Sign of the Monsoon
The New Mexico summer monsoon is in full tilt now, though it has been a bit odd in that the valley has received twice as much rain as we up against the mountain have measured this month. The airport so far in July has measured 2 inches of rain; I'm not sure we've gotten that much. In Santa Fe the airport is located in the dry end of the valley and has but 1.2 inches of precipitation. In the city and the mountains behind, over 4 inches of rain have fallen, and this evening the radar indicates another cloudburst for that city with flood warnings posted. That's the way monsoons go down here. Next week, we at Casa Bonita could easily catch up with everyone else. I'd like to say I took this picture, but it was taken from the west side of Albuquerque while we were on the cruise and posted on the Weather Service site. Quite impressive, a rainbow that spans about 10 miles.

Alaska Vacation
July 10-12 - days 6-8
The Return Journey
From Skagway we sailed almost directly for Seattle, stopping for an early Thursday evening in Prince Rupert, British Columbia (about 60 miles south of Ketchekan). The town was pretty quiet, with only our cruise boat at dock. Since NCL is of foreign registry, at least one port had to be outside of the U.S. Prince Rupert has had cruise ships only since 2006, so there were only a modest number of stores, though the Museum of Northern British Columbia had a gift shop with nice things in it at reasonable prices. After the museum, Jon and I continued up the hill to pop into a Safeway to see what the Canadians had for groceries - not a lot different than home, except that all the labels were in english and french. One of my co-workers and friends in Santa Fe County is the Fire Chief, so I ran back across the street to get my picture taken in front of a Prince Rupert fire truck.


We also found a totem pole in a park by a government building, so we took a picture of that also.

Jon wasn't thrilled with Prince Rupert. "It's just like an American town in Oregon", he said. But nevetheless we got to step into Canada to do a bit more than run for a train.

The cruise map indicated that we would traverse the ocean side of Vancouver Island and I wasn't looking forward to those big ocean swells again, but as we passed the south tip of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the open channel was as quiet as the inside passage, and so was the trip down the west side of Vancouver Island all day Friday - a lucky day with mostly clear weather and sunshine breaking out and a few whale sightings to capture our attention.

Carma got around the boat in her wheelchair, but was able to get up to sit at a dining room table and to go in and out of her cabin. Marolynn roomed with Carma and generally watched after her for the cruise. Carma had a super time.

Here's a photo of Jon on the balcony of Carma and Marolynn's cabin. A balcony cabin is a must for at least one couple on the Alaskan trip, and for other cruises also as I was told. We all sat out there for hours watching the scenery.

Marolynn and Carma's cabin was a drop-in place for all of us on the cruise. Sometimes it was a sleep-in place also.

Although there were many shipboard restaurants for meals, we all gravitated toward the Versailles for dinner - it had good service and generally good meals.

Early on Saturday, July 12 the ship docked at the NCL terminal in Seattle and we headed for the airport and flights home. It was a brilliant, warm, sunny day in Seattle and someone took this picture of the Norwegian Star that morning at dockside. I was fortunate enough to spot it in a Flickr upload.

Alaska Vacation

July 9 - 5th day

Pass to the Yukon

Skagway, Alaska was our northern-most port, 59.5 degrees north and the sun was up at 4am and stayed up until 11:30 pm. Skagway (or Skaguay, as I saw it on one store-front) is a small town of about 800 residents. On the day we were there, four cruise ships docked and spilled about 7,500 tourists into the town. The nearest cruise ship in the photo above is our ship. The last cruise ship arrives on September 27, and after that, many of the 800 residents leave for the winter. The town is at the bottom of a canyon which rises to a 3,000ft pass into Canada and the Yukon, and the winds howl out of the interior most of the winter. The Indians wouldn't live in Skagway; too cold and windy, they say - only white men would live there.

The town was founded in the 1890s when gold was discovered in the Yukon. It was a typical gold rush town. There were three churches in town; a catholic church painted red, and two protestant churches painted green and white at the order of the town council, so that the men who were drinking on Saturday night could find their church on Sunday by its color. There's actually a natural wood-colored LDS meetinghouse there now also, and the tour driver pointed at a store and indicated to us that we could buy our "LDS things" there.

We chose to take a tour up to the pass - a bus ride up and back on the train. The track up over the pass was built in 1900. A railroad builder from London was asked to survey the area to determine whether a railway could be built and the decision was no - impossible in that kind of country. An Irish railroad man was called in and he said that if he were supplied with enough whiskey, he could build the railway, and he did with only three fatalities when a boulder rolled down the mountain and crushed three workers.

At the top of the pass, the trees were only about 3 or 4 feet tall. The guide explained that some of them were over 100 years old, but they were stunted by the -60 degree winter temperatures and wind in the winter. The movie "Never Cry Wolf" was filmed in this location. Remember, the pass is only 2,800 feet above sea-level.

