North to Alaska

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…..