It has been too long since I posted here. After my nephew Todd departed from Prince Rupert in British Columbia, Lee and I then moved to Ketchikan, Ak. This was a two day trip and involved crossing an open ocean passage called Dixon entrance. The waves were moderate but off our beam, so we activated our stabilizers to help take most of the roll out of the boat. Stabilizers are a wonderful contraption, they are actually fins that stick about 4 feet into the water and are about 3 feet wide. They are thin and face fore and aft. Driven by hydraulics which comes from a pump mounted on the engine, there is a gyro that senses the roll of the boat. The computer sends a command and the fins rotate appropriately to apply pressure against the sea as it passes by them. This in turn causes the boat to "lift" in the appropriate direction. They make for a safer and more comfortable journey.
After three days cleaning the boat my sister Annette and Margaret arrived by plane and we commenced our journey of two weeks with them to Juneau. Juneau is north of Ketchikan, but first we went south and into a long (100 mile+) body of water, shaped like a U that then exited to the north of Ketchikan. This area is properly called the "Behm Canal" or more commanly known as Misty Fiords National Monumnet. Misty of course because the area is a rain forest and there is perputual mist. There is NO civilization other than one fishing lodge in this entire trip. We usually wish for sunny weather, but expect Alaska to almost always be grey and overcast and rainy. This time we wished for bad weather and got sunny weather. When it is raining in this area there are literally hundreds of waterfalls, many of them falling thousands of feet. Instead we saw just a few waterfalls. The fishing lodge we visited, Yes Bay Lodge, did not have any guests yet, so we went there and had a wonderful dinner in this quite old but elegant place. The appetizer was 1/2 of a large crab for each of us (enough there for a whole meal), then we were treated to a wonderful fresh halibut, cooked just right. They don't have room at their dock for a boat our size, so we anchored near by and took our inflatable to dinner. We had a wonderful time. Upon leaving Misty Fiords we then went to a very small community called Myers Chuck. In the winter the population here is about 10 people and during the summer swells to about 50! There are absolutely no services here, but it is an interesting place to walk around. Can you believe though there is a U.S. Post office here! No wonder they lose money! But, the postmisstress sells "sticky buns". These are homemade cinammon rolls, yummy, but obviously not on the diet.
We left here and headed to our next destination, the city of Wrangell, population 1400. This is a pretty good sized community for this area. We walked around and saw the whole place in about 10 minutes! There is one family run little restaurant where we had dinner. Then on to Petersburg, population 1800. A Scandanavian town with the history of the first settlers from where else, but Scandanavia. It is a cute place, two restaurants, two grocery stores and two ace hardware stores. We spent a few days here because a storm system came through and did it ever rain, day after day, non stop! We were a bit sick of the rain. Nest we moved to Juneau over the course of two days and on June 20th Annette and Lee flew back home to Raleigh N.C.
On June 23rd my brother Grant arrived from his home in Minneapolis. We was with us a week and we took the opportunity to travel to Glacier Bay National Park. This is the park where there are multiple calving style glaciers dumping into the sea. It is a huge place only accessable by boat. The park is very tightly regulated so you must have a reservation to take your boat into it and you can only stay a limited time, no more than one week. It is almost impossible to cover all of it at 8 knots, so we took a 10 hour tour on a jet powered catamaran boat which was quite fun. We saw glaciers up close and personal. However the other attraction is the wildlife. Before we entered the park we were in an open ocean area called Icy Strait. Sounds cold, right? And here we were treated to a spectacular show put on by HUGE grey whales. This is a feeding ground for them and they were flying out of the water with these huge bodies. One whale we watch for at least 15 minutes, just stayed in one place with his tail sticking up out of the water and slapping the water over and over and over. It was spectacular.
My brother left on June 30th and we flew home to San Diego on July 1 for a 10 days visit with all our family. We had a lot of fun and have no returned to the boat, just Margaret and I, to continue our journey. We will keep you posted.
Mendenhall glacier in Juneau
Glacier, huge wall of ice, going back many miles!
Chuck and brother Grant on tour boat at Glacier Bay. Note glacier in 
Scenery from Icy Strait
Grey whale pounding the water repeatedly with the tail
Scenery from Icy Strait
Grey whale pounding the water repeatedly with the tail
