Juneau

Bill and I are on our own with a few days leisure before our permit to enter Glacier Bay National Park on July 8th. We decide to stay in Auke Bay 15 miles north of Juneau for 2 or 3 days to catch up on things and then head up Lynn Canal to Skagway. We rent a car and drive to Mendenhall Glacier. The glacier is impressive, but our real surprise was how attractively planned and built the tourist center and walking paths are. Definitely a lot of forethought had gone into planning this setting. Even though there was the usual crowd of cruise ship tourists, it was still pleasant walking around the area.

This picture gives a good idea of how much the glacier has receded. It was taken from the tourist center. Fifty years ago when the tourist center was built, it was constructed at the base of the glacier. Now the glacier is a mile away. The plants in the foreground have established themselves in the time interval, and the mud flats below the glacier will gradually do the same.

We drive into Juneau to look around and have dinner. The “look around” consists of a drive-by. When we see the crowds of cruise ship tourists milling around the few short blocks of down town and the “come hither” stores, we figure we have seen enough of down town. We head up into the residential area which is quite interesting with its zigzag streets winding every which way and steep staircases connecting all else. Up here, on a clear day, the views across the channel must be phenomenal. We slowly wind our way back down marveling at the guardrails strategically anchored in to keep cars from careening around curves into the living rooms of the houses built below the grade of the street. How do they drive up here in the winter?

We park the car and head out looking for a restaurant which, to our surprise, proves to be difficult. This is Juneau, one of Alaska’s major cities. It’s their government seat, for goodness sake! There are plenty of bars, but no restaurants. I wonder out loud where people eat around here. A security guard interrupts my wonderings and gives us the name of 3 places. Two are in hotels and one is a fish and chips place down by the harbor where the cruise boats are. He’s stumped for another place, but we thank him. As I have already said, Alaskans are friendly and talkative. Most seem to like or at least tolerate their befuddled tourists.

While on our restaurant search, I recall friends mentioning that fur coats are good items to buy in Alaska. So I ask Bill if we couldn’t find a fur store and take a look. I have had in mind that a mink vest would be of benefit in Telluride. To my utter surprise, he says to go ahead if that’s what I want. “Whatever my Suzie wants,” are his words. Off we go in search of a fur store which proves easier to find than a restaurant. We walk in and are immediately assaulted by this saleswoman with a southern accent. Sure she grew up around here! When I tell her that I’m looking for a mink vest, she promptly pulls out this bright pink one. I tell her that’s not quite what I had in mind. She leads me over to a rack, and it all looks like Filene’s Basement with mark down prices. Get me out of here, I think, and look around to see that Bill has already bolted. I now realize that the reason he had agreed so easily to my quest was he foresaw no threat of success for the venture. So much for my mink vest. I am informed later that our friends go to a furrier in Anchorage where they chose their pelts and work with the shop to design their coats. That’s what I want, but I wouldn’t find that in the tourist shops of Juneau, and we’re not going to Anchorage.

We end up at the Zen Restaurant in the Goldbelt Hotel. For all the tourists we saw in town, this place is almost empty. We are one of three occupied tables in the restaurant, but we do have a rather nice dinner served by a totally inattentive waitress. A nice sideline to an occasional dinner on land up here in Alaska is that it reminds the Captain of the appreciation that should be accorded his First Mate.

We return to the marina at Auke Bay glad now that Avante’s mast could not fit under the bridge into Juneau’s harbor. All those mega cruise ships and the crowds would have driven us crazy. Auke Bay is a quiet marina, more of a local’s and fishermen’s marina. They do have a few tourist excursion boats around, but the crowds, never numbering more than 40 at a time, are whisked away quickly. They do not have any tourist shops, and, though of marginal quality, they do have the minimum necessities we need (ie: showers, laundry, propane, convenience store and free Wi Fi at The Waffle House). They also have Bald Eagles flying around the harbor and landing on boat masts. Bill takes a picture of one on Avante’s mast, and then promptly shoos him away with a halyard. In horror, I tell him that doing so is bad luck. It has to be. That’s our National Bird. You don’t just shoo him away. You let him be. “Not to poop all over my deck”, says Bill. “Well, don’t do it again”, I respond and am immediately ignored. This isn’t The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and we’re not dealing with an albatross, but still bad luck is bad luck.

