2 July 2023

Gibson got home from his East Coast trip about 3:30 am on Saturday, June 24 and our family left on our Alaska adventure about 9:30 am the same day. Gib packed two suitcases before he left the first time and swapped suitcases when he got home. Our neighbor, Beka, took this photo when she dropped us off at the airport.

We flew to Seattle where we boarded our cruise ship, the Norwegian Bliss. We met up with Sarah, Joe, Zina and Darius who arrived a few hours before us. This is a view of the 16th deck of the ship before we left Seattle. The deck was never this sunny or this crowded the rest of the cruise.

We settled into our stateroom on Saturday. This is a view of Seattle and Mount Rainier from our balcony. We set sail Saturday evening and sailed north all of Sunday. Our weeklong cruise had 5 ports of call: Sitka, Juneau, Icy Strait Point and Ketchikan in Alaska, and Victoria, BC in Canada.

This is a photo of Gibson and Helen in front of our ship in Sitka, Alaska.

We signed up for a hike through the Tongass Rainforest. Our guides were fortuitously named Sophie and Helen.

The Helens were surprised to meet each other as most of the Helens they have met are elderly women. In fact, our guide may be the first Helen our Helen has met who is younger than she is. Our tour guide was a 16 year old high school student.

The Tongass Rain Forest looked similar to other forests we've hiked through in the Pacific Northwest with a few distinct characteristics. The Alaskan forests are more bio dense, but have less biodiversity. We got pretty good at identifying the three main trees and about 10 other types of plants commonly found along the trail. Also, the soil on the island is very acidic and so trees avoid growing deep roots in the ground, as you can see from this photo of a tree barely rooted. The trees blow over easily in storms and become nurseries for new trees.

This seaweed is called bladderak and is full of clear gel. Our tour guide recommended we rub the gel on our skin as a moisturizer. The fancy name for the gel is sodium alginate. Besides skin care products, sodium alginate is used  in hydrogels for healing wounds and as a natural, vegan thickener in gluten free foods.

Our guides in Sitka showed us some edible plants which we saw throughout our time in southeastern Alaska. In the photo, Helen is trying out some deer heart, a small leafy plant similar to spinach. We also ate spruce tips which are high in vitamin C and would have prevented scurvy in sailors, if the sailors hadn't distilled all the vitamin C out when they made beer out of the spruce. We saw lots of salmonberry and blueberry bushes, but it was too early for berries.

After our hike we walked through Old Sitka. Sitka was settled by Russians in 1799 who hunted all of the sea otters and beavers for  their furs and cut down all the trees for lumber. Some Russian influence remains, like Saint Michael's Cathedral, built in 1837. Believing they had extracted anything of value from the land, and needing money after losing the Crimean War, Russia sold all of Alaska to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million, about 2 cents per acre. 

Back on ship, we had many activities to choose from. On Monday night we went to a musical called Six.

The musical reimagines the six wives of Henry VIII as pop icons. They flip the story to end with the rationale that instead of Henry VIII being the main character, the only reason anyone remembers Henry VIII is because he was married 6 times.

On Tuesday in Juneau our group split up for the day. Brandan, Joe, Darius and Gibson went salmon fishing. Gibson caught a King salmon that weighed 25.8 pounds.

This is the second fish Gibson has caught. Here's a photo of the first one that he caught with Joe's help at Redfish Lake in 2016.

Darius also caught a fish. Joe shipped the fish to his house and we hope to eat Gibson's salmon when we visit later this summer.

Meanwhile, Becky, Sarah, Zina and Helen were on a 6 mile hike to see the Mendenhall glacier. It rained all day in Sitka the day before and we were glad it didn't rain in Juneau as the rain would have made the hike slippery and more challenging. 

We saw many of the same plants in Juneau that we learned about in Sitka. This hillside is covered in devil's club. The underside of the leaves and the stems are covered in barbed spines that will penetrate your skin and fester if you touch the plant. Indigenous people learned made a salve for sore muscles from the plant. The salve is still a popular home remedy and is sold in gift shops.

We reached the top of the hike with a staircase our guide called The Grand Staircase. This photo shows about a sixth of the steps so it's an appropriate name.

Here's a photo of Helen and Zina at the top. The trees were too thick to have much of a view.

Further down the trail we could see the glacier. It has receded about 2.5 miles from its maximum size and is expected to pull back from the lake soon and become a land glacier instead of an intertidal glacier. At least Helen will be able to tell her grandchildren that she saw a glacier.

Back on board the ship, we sailed up one of Alaska's many fjords. We enjoyed stunning scenery like this all afternoon.

Our next stop was Icy Strait Point, a destination on Chichagof Island created by cruise ships in partnership with Alaskan Natives. The goal of the project is to preserve the culture of the area and provide economic benefits for the cruise companies and the people who live there. The port is a healthy mix of fun, sustainability and authenticity. One of the attractions is a gondola ride to the top of the island.

The gondola climbs steeply up Hoonah Mountain. We got our best view of the bay from the gondola.

This sign at the top of the mountain made Becky laugh.

Until she saw the tour guide, Aaron, carrying a gun. The coastal brown bears that live in this area are really just very large grizzly bears. With plentiful food, the bears aren't aggressive, but they are unpredictable. One of Aaron's responsibilities is to walk the trail every morning and check for bears. With 2-3 bears per square kilometer, he sees a bear every day.

