Skater's Cabin

This is skater's cabin on Mendenhall Lake. It is property of the US Forest Service. People have events and fires here quite a bit. The distance picture was from my camp site. I saw a wedding taking place there one afternoon. Another night I heard a native group having a ceremony. My School uses it once a year in the winter when we have classes go out to the Glacier. They have a fire and do some outdoors studies out here. It has a very big wood stove and a very big fire pit outside too.

Mendenhall Glacier, Ketchikan. blueberries

Pictures of Mendenhall Glacier. The last picture is of Ketchikan, AK. Between the buildings is a river which was loaded with salmon. People could rent poles and fish.

We are having a blueberry festival at our school next week - how great is that? Tlingit elders talked my principal into setting up the festival since blueberries are growing wild and blueberries are a traditional food of the Klingit people. Everyone is thinking of lessons involving blueberries, bears, seasons, and how the blueberry was infused into the lives of natives and the people of AK generally. Pretty great idea!

Bears

Here is the first bear I saw at Mendenhall Glacier. They close down sections when the bears are getting too close to people. Regularly, bears wander where there are hundreds of people near the glacier.

Petersburg, AK

Petersburg, AK. This was Petersburg and it was getting dark when we were there. It was a short stop so I did not get off. I have heard good things about Petersburg as a town. Like all small island towns, it has few paved roads.

Ketchican

We had a 3 hour layover in ketchikan and I checked out the town and took a few pictures. It is much like Juneau but Juneau is a bit bigger and I think Juneau has bigger mountains surrounding it. both places are surrounded by forests, sea and animals. do you see the salmon is the river which goes right through the town?

To Alaska: The inside passage.

The trip was relaxing and I read FDR, which helped me figure out the current mess which President Obama is facing. There are many similarities between FDR and President Obama.

During the voyage: We saw at least one hump back whale as well as a few Orca Whales.
We passed so many islands as we went through the inland passage and many of them were uninhabited.

Rain - yep. Southeast Alaska has lots of rain.

The Inland Passage to Alaska

the middle picture is the troll under the bridge in Seattle.

The kids in the picture were my room mates for two nights. They were a church group going to Sitka to paint houses and help the elderly. they would have meetings and hacky sack games where I was. They were a good group of kids.
Here is the beginning of the ferry ride. I drove on the ferry just outside of Bellingham and got off in Juneau. On the ferry, I slept on a plastic lounge chair under the covered area. It also had heat. The trip was 3 nights and two full days.
It was quite relaxing and enjoyable. The scenery was amazing. It was like watching a nature movie live. My ferry, was ahead of schedule by 3 hours so we took a detour into passages not normally used to kill time. It was very spectacular. We even had some sunshine for a few hours. It rains a lot in Southeast Alaska.

I have a lot more to put on the blog, so more is on the way soon.