There are still remnants of the narrow gold-miner's trail that led up the canyon to the pass. Canada is just beyond the top of the pass and the Canadians wouldn't let anyone in unless they had a year's supply of food and goods which amounted to about a ton. That meant that they had to traverse the trail many times to get their supplies over the pass. One could buy a horse in Skagway and load him up with 400 pounds of goods, but the horses wern't very good, and about 80% of them gave out about half way up the trail and were shot and thrown off the trail.

On the north side of the pass are some lakes and a train station that is in Canada. One could ride another 40 miles to Whitehorse in the Yukon territory, above the 60-degree latitude line, but we didn't have time to do much more than go through Canadian customs and hop on the train back to Skagway. The train ride back down was really fascinating. I've been on few trails with the boy scouts that dropped off like the track-bed did, almost straight to the bottom of the canyon.

As the train starts down off the pass, the inverted-V trestle bridge appears, now unused, but it is a symbol of the railway. The canyon beyond that point quickly gets a lot deeper and soon we're riding on a narrow track-bed high up on the mountain.

The tracks follow a side canyon (left photo) where the train stops to pick up hikers who have been helecoptered up to the foot of a glacier and who have hiked back down to the train stop. That sounded like a neat trip to me, but since the asking price was $500, I chose to pass it up in favor of the train excursion.

Carma is in the picture to the left on the train - note the coal stove, and the saw in the "break in case of of emergency" compartment up above. To the right is the roudy bus passengers on the way up to the top of the pass. All of them except two bewildered Japanese passengers which they switched to another bus, were in our cruise group.

Alaska Vacation

July 8 -Day 4

Blue Ice and Whales

Tuesday we arrived in Juneau and most of us availed ourselves of a whale-watch trip. It came with a bus-ride to a bay about 10 miles outside of Juneau which has a 47 mile highway that goes nowhere. High up in the mountains, the Juneau snowfield supports many glaciers. The Mendenhall glacer is just up the valley from Juneau and can be seen in the middle of the picture above. There were a couple in the group who took a helicopter ride up and onto the glacier - a great excursion they said.

The whale-watch trip turned out to be very successful with a pod of orcas all around the boat, and humpback whales across the channel.

Orcas above, and a humpback to the right. It was the best trip in regard to the number of whales sighted, so far this season, the skipper said. The people that ran the trip were very

knowledgable about the sea life -- orcas stay with their mothers through their life; there might be several in such a family -- so these folks who are marine biologists are not in favor of orcas in captivity. All of the orca pods from southeast Alaska down through Vancouver Island have been documented, and if you have an identification book, you can name a particular pod. There are resident and transient pods. The residents eat salmon and other fish, and the transients eat seals and even sea lions.

The cruise ship was at Juneau only for the morning. The afternoon was spent in sailing up a fiord to a glacer south of Juneau. The weather continued cloudy and sometimes misty as we sailed for the glacier. I took a photo of a mountain glacier as we started up the fiord, and when I examined it full size, I might have been lucky enough to catch an avalanche breaking off of the front of the glacier.



Left Picture bottom left: an ice-fall or just a cloud?"

Travel brochures showed beautiful pictures of blue ice, but I never comprehended it until I saw in in the fiord. When ice is put under immense pressure by a glacier, it turns a brilliant blue. The blue shade is in the mountain glacier above. Further up the fiord there were small chunks of ice that were just as blue; absolutely fascinating.

There wasn't a lot of ice as we sailed up the fiord, not even near the glacier as we found out. But the landscape, carved by the glacier, assumed mind-boggling proportions, rising from a thousand foot sea bottom less than a hundred yards away, straight up a mile from the surface into the snow and clouds. This is as wild a landscape that I ever experienced - it seemed like the earth at the time of its creation. Proportions are deceiving in the picture. The height of the wall below the clouds in the picture is more than 2000 feet. Streams and waterfalls run everywhere from the snow above.
The ship reached the glacier about 8pm and we almost didn't see it because it was quite misty at first. It was cold too; just like being in a deep freeze with the glacier and the ice on the water bounded by steep fiord walls.

The ship stopped and did a 180-degree pivot; we didn't have a lot of time because we had to be out of the fiord and the ice before dark. The mist suddenly cleared, allowing some pictures to be taken.

Alaska Vacation
July 6-7, days 2 and 3
Totems, Salmon, and the Deep Green Sea
Our first full day at sea was spent traversing the landward side of Vancouver Island. The day was cloudy as was almost the rest of the cruise. Still, we took pictures of the island mountains rising out of the sea, green with fir trees, all snow-capped at cloud level
Northward, between Vancouver Island and Queen Charlotte Island there is a 150 mile stretch of open ocean, this time complete with 20ft. swells to the side of the boat, which made life difficult for Jonathan. Just as soon as we had land to our west again, the water calmed down and so did Jon.