The harbor also has salmon, and you can fish for them right off the dock or off your boat. The rod we have on our boat is a heavy-duty deep-sea fishing rod with minimal flexibility. It’s all I can do to hold it, and the only way I can crank the handle while holding it is to have its end secure in the bracket on the boat. On the docks, the rods being used are light and flexible, similar to fly fishing rods. Bill will not buy me such a rod. Fortunately for him, I’m busy cleaning the boat, provisioning the boat, organizing stuff again which is a constant activity on a boat and doing other sundry things. I really don’t have time to fish, but, if I had that rod, I would. He knows I’m not pleased with this pig-headed decision so one afternoon he “bags” me a salmon. Bought it right off the dock he did! Gave it to me in a white plastic garbage bag he did! Local fisherman was selling his day’s catch. So now I have a salmon, a rather big one, too, and what I haven’t mentioned is that I really don’t know what to do with a salmon or a halibut or any fish once it’s out of the water. The closest I’ve come to preparing a whole fish is a trout. They’re only 8 – 10” long, but this guy is almost 30” and a bit much to handle. It’s too big to cook whole because it wouldn’t fit in any pan I have unless it’s cut in half. I get out my 2 cruising cuisine cookbooks and read their descriptions on cutting up your catch. Pretty much the same technique I use on trout. We prefer fillets to steaks, and the books say that you use one long stroke to cut the fillet from the bones. Short strokes tend to mess up the flesh. Well, I try long strokes, but it must be a technique that improves with practice because for me bones get in the way or my fingers do and I end up with those short strokes that make a mess of the flesh. So I just cut off the really jagged pieces and clean up areas near the bones that I missed. All that will go into a fish stew, and no one will know the difference. And the not very pretty fillets will look just fine when poached, baked or sautéed. That fish will give us four meals plus the stew. Not bad for a day’s “bagging”!

We’re ready to leave Auke Bay and Juneau, but our enthusiasm to continue north to Haines and Skagway has dimmed. We’ve had enough of tourists, crowded harbors and marginal facilities. The descriptions of the marinas in Haines and Skagway don’t give us any hope of improvement. We find out that we may be able to get into Glacier Bay a day or so earlier. One must call at 7:00 in the morning to find out if any slots are available since only 24 boats are allowed in at any one time. Bill calls on the 3rd. The line is continuously busy. When he finally gets thru, all available slots for that day have been filled by earlier lucky callers. He tries again on the 4th. Same thing. There’s only so much patience this guy has, and he wasn’t given much to begin with. We decide to leave Auke Bay and head in a general northerly direction maybe to go to Haines and then just do a motor by of Skagway to say we’ve been there. The weather, which the day before had been tee-shirt and shorts warm, has turned cold and dismal as luck would have it (See, it’s the revenge of the Bald Eagle) Intermittent showers become constant rain. The scenery, what we can see of it thru rain and fog, is uninspiring. Instead of continuing on 4 more hours to an anchorage that will allow us time to get to Haines and Skagway, we anchor early with the hope to still be able to get into Glacier Bay a day earlier; If not, we’ll just gunkhole around for a few days, happily dropping anchor in coves as we meander our way to Glacier Bay by July 8th. Even with the rain and chill, it’s nice to be out of harbor and anchoring in quiet, lonely coves again.

July 5th, Bill calls Glacier Bay by satellite phone and gets thru on the first dial. Must have been all the $$ cajinking across the airwaves. We’re told we can get in on the 7th. Only one day earlier, but that’s a help. Rain continues, and it’s getting colder. We’re hoping for a good weather window when we get to Glacier Bay. If not, we’ll see what we can see and maybe leave a day early from there giving ourselves more time to get to Sitka.

