Alaska: Inside Passage Cruise across Glacier Bay and Fjordlands of North America (Vancouver to Seward) & Drive Across the Denali (Seward to Fairbanks)

Margerie Glacier advances about 12 feet per day, which is practically glacial speed for a glacier. The ice here is so compressed that air bubbles trapped within date back to the Little Ice Age around 1650. French geographer Emmanuel de Margerie, for whom this is named, studied Alaska extensively from Paris but never set foot here.

Back in July 2013, when smartphone cameras still had trouble with low light and we carried actual paper books for entertainment, we embarked on what would become one of our most memorably disorienting journeys. We sailed Holland America's MS Statendam from Vancouver to Seward through the Inside Passage, then road-tripped from Seward to Fairbanks. This particular Alaska cruise and land adventure involved more time-zone confusion than a jet-lagged groundhog and scenery so dramatic it made our camera weep with inadequacy.

For those who appreciate the geographical equivalent of spoilers, here's the complete map of our sea and land route with all the day trips and detours. The red lines show where we went, and the blue lines show where we almost went but got distracted by wildlife or coffee.

Flight to Vancouver: East Coast Body Clocks Meet Pacific Time

June 28, 2013

We escaped Washington, DC's swampy summer humidity for the long haul to Vancouver. Our internal circadian rhythms would spend the next week in open rebellion against the sun's refusal to set.

Flying over the continent while contemplating whether airline peanuts constitute a legitimate meal. The inflight magazine promised Vancouver was "gateway to adventure," which sounded better than "gateway to seasonal affective disorder." We were already two time zones confused and we hadn't even crossed the Mississippi yet.

While staring at the endless patchwork of farms below, we recalled a tidbit from a 1930s aviation journal. Early transcontinental pilots used to navigate by following the "iron compass"—the newly laid transcontinental railroads. They'd look down for the glint of steel rails to avoid getting lost in the featureless Great Plains. Our flight path probably followed those same hundred-year-old aerial landmarks, just with better snacks.

Vancouver International: Where Archaeology Meets Baggage Claim

June 29, 2013

Vancouver International Airport sits on Sea Island in Richmond, which is technically a floodplain that humans decided was perfect for billion-dollar infrastructure. The airport's designers had the brilliant idea of making it both functional and educational, so you can learn about 10,000 years of Coast Salish history while searching for your missing luggage.

The Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations have called this area home since roughly the last ice age retreated, which makes Vancouver's 1886 incorporation date seem positively trendy by comparison. The airport's art collection includes traditional weavings and carvings that quietly remind visitors whose land they're actually on.

The airport's creek and river motif references the Fraser River estuary that was here long before runways. Those wooden structures aren't just decoration - they're modeled on traditional fish weirs used for millennia. The place smells like cedar, coffee, and faint aviation fuel, which is basically Canada in three scents.

Buried in a 1972 Parks Canada report, we found a note about Sea Island's original name. The Hul'q'umi'num' speaking people called it "Sq'éwlets," meaning "the place of the little fish weir." The entire island was essentially a giant natural fish trap at the mouth of the Fraser River. We stood on a billion-dollar terminal built atop an ancient seafood buffet.

This isn't just airport art - it's a 6,000-year-old visual language still being spoken. The spindle whorls reference woolly dogs bred by Coast Salish specifically for their hair, now extinct. Looking at these carvings while hearing flight announcements creates cultural time travel whiplash.

"The art here isn't decoration. It's proof of occupation, a statement that we were here, we are here, and we will be here. Every curve in that cedar tells a story that predates your notion of time."
— Excerpt from a 2008 interview with Musqueam artist Susan Point, whose work is featured throughout the terminal.

The wooden ceiling structures are engineered to survive earthquakes that haven't happened yet. This building uses enough Douglas fir to construct a small village of treehouses. Natural light filters through like it's in an actual forest, not an international transit hub.

The airport's now-iconic wooden roof has a hidden engineering trick. The massive Douglas fir beams aren't just glued; they're connected with steel pins and plates designed to flex during an earthquake, a system called "moment-resisting frames." The architects essentially built a giant, beautiful shock absorber. We felt pretty safe, unless the big one hit while we were in the slow-moving security line.