We felt safe hiking with a large group of noisy people and did not see any bears on our hike. Instead, we saw fields of shooting star wildflowers. We carefully stayed on the path. This beautiful area is a muskeg, a kind of bog on top of limestone. Hidden in the vegetation are sinkholes up to 40 feet deep.

A second gondola took us to a restored cannery that has been turned into a museum and gift shop. The cannery operated under different owners from 1912 until the 1990s. Then it transitioned to a tourist destination. 

All of this fishing gear is now only decorative. 

On Wednesday night we watched the musical The Jersey Boys. Sofi saw this musical on Broadway in 2014 and introduced us to the music when she got home from New York. We knew all of the songs, but not the story and enjoyed seeing the show put together. We were impressed with the talented singers of both the musicals we watched on board.

On Thursday we stopped at a new port, Ketchikan.

The trash cans were painted to look like canned salmon. 

Besides salmon, Ketchikan is known for having the greatest amount of totem poles in the world. We visited the Totem Heritage Center to see a few of them.

Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people carved totem poles to honor individuals, commemorate special events and represent their clans and family groups. The totem poles are not religious and were never worshipped. The dinosaur on the middle totem pole in this photo actually a bear, although it looks more like T-rex. Traditionally, totem poles were left to naturally decompose back into the earth and had a life span of 70-80 years. The totem poles in this photo are almost 200 years old and have inspired the next generation of totem pole artists to create new works.

The Heritage Center has other examples of indigenous art, including this robe, a superb example of Chilkat weaving. By the 1970s, the ability to produce Chilkat weaving had almost disappeared. The artist who created this robe, Dorica Rockwell Jackson, helped preserve the required skills and started a Chilkat weaving revival.

After leaving the museum, we walked around downtown Ketchikan. Creek Street used to be the sketchiest part of town, but now it's the most picturesque street in town, with charming shops lining a wooden boardwalk along the creek.

Back on board we had a long way to go to our final stop in Victoria. Brandan, Becky and Gibson tried out the miniature golf holes located at the back of deck 17.

Anticipating some downtime, we bought a 250-piece jigsaw puzzle in Ketchikan. If Becky would have known it would take Brandan and Gibson less than 30 minutes to finish it, she would have gotten a bigger puzzle.

Darius, Zina, Joe and Sarah put the puzzle together a second time. These photos were taken in the Observation Lounge, a wonderful space on deck 15 with lots of comfortable chairs and terrific views of the ocean. We all took a nap, read a book, worked on a puzzle, saw a whale or two and/or admired the view nearly every day on this level.

The cruise ship had wonderful and varied dining options. Helen, Gibson, Zina and Darius preferred the buffet. Helen renamed the buffet "The Hall of Wonders and Pleasures I Would Like to Indulge and Tasty Little Succulent Delights." We called the buffet the "Hall of Wonders" for short. The buffet was great for quick meals, like the mornings we left the ship early for an excursion. Becky, Brandan, Joe and preferred eating at one of the three complimentary restaurants. The menus changed every day, the food was delicious, the service was impeccable and the portions were perfectly sized. Every meal felt like a treat. Our cruise package included two meals at one of the nine specialty restaurants on board. We tried out the Mexican restaurant, Los Lobos, on Thursday night. Fantastic!

Most of Friday was spent traveling from Alaska down to Victoria. We tried out an escape room challenge after breakfast. We worked together to decode clues and find the combinations to open each of 6 locks so we could open the box.

Inside the box was. . . another locked box. And inside that box was another code to unravel. Super fun and challenging with a stopwatch ticking in the background.

For lunch we tried out Food Nation, another specialty restaurant. This one had a Pan Asian theme and we ordered pot stickers, Korean fried chicken, sushi, ramen and pho as well as some definitely not Asian items like Mexican street corn and waffles. This was one of our favorite meals on the cruise. Darius and Zina ate at the always reliable Hall of Wonders.

After several days of rain and overcast skies, Friday almost felt warm. We walked around deck 8 after lunch.

Helen, Gibson, Zina and Darius went swimming and hot tubbing. There were two water slides on board, including this one that went out over the ocean. The water slide had two flat spots where people often got stuck. Hatch doors were built into the water slide and an attendant would let the stuck people out. Getting stuck happened A LOT, maybe 1 out of 3 people who went down the water slide. Gibson and Darius both successfully went down the water slide without getting stuck, which felt like an accomplishment. This photo is of Becky and Gibson watching the water slide earlier in the week. The key to a successful slide appeared to be form and speed. For example, this person has his arms and legs tucked in and will likely make it through.

We were scheduled to arrive in Victoria at 8 pm, late, but before dark and with plenty of time to walk around town before the all aboard call at 11:30 pm. Unfortunately, the coast guard had an incident shortly before we arrived and asked our ship to remain at sea until they finished their rescue operation. This meant we disembarked at 9:30 pm. We speed walked through Victoria and enjoyed some of the beautiful buildings before heading back.

We woke up Saturday morning back in Seattle. We said goodbye to Sarah, Joe, Zina and Darius at the Seattle airport. As we walked off the ship for the last time, we saw forklifts staging the thousands of pounds of food and beverages needed for the Bliss's next week long cruise to Alaska, with a departure time less than 12 hours from the time the boat arrived. Extraordinary.