On Monday morning we arrived in Ketchekan where some of us had arranged a fishing charter. Five of us fished and we brought Carma along to sit and watch the action. At first it all looked kind of doubtful with wind, rain, and bumpy seas, but after an hour the wind quit, the rain stopped, and the water calmed down. Then salmon started jumping out of the water; all of this less than 100 yards from shore. Everytime we trolled through the school, we got a fish on until each of us boated two fish, the largest about 25 lbs. There was also plenty to see - a large fir tree with a half-dozen resident eagles, and a bear which came out of the woods down onto the beach, and then up through a group of houses along the shore, looking for lunch.

The red "Alaska" overcoats were bought aboard the ship as a necessity for Marolynn and Jon who had no coats, but I bought one also and quickly learned that it was a necessity for me also with the constant 50-degree weather and occasional rain. The snow level was only about 2,000ft up the mountains - all of the residents remarked how low it was for this time of year. They have not really had any break in the cloudy, rainy days of spring this year.
Jon and Marolynn took a tour to the Saxman Native Village replete with totems.

The U.S. purchase of Alaska from the Russians in 1867 was very popular among the native americans. Seward came up to see his purchase and the tribe threw a big party for him, and planned a totem in his honor. They expected him to reciprocate with a big party for the tribe and when it was not forthcoming, they constructed a "shame pole" with a carving of Seward at the top but with red ears and nose as a symbol of his shame for not hosting a celebration.

We all had a great time in Ketchikan. It is a beautiful place and I wished I was a generation younger - if I had known then, I might have moved up there.

Alaska Vacation
Saturday, July 5 - day 1
Carrie and Kurt
Save the Day
I like a well-planned and executed trip, with all the ducks lined up. Well, it went that way for a while. The airline got us to Seattle on the morning of the cruise embarkation. Surprise, surprise, Carrie and Kurt were there at the SeaTac airport to see us off. Grandma's eyes were wide with surprise when she saw them.

When we went for our bags, mine were there, but Marolynn's and Jonathan's bags were missing. We crowded into the Soutwest baggage office and were told to wait a half hour for another plane that was coming from Albuquerque. Alas, no bags from that one either. So back into the baggage office to fill out paperwork. Southwest provided some balm for our anxieties - they compensated us $100 per cruise day, each for Marolynn and Jonathan and told us to check there for the bags when we got back.

But mom and jon had no spare clothes. Carrie offered to take them to a mall to buy some clothes and then take them to the ship dock - a real life-saver. The rest of us boarded a shuttle and went to the dock. There were a few anxious moments waiting for Marolynn and Jon to appear; they were pretty late, but the embarkation staff looked out for them and we were finally united to board the Norwegian Star which got underway at 4pm.

You can see the Star at dockside, not far from the Space Needle in Seattle (I got this photo as we were flying back home). The captain announced that we would proceed up the landward side of Vancouver island and reach Ketchikan on Monday morning. Jon took a nice photo of the sun setting against the sea and mountains.

Alaska Vacation
We're back from our Alaska vacation and what a week! We'll relate the trip in more detail as photos are downloaded and there is time to organize our postings. 22 of us went, all from Marolynn's family, including Grandma Carma who is 93 who after she sat on a fishing boat watching some of us catch salmon, said, "Next time I'm going to fish also." All of Marolynn's 3 sisters and husbands went, as well as some of the younger generation and moms and dads of the husbands.

We found that it is almost always cloudy and rainy in southeast Alaska, but there were enough breaks in the weather to see the glaciers and ride the train up over the pass above Skagway. I didn't realize that Ketchikan is 600 miles north of Seattle and that Skagway is another 600 miles north of Ketchikan. The sun comes up at 4 am and sets after 11pm that far north at this time of year.
We were almost shocked when we got back to Albuquerque last night to find the sun setting just after 8pm. More about the Alaska trip coming up.

Sign of the Monsoon
The New Mexico summer monsoon is beginning to roll up some towering afternoon clouds. Actually there have been great thunderstorms over the Sangre de Cristos back of Santa Fe and over the Jemez, some of which have floated down to Albuquerque by evening - we've had about a quarter of an inch of rain this weekend.

Marolynn returned from Utah yesterday to spend the few days before the big cruise getting ready for the trip and cleaning up the place. The new County fiscal year (2009) started today and I installed the new budget on the mainframe computer in time for everyone to start financial transactions against it. Jon, Mom, and I all went out this evening to see the new Pixar movie, "Wall-E" which was just great - I recommend it for anyone who can get to it. It's nice to see that G-rated movies can still bring big crowds to the theaters.