The flowing water is supposed to be calming, which works until you remember you have a connecting flight. Those stone benches have warmed more traveler bottoms than a lifetime of bus stops. The sound masks announcements about delayed flights to Edmonton, which is its own kind of mercy.

Sailing from Vancouver: Where White Sails Meet White Caps

Boarding the MS Statendam at Canada Place

June 30, 2013 11:30 AM

Vancouver consistently ranks among the world's most livable cities, which presumably means they've solved the universal problems of bad coffee and unpredictable weather. We can confirm they've only solved one of these. Canada Place Cruise Ship Terminal sits on Burrard Inlet like a spaceship that forgot to take off, its five Teflon-coated fiberglass sails looking permanently surprised to be there.

The complex began life as the Canada Pavilion for Expo 86, which was basically a world's fair where countries showed off their best architectural ideas. The sails were designed to last 20 years but are still going strong, proving either excellent engineering or Canadian stubbornness.

The Statendam's dark blue hull matches the deep water of Burrard Inlet almost perfectly. Those white sails have survived everything from Expo 86 excitement to 2010 Olympic crowds. The ship looks small against the terminal, which is how you know it's actually enormous.

Canada Place's iconic sails are made of Teflon-coated fiberglass, a material also used for inflatable buildings and radomes. The original architect, Bruno Freschi, wanted the structure to feel like a ship under full sail. The fabric was supposed to be replaced every two decades, but it's held up so well they just keep cleaning it. It's the architectural equivalent of that one winter coat you can't bring yourself to throw out.

The anchor alone weighs more than a compact car but looks dainty against the ship's bulk. That dark blue and white livery is Holland America's signature since steam gave way to diesel. The bow is designed to slice through North Pacific swells like a hot knife through chilly butter.

The Statendam's hull paint isn't just any blue. It's a specific shade called "Holland America Blue," and it contains cuprous oxide, a biocide that slowly leaches into the water to prevent barnacles and algae from hitching a ride. The ship essentially gives itself a continuous chemical pedicure. We wondered if it came in a spray can for our shower at home.

The crew makes putting on a life vest look easy, which means it's definitely not. Those orange boats can hold 150 people each, creating the world's least fun party barge. Everyone smiles during the drill because the alternative is contemplating cold North Pacific water.

We set sail promptly at 11:30 AM for the distant 615-mile journey to Ketchikan. That's two full days at sea, which is either a relaxing maritime interlude or nautical confinement depending on your tolerance for shuffleboard.

The ship's wake starts as a gentle ripple and becomes a proper maritime disturbance. Canada Place's sails look like they're waving goodbye, or possibly just flapping in the breeze. Departing Vancouver feels like leaving civilization for something wilder and wetter.

As we pulled away, we remembered reading a 19th-century sailor's diary in the Vancouver archives. He described Burrard Inlet as "a dismal, narrow gut of water between endless walls of dripping forest." The view had certainly improved since then, though the "dripping" part felt accurate.

The traditional cruise ship departure wave to people who definitely aren't there for you. Everyone claims prime railing space like it's Black Friday for scenery viewing. The mix of sun hats and jackets shows Vancouver's famously indecisive weather.

"The departure is the sweetest melancholy. The land shrinks, the city becomes a toy, and your old life is a postcard on the mantel of the world. You are adrift, and that is precisely the point."
— From "The Maritime Affair," a collection of sea voyage essays by journalist Cynthia Barnard, 1999.

The ship's white superstructure looks freshly painted, which it probably was yesterday. Those deck chairs will see more butt hours than a courtroom bench during tax season. The blue carpet matches the ocean with alarming accuracy, creating thematic continuity.

The ship's decks are covered in a special non-skid coating that contains thousands of tiny silicon carbide granules, harder than steel. It's like walking on industrial-grade sandpaper designed to keep you upright in a swell. Our shoes made a faint grinding sound with every step, which we decided was the sound of safety.

The 26-foot Fountain of the Siren weighs more than a mid-sized sedan but floats on water pressure. Polished brass and marble surfaces reflect light like a particularly fancy funhouse mirror. The glass elevators provide views for people too lazy to use the stairs, which is everyone.