Last night we dropped our crab trap in the midst of a lot of traps. The head of that salmon, the one that Bill had “bagged” for me on the docks in Auke Bay, was in the bait trap. We knew for sure we were going to have crab for dinner tonight, but no such luck. (I’d blame that on the Bald Eagle again except that we’ve had this kind of luck since Day One.) The trap was disgustingly empty! Tonight, Bill baits it the old-fashioned way, he says. He runs a cord thru the mouth and gills of the salmon head and leaves it tied and floating in the trap. For good measure, I chop up some herring for the bait trap itself. Again, there are a lot of other traps in this bay. Tomorrow will be the day! We go to sleep with rain pattering on the roof.

July 6th – We wake up to silence. No rain! But the low, heavy, grey cloud cover tells us more rain is on the way, and, sure enough, it soon is raining again. Bill comments that there is no way he could live in Alaska with this weather. I readily agree. I guess all this natural beauty has to have a downside or it’s name would be Alaskafornia.

Today’s crab catch is 5! Three, unfortunately are small and female, but 2 are of good size and male. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve found the secret. A bait box with perforated holes allowing good smells to waft out is not enough. These guys want to gnaw on the real thing – a fresh salmon head. The head, of course, is gone. To my surprise, as soon as we head out into open water, Bill announces that we need another fish head and he’s rigging up the recalcitrant fishing rod with determination. I guess the guy likes crab more than fish. If the procuring of fish heads in order to catch crabs is what it takes to make an enthusiastic fisherperson out of him, so be it.

For those of you who may not have followed the description on how to tell male from female crabs, here is a graphic presentation. The female (above) has a round abdomen shaped like a beehive. The male’s (below) is narrower looking more like a lighthouse.

The rain has stopped. It’s turned into a fine overcast day, and, in very light wind, we motor down Icy Strait to our next anchorage. I know the water is cold up here, but I really don’t need a name like “Icy Strait” to remind me of what’s just a few feet below my feet.

We see a pod of humpback whales coming up for air. Pow, Pow, Pow – the plumes of spray follow one after another like the finale of a fireworks display. It’s thrilling. Then we see the arch of their backs and the flip of their tails as they go down again. They put on a show like this 3 more times as they swim up the coast. One more final graceful arch of their tails and they’re gone. What an amazing sight!

Our first choice of anchorage in a bite off Pleasant Island isn’t going to be a good one with the anticipated wind direction. Instead we anchor across from Gustavus in what really is a fairway. The land around Gustavus surprises us with its gentleness. We had expected a rugged, tortured looking mountainous area at the gateway to Glacier Bay. Instead it is verdantly green and mellow with sandy beaches leading to the water. There are snow-capped mountains, but nothing that bespeaks of a glacier area not too many miles away. It could be springtime on Lake Geneva!

We drop anchor and jig for Halibut. At first there’s no success for either of us, though Bill does bring up an octopus which we let go on its merry way. Having had one not-to-be-repeated any time soon experience of cooking an octopus about 20 years ago, I’m still not ready for a second attempt and may never be. Bill next baits a double hook arrangement with a herring cut in half. This was my idea as I figured a cut up herring would have more blood and gore smell appeal to any passing fish. It worked. Within seconds, Bill snags a Halibut. Well, more a flounder, but it’s a fish! He rebaits the hook, gives it to me, and, to his surprise because he had already told me I didn’t have the right technique, I even manage to snag one and pull it in. Worried that I would lose it, Bill counseled me the whole way in. Well, the fish and hook stayed connected, and I brought in my first fish ever! It wasn’t trophy size, but it was a fish and an edible one, too. What a day! Two crabs in the morning and two Halibut this evening. Fish heads for the crab trap next time we bait it. We are learning what works, and we are almost living off the sea. I love it!