Monday Meanderings - 8.27.2016

One final post regarding Alaska - from a sort of a backward approach.

I'm narrating an audio book entitled "In Darkest Alaska." Strange title, but it deals extensively (!) with the earliest days of tourism along the Inside Passage - that nearly 1,000 mile-long sea lane that weaves up the coast from Puget Sound to Icy Strait and has been a sight-seeing attraction since shortly after the Alaska Purchase in 1867.

In the early days, the steam ships departed from ports ranging from San Francisco to Vancouver - same as now - and made stops at Fort Wrangell, then Juneau, Glacier Bay and finally Sitka. Over the years, those ports have changed somewhat; Fort Wrangell was decommissioned, so Ketchikan was added. Gold was discovered in the Yukon and Skagway became a major destination, but the one constant has been Glacier Bay.

The naturalist John Muir is given credit for "discovering" Glacier Bay in 1879. Never mind that a Tlingit Indian guided him to it, and there were native seal hunters living in a half-dozen permanent communities within the arm of the bay at the time. As tribute, the largest of the nineteen-some-odd glaciers in the bay at the time was named in honor of him, and thousands made the journey to see the Muir Glacier in Glacier Bay.

"The grandest glacier in the bay was the Muir Glacier. Imagine a glacier three miles wide and 300 feet thick at its mouth. Think of Niagara Falls frozen stiff, add thirty-six feet to its height, and you have a slight idea of the terminus of Muir Glacier."

I'm puzzled by this, because it was the Marguerite Glacier - not the Muir Glacier - that our cruise ship parked in front of and we spent the afternoon marveling at.  And, according to the friendly park ranger aboard ship, the width of the glacier is about 1 mile  - not 3, and the visible height at its terminus is "only" about 250 feet. So is the first description simply hyperbole? And did they change the name in the meantime?

 A quick check with Google and the mystery is solved. This photo and the one that follows were taken from the same location on the west shoreline of Muir Inlet in Glacier Bay, and show the changes that have occurred to Muir Glacier during the 113 years between September 1892 and August 2005.

The 1892 photograph shows the more than 328 feet high, more than 2.5 miles wide tidewater terminus of the glacier. Some icebergs, evidence of recent calving, can be seen floating in Muir Inlet

In the 2005 photograph, Muir Glacier is no longer visible, as it has retreated more than 31 miles from its former position. During the 113 years between photographs, Muir Glacier ceased to have a tidewater terminus (no longer touches water in the bay). There is no floating ice and the vegetation is abundant.

So, it's still in the Park, but Cruise Ships can't handle the 31 miles of dry land to reach it. 

Interestingly, when John Muir and his Indian guide "discovered" the bay, the glacier that bears his name was the end of navigable waters, 48 miles into the bay (middle arrow). The ice wall has since retreated some 65 miles from the mouth of the bay (top) and is only a remnant of the massive glacier that filled the entire bay. When George Vancouver mapped the coast in 1790, there was no visible bay - just a huge ice field over the entire area.

Monday Meanderings - 8.20.2018

Jobs in Alaska.

We were already aware that many of the bus drivers and tour guides that we encountered in our Alaska excursions were college kids working a summer job. Some live there year-round - like the bus driver who had a tip jar labeled "Because winter is coming!!" - but most often you ran into summer hires.

We perhaps did not realize the extent of this part-time work force until we set out to venture inland to Denali. The young man and woman who served as our hosts on the rail car were from Idaho. This was his 8th season as a rail guide, and he had talked his girl-friend-now-fiance into joining up a couple of years ago. The bus driver who met us at the train station and delivered us to the lodge lives in Alaska year-round, teaches school in Fairbanks and works as a summer hire "because that's where the money is."

The Princess Denali Wilderness Lodge (and the other Cruise-line lodges, as well as most of the businesses in Healy) are shut down for the winter, and with the exception of a few maintenance workers, everybody goes home in September.

At the Lodge, we noticed a change in the age of the seasonal employees. There were still plenty of college-age workers - mostly in the food venues - but now we encountered a host of older, retirees. Like the woman who drove the shuttle bus at the Lodge. Her sign said "Carol - Flagstaff AZ" She and her husband drive a camper to Denali each Spring, live in an adjacent RV park, and spend the summer driving shuttle buses. The woman who drove our glorified Park Service school bus on the tour of the Park lives in Maine. She makes the trip by herself every year.

All of the drivers have a spiel. Of course that's part of the job description for the train guides and the Park tour guide, but even the shuttle bus driver is quick to carry on a conversation. In part, because it makes driving the Lodge circuit sixty-six times a day (yes, really) more interesting, and in part because it fosters tips.