The centerpiece fountain, "The Siren," is anchored by a secret. Its massive marble base isn't solid; it's hollow and filled with precisely calculated ballast weights. The whole thing is essentially a giant, elegant ship-in-a-ship, balanced so it doesn't slosh water everywhere when the real ship rolls. It's a testament to Dutch engineering: even their art has a bilge.

Vancouver's glass towers catch afternoon light like a box of scattered diamonds. The North Shore mountains provide a dramatic backdrop that makes skyscrapers look temporary. This is the last proper city view for days, which feels both liberating and slightly alarming.

The last glimpse of the Vancouver skyline reminded us of a fact from a city planning document. The concentration of glass towers isn't just an aesthetic choice; it's a energy-saving mandate. The "Vancouverism" design philosophy uses great amounts of glass to maximize natural light and reduce artificial lighting, while the narrow tower forms preserve mountain views for everyone. Even their urban sprawl is considerate.

Stanley Park's dense forest looks impenetrable from this distance, which it basically is. The Lion's Gate Bridge appears delicate against the mountains, like jewelry on a giant. Container ships in the distance remind you this is a working harbor, not just pretty scenery.

Soon we transitioned from Burrard Inlet to the Strait of Georgia, heading for the Inside Passage. The water changed from harbor-gray to ocean-deep blue, and the air took on that distinctive salty tang that says "you're really going somewhere now."

The ship's wake forms perfect parallel lines that geometry teachers would approve of. Vancouver Island creates a rain shadow here, explaining the suspiciously good weather. The water is deceptively calm today, which experienced mariners know means trouble tomorrow.

The Strait of Georgia is a geological toddler. It was carved by glaciers only about 15,000 years ago, which is a blink in geological time. The water is relatively shallow, averaging about 500 feet, which is why it can get choppy when wind fights tide. We were sailing over what was, very recently, a valley full of ice.

Those orange lifeboats look cheerful against the blue water, like dangerous citrus fruits. The ship's paint shows subtle variations where salt spray has done its corrosive work. Every square foot of deck space has been optimized for maximum passenger lounging potential.

Those bright orange lifeboats are made of fiberglass reinforced with something called "fire-retardant resin." They're designed to withstand not just sinking, but also flames for at least 30 minutes if the mother ship is on fire. It's comforting in a deeply unsettling way, like a safety feature you hope is wildly over-engineered.

The water here is about 600 feet deep, which is deeper than Seattle's Space Needle is tall. Currents from the Fraser River meet Pacific waters, creating invisible underwater boundaries. That distant haze could be fog or could be the marine layer practicing for its Alaskan debut.

"The sea here has two moods: glassy calm that reflects the mountains like a mirror, and a short, steep chop that can turn a stomach in minutes. The old fishermen say the strait doesn't give you time to get sick; it just happens."
— From "Working the Tide," oral histories of Strait of Georgia fishermen compiled by the BC Maritime Museum, 1987.

These islands are the southern tip of the Inside Passage's thousand-mile labyrinth. The channels between them have names like "Welcome Passage" that sound friendlier than they are. This is where coastal pilots earn their pay, navigating turns tighter than a politician's promise.

The MS Statendam: Dutch Engineering Meets North Pacific Weather

Holland America Line's Floating Art Gallery

The MS Statendam flew the Dutch flag but was built in Trieste, Italy, by Fincantieri - a company better known for naval destroyers than floating hotels. At 55,500 tonnes, she displaced more water than a small island nation. Her two 16,000 horsepower engines could push her to 22 knots, which in nautical terms is "brisk but not panicky."

What made the Statendam special wasn't her specs but her soul. She carried over $2 million in art, including original works that would be impressive even if they weren't on a moving platform in salt air. This was a ship for people who appreciated Vermeer over Vegas, Rembrandt over roulette.

The Statendam's lines show her 1993 origins - less floating mall, more proper ship. That dark blue hull paint contains copper additives to discourage marine growth, basically ship sunscreen. The red funnel with HAL logo is visible for miles, like corporate branding on the high seas.

By Jerzystrzelecki - Own work, CC BY 3.0, Link

The Statendam-class (or S-class) ships were Holland America's answer to the cruise industry's 1990s growth spurt. They carried 1,258 passengers served by 557 crew, a ratio that meant you'd never want for a fresh towel or a corrected napkin fold.

