Month: January 2020

North to Alaska continued….    by my Daddy

This past Monday we flew back into warm and dry country – up to 100 degrees in the shade. It didn’t take long to wish we had some of that Alaska Weather that got up to 72 in the sun. (We only had one day in the sun. The rest of the time there was a cloud and fog covering).

In Seattle we met Betty from California, Donna Marie, her daughter, Linda, and Son in Law, Tom, from Wyoming. We rode a bus about 60 miles to Vancouver. Donna Marie was a talk guide. She had been raised near Seattle. Later she and Russ went to Vancouver. One time they flew up to parts of Alaska.

We boarded the tour boat at Vancouver and the first day we sailed along the Canadian coast until we reached the lower parts of Alaska, 600 miles north of Puget Sound. Our first stop was at Ketchikan which sits under steep mountains with a waterfront about ½ mile wide. Ketchikan might be as big as Big Timber. We went to a Lumber Jack show where an American and a Canadian Lumberjack put on a contest for us – chopping spruce logs in two, riding spinning logs in the water, carving with a chain saw and climbing tall poles. I think that 20 years ago Bee could have climbed at about the same speed. Then we took a tour bus through the mist and rain to Bligh Park about ten miles up the inlet where we saw numerous totem poles and a tribal meeting house. Our bus driver told us that one out of six adults in Alaska had a pilot license, and that the automobile drivers knew how to drive in rain and fog, but they couldn’t handle sunshine. The sun came out on our way back to town, and sure enough, there was a car wreck ahead of us and we had to take a detour.

The next day we stopped for a daylong visit of Juneau. My daughter and son-in-law took a cable tram to the top of the mountain ridge. Betty, Donna Marie, and I took a gander at the Juneau Alaska Museum which covered history, government, mining, fishing, wildlife, Indian, Russian and American culture, and all sorts of clothing, kayaks, sleds, hides, and furs.

The next day was spent at Skagway where Betty and I took a train through Dead Horse Canyon and on to White Pass where the Yukon miners lost horses and lives on the way to the Yukon gold fields. (I think that Barney Brannin hauled dynamite to mines out from Juneau and not from Skagway.) There were lots of clouds and fog on the west side of the pass, but the east side – where we entered Canada, was free of the clouds and fog.

We spent two days touring through the glaciers on Glacier Bay and College Glacier Bay. Saw whales, sea otters, sea lions and three dots that moved on the narrow shore two miles away. People said they were bears. But I have had dots in front of my eyes that moved faster and were called floaters. (However, they didn’t eat berries.)

We told our tour boat good-bye at Whittier – where all the town’s population live in one large high-rise apartment house. Then we rode the train past Anchorage and on toward Denali Park where we would stay two nights. A big part of the way had a bay inlet on one side and mountains on the other. We got a close-up look at some Dahl Sheep.

For miles we traveled through forests of white spruce, black spruce, birch, and quaking aspens. Any homestead along the route with a few houses was given a name. One place was named Montana. It was a bare open patch of about two acres that looked like the remains of a junk yard. About a mile further on a woman stood beside a cabin clearing and waved at us – Welcome to Montana. We didn’t stop.

When we entered the region of Denali Park, we couldn’t see Mount McKinley (Denali – “THE BIG ONE”) because of clouds and fog. As we got further north the trees were smaller. Some places the forest was Black Spruce, twelve to twenty foot tall – or shorter. In higher region the forest gave way to tundra.

On our tour of Denali Park, we got pictures of moose and caribou and visited some Athabaskan women who were selling their handmade jewelry. From Denali we went to Fairbanks. It is in a lower climate and has a wide variety of trees, gardens, etc. A river boat tour stopped at an Indian settlement where we saw a Native American salmon water wheel catching fish. A young lady was hanging them up on poles to dry. We saw reindeer, and dog teams, and fur tents. Some Eskimo girls modeled Eskimo clothing.

Flying back from Fairbanks to Anchorage at 30,000 feet, we got a good view at Mount McKinley. WHAT A MOUNTAIN THAT IS!
July 11, 2010

Many of my adventures in life included my daddy. When I was just a kid, we talked about going to Alaska, along with my sister of course. He talked about us making the drive. It was quite a challenge to make such a trip but, nevertheless, we dreamed of the day when we could make it happen. As the years passed, time narrowed and it looked like that dream would never come to reality. Daddy got to where he wasn’t getting around as well and had to have assistance with a cane. I knew time was short. One day I told my husband I wanted us to fulfill that Alaskan dream. I approached Daddy and told him my plan. As usual, he was ready for an adventure. When I asked my Aunt to go with us, she said she would. Then Cousin Donna Marie got on board along with her daughter and son-in-law. I made the necessary travel arrangements for our Alaskan cruise and four-day inland tour. All they had to do was meet us in Seattle. What an adventure! 

Here is part of my Daddy’s recounting of our Alaskan trip from 2010:

I went to Alaska with my daughter and son-in-law, my 81-year-old sister-in-law, Betty, and my 82-year-old cousin-in-law from Wyoming and her daughter and son-in-law.  Luckily, I was on a tour boat, bus, or train most of the time because that 82 year-old-woman with long legs could have walked me to death.

We boat toured about the three hundred miles of islands an inlets and mountains that hang down from the main part of Alaska like a dog’s tail. In some of the inlets we saw huge glaciers dropping small icebergs into the Pacific waterways.  This made me wear two flannel shirts and a warm jacket and wish it would warm up to 60 degrees.  

Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway are small towns huddled on narrow water fronts along some three hundred miles of bays and inlets surrounded by straight up and down steep mountains. This is part of the Tongass National Forest which is the largest National forest in the USA. It stretches from below the Alaskan border below Ketchikan to Yakutat Bay. This may be the wettest place under the American flag, a place where annual rainfall is measured in feet and not just inches. It is a place of mountains, rain forest, 1,200-pound brown bear, and fish – salmon so plentiful the Haida people live well and find time to carve their legends and history on large cedar poles. This is still a place where tall cedar and spruce poles are carved with their stories of flying birds, animals and big nosed ancestors.  

I was raised in Montana, but I’ve been interested in Alaska. One of my aunts – the one who dropped me on my head when I was a baby – raised her five children in Alaska. My Aunt Tooie raised her five children along the waterfront in Juneau. The house they lived in has been dredged away to make a place where large boats can anchor.  Cousin Beth used to work in a courthouse there (she is now 87 years old and lives in Idaho.)  Betty and I ran through the rain and fog trying to keep up with long legged Wyoming Cousin and took in a very good museum.

One of the snap shots shows a house built at the waterfront on what looks like a wharf itself. Sid Brannin, my bronc riding uncle, traveled from Alaska to Montana like a yo-yo on a string. His two oldest girls, Sydney and Margaret, near 90 years old, are still in Alaska.

We had about six hours in Ketchikan and saw a lumberjack contest between a Red shirted Canadian and an Alaskan as they chopped trees in two, rode spinning logs in a pond, and climbed long poles resembling the White Spruce and  Sitka Spruce of the Alaskan rain forest which their lumberjacks topped off for their gin poles in their logging and skidding operations.  

I was raised at a sawmill and timber operation in Montana where one year my uncles rode saw logs floating down the Sweet Grass along the Rein meadow. They fell off just like the Alaskans did in their lumberjack contest.  Guest Author, my Daddy

To be continued…..