All of the motor coaches are equipped with hands-free headsets for the drivers, and they take seriously their role as providers of information. Usually it's abut flora and fauna, but the driver on the McKinley to Anchorage portion of the trip gave us a completer and almost unbiased political history of Sarah Palin as we passed through her former home town of Wasilla.

He also told us about the signboard that operates in the winter that keeps a running total of the number of Moose killed by autos on the highway between Wasilla and Anchorage. Last year, more than 300. There apparently is not a signboard for the number of people killed in these encounters. That may say something about Alaskan values. Just saying,

Then there was Carl, the older gentleman who drove the bus from Denali Wilderness down to McKinley State Park. Carl was originally from Louisiana and when he graduated from LSU, he and his new bride responded to an offer to relocate in Alaska and teach school.  It was unclear from Carl's story just when they learned that his school was going to be a one-room all-grades class on an island in the Bering Sea.  Unlike Sarah Palin's boast that "she could see Russia from her back yard," you really could see Russia from this island. In fact, it was closer than the US. Oh, and by the way, you will need a year's supply of food and necessities, and here's a catalog to order what you will need, and a ship will bring it. Eventually.

The contract was for one year. They stayed six. They returned to the "outside," but it was too late. He and his wife live in Alaska year-round now, in Park Service housing, and he drives a bus and tells old codger stories and bad jokes to tourists. Like:

"My wife and I were at the bank in Anchorage and  a gunman burst in and proceeded to hold everyone at gunpoint and rob the place.The gunman asked the teller if she could identify him. She said yes, so he shot her. He asked the person in front of him the same question, and receiving an affirmative answer, shot him. He then asked my wife if she could, and she quickly answered, "No." But then she pointed at me and said, "But he can.""

And Carl is the one who led the bus in singing, "America The Beautiful." At that moment, in that place, it just seemed like the thing to do.

Monday Meandering - 8.12.2018

Alaska by rail.
 

We extended our Alaska cruise with a train trip from the port of Whittier, Alaska to Denali National Park. It's a distance of about 300 miles, which translates to a 10 hour train trip. I will say that  the glass dome cars provided spectacular views of the countryside - but as Barb put it, "We could have flown to Europe in the same amount of time."

Since on the maps it looked to me like Denali was in the big middle of a lot of empty space, I think I was expecting a Cruise-line owned railroad that went to the Cruise-line owned lodge outside the National Park and we would be rather isolated in the big middle of that empty space.

Turns out the Whittier-Denali route is just a portion of a very busy rail line and the Cruise line just contracts with the Alaska Railroad Company to haul the Cruise-line owned dome cars (specially made by a Colorado company) back and forth between Denali and Whittier, only a portion of the Anchorage to Fairbanks route. Oh, and there's a major highway that parallels the rail route, and the Cruise-line owned lodge is just one of many lodges and commercial establishments in the busy little town of Healy, just outside the Park entrance.

But this blog is about the train.

Like airlines, seating is assigned. Each car accommodates about 60 passengers and there are attendants assigned to each car. One acts primarily as your tour guide; the other is busy with food and drink service. The observation deck is upstairs, there are open-seating benches and tables downstairs, along with restrooms and access to an adjacent dining car and open observation platforms.

Underway, I expected us to head for the wide open spaces, so it was a little startling to first pass through Anchorage, then Wasilla, then Willow before reaching "wilderness." In fact, we passed through small towns and villages along the route on a regular basis. The railroad, of course, attracted this confluence of settlements; you might live out in the boonies, but you had to have a way to get back to civilization.

Perhaps the smallest town consisted of one house - Sherman, Alaska.

You can't see it in the picture but there is a sign that says, "Sherman City Hall" above door of the home where Mr. and Mrs Sherman raised their 5 kids, and where they live after retiring (from the railroad, of course).

Another surprise, after being out of cell phone service for most of the cruise, was to find good phone service along almost the entire route. Once upon a time telegraph lines ran alongside the railroad (there were long stretches of abandoned poles - some with slack wires); now there were cell towers to provide needed communication.

We passed, met, and waited for other trains along the way. At one point we stopped alongside a train headed back to Anchorage and transferred goods and passengers. As mentioned, it is a busy railroad. During the summer months, ARC operates daily "Flag Stop" service. If you live along the route and need to go into Willow, or into Talkeetna, you literally put up a flag at designated spots along the route. There are trains each way that stop when flagged and the passengers pay a per-mile rate to their destination and back.

Next: Summer Hires