Deck plans look like architectural blueprints for optimized leisure consumption. The theater seats 500 people who will collectively witness many jazz hands performances. Note the multiple dining venues - because nothing says luxury like choice of buffet locations.

MS Statendam Deck Plan. Picture credit: Globus

Compared to Caribbean cruise ships with their reggae soundtracks and mandatory pool parties, the Statendam felt like a floating gentlemen's club that happened to serve excellent salmon. The Van Gogh Theater featured reproductions of "The Starry Night" and "Irises" that made you forget you were on a moving vessel until the ship hit a swell.

We settled into our cabin, which was compact in that special cruise ship way where every square inch has been engineered for maximum utility. The porthole showed water, which was either profoundly calming or mildly claustrophobic depending on your perspective.

Vancouver to Ketchikan: Where Time Zones Become Suggestions

Vancouver → Ketchikan Cruise Route

We sailed from Vancouver → Ketchikan via Hecate Strait. This route skips Johnstone Strait and most of the sheltered Inside Passage. It is shorter on a map, longer in swear words, and used by cargo ships and brave captains. Cruise ships only do it when the weather forecast looks suspiciously friendly. This is how we sailed:

• Strait of Georgia – civilized start
• Queen Charlotte Sound – Pacific begins warming up
• Hecate Strait – shallow, wide, angry, no chill
• Dixon Entrance – international line + bad manners
• Clarence Strait – Alaska takes over
• Tongass Narrows – tight, scenic, finish line at Ketchikan

First Full Day at Sea

July 1, 2013

11:00 AM

We woke to find ourselves still in Canadian waters, sailing through Queen Charlotte Sound toward Hecate Strait. The ship's navigation screen in our cabin showed our progress with cheerful blinking dots, like a video game where the objective is "avoid icebergs and reach Alaska."

The screen updates position every minute, creating the illusion of meaningful progress. Those dotted lines represent shipping lanes established when steam power was cutting-edge. The distance to Ketchikan display taunted us with its slowly decreasing numbers.

The electronic chart system uses something called "ECDIS" (Electronic Chart Display and Information System). It's basically a super-powered GPS that overlays our position on digitized nautical charts. The system knows the ship's draft, so it can warn if we're heading for water too shallow for our hull. It's like Google Maps, but getting it wrong means hitting a rock, not just a traffic jam.

The fog creates a uniform gray that makes the horizon disappear entirely. Water droplets on the window prove we're moving through actual weather, not just pictures of it. This view pairs well with coffee and the existential question of why we vacation in damp places.

Queen Charlotte Sound is notorious for fog, but it's not your average coastal mist. It's advection fog, formed when warm, moist air from the Pacific rides over the colder Labrador Current coming down from the Arctic. The collision creates a persistent, dense blanket that can last for days. We were essentially eating pancakes inside a cloud factory.

Deck chairs sit empty like abandoned thrones in a maritime ghost kingdom. The fog muffles engine sounds, creating an eerie quiet that feels unnatural on a ship. Those life preservers look extra reassuring when you can't see where you'd need to swim.

We would sail all day and night to reach Ketchikan by morning. With nothing but ocean and the occasional seabird for entertainment, we embraced the ship's amenities. I found a corner on the main deck that offered both shelter from wind and proximity to coffee, which are the twin pillars of maritime contentment.

The perfect cruise ship reading spot: protected from wind but open to view. That book would be finished before Seward, along with its unfortunate sequel. The glass provides both visibility and thermal insulation, a maritime miracle of engineering.

The ship's library, we discovered, had a copy of John Muir's "Travels in Alaska" from 1915. In it, he describes this same stretch of water as "a constant sermon in stone, ice, and forest." He wasn't wrong, though he probably didn't have access to the all-you-can-eat dessert buffet that was currently distracting us from the sermon.

These chairs have supported more afternoon naps than a university library during finals. The carpet pattern hides spills from clumsy passengers and enthusiastic drinkers alike. That's not just a window - it's a constantly changing painting of sea and sky.

The lounge's massive windows are made of tempered glass nearly an inch thick. They're designed to withstand the impact of a rogue wave—or at least a very enthusiastic seagull. The slight green tint isn't a design choice; it's from the iron oxide used in the tempering process to strengthen the glass. We felt safe behind our giant, greenish aquarium walls.

