have sailed one of her sisters, the Odyssey, and it is very nice.

Entering the harbor twin sisters Volendam and Zaandam were waiting bow to bow. We left the St. Phillip much as we entered, going directly through the tender hatch into the Volendam. Our cards were scanned but we did not have any further security. There was really no opportunity to acquire any contraband.

Roger had forgotten some significant although not critical medicine. When we docked he headed for a pharmacy for them to contact his home pharmacy and get a new supply. He was successful but the wait for all the procedure to happen was extremely long. I waited till about 5:45 before going to dinner solo and in forgot my camera. Roger joined me about 6. I chose the carrot salad, pasta, and raspberry tart.

Most of my final evening was spent packing. Sailaway for both the Zaandam and Volendam was 10PM. I went out about 9:45 and we had turned away from the pier. Watching from the forward platform on deck 6, there wasn’t really much to see of the sailaway but the first moon I had seen on the trip was shining above us.

As a parting shot, some tours are better than others. I had looked at this tour with high hopes, and found that the experience far surpassed my wildest expectations. That’s rare. For anyone who gets an opportunity to visit Tracy Arm by small boat, I highly recommend it.

Roy