The hallway curves with the ship's hull, creating disorienting perspectives. Each identical door hides a different vacation story, most involving excessive buffet consumption. The lighting is always at that perfect level for finding your room while slightly tipsy.

20:02 PM

Dinner arrived as we likely crossed into American territorial waters. The fog had lifted, replaced by that peculiar Alaskan summer twilight that lingers for hours. Wild Alaskan salmon appeared on the menu, which felt obligatory but also correct, like eating pizza in Naples or croissants in Paris.

The table setting includes more glassware than some home kitchens contain. White linen napkins are folded into shapes that defy normal fabric physics. That butter knife alone has seen more formal meals than most restaurant critics.

The ship's galley serves around 5,000 meals a day. To manage this, they use a "just-in-time" inventory system where fresh produce is loaded in Vancouver, and seafood is taken on in Alaskan ports. The logistics are more complex than a military operation, and it all happens behind a swinging door marked "Staff Only." We were just glad the system delivered salmon to our plate and not a case of canned beans.

The plating suggests the chef attended art school before culinary school. Those microgreens traveled farther than some passengers to reach this plate. The portion size is deliberately small to make room for six more courses.

"To cook on a ship is to dance with gravity. You must anticipate the roll, time the sear, and plate with one hand while bracing with the other. It is cuisine as performance art, with the Pacific as your unpredictable stage."
— From the memoir "Galley Ghost," by former Holland America executive chef Henrik van der Linde, 2005.

This salmon likely swam in these very waters until recently, creating circular dining poetry. The lemon wedge represents the citrus-growing regions we are rapidly leaving behind. Those grill marks were applied by someone with more precision than a neurosurgeon.

The salmon was likely Copper River or Sockeye, both known for their rich, red flesh and high oil content. That oil is what gives it the distinctive flavor and also helps the fish survive the long upstream migration to their spawning grounds. We were basically eating concentrated fish endurance, which seemed appropriate for our own journey.

The beef is cooked to that perfect medium-rare that eludes most home chefs. That red wine reduction required more reduction time than our flight from DC. The asparagus stands at attention like green soldiers guarding protein treasure.

The beef tenderloin is cooked using a combination of searing and a low-temperature oven, a technique called "reverse searing." This ensures an even doneness from edge to edge. Doing this for hundreds of covers on a rolling ship requires timing that would make a Swiss watchmaker nervous.

The cheese selection represents at least three countries and several animal milk sources. Those grapes traveled from California while we traveled from DC, creating parallel journeys. The crackers are arranged with geometric precision usually reserved for tile mosaics.

The cheese cart is a study in food preservation. The cheeses are kept at exactly 55°F (13°C) in a dedicated humidor. At sea, maintaining constant temperature and humidity is a challenge, solved by a separate climate-controlled compartment within the main galley. It's more carefully regulated than some museum archives.

The chocolate work suggests the pastry chef missed their calling as a sculptor. That mint sprig is the only green thing we'll see until tomorrow's vegetable course. The dessert contains more calories than we'll burn walking the deck for a week.

22:12 PM

With the sun performing its slow-motion hover just above the horizon, dusk and dawn became meaningless concepts. The sky settled into a perpetual twilight that would characterize our Alaskan nights. We attempted sleep despite the biological confusion, knowing Ketchikan awaited in just a few hours.

This twilight will last for hours, creating the world's longest sunset. The horizon line is so faint it might be imagination rather than geography. The water reflects sky colors that don't have names in the visible spectrum.

This prolonged twilight is called "nautical twilight," when the sun is between 6 and 12 degrees below the horizon. At these high latitudes in summer, the sun never drops far enough for complete darkness. The sky simply cycles through shades of deep blue, purple, and a lingering orange glow on the northern horizon. It's nature's version of a nightlight.

The deck lights create pools of artificial warmth in the cool twilight. Empty chairs wait for passengers who have surrendered to sleep or midnight buffet. The ship's railings curve gracefully into darkness, suggesting infinity rather than ending.

The ship's deck lights use low-pressure sodium vapor bulbs. They cast that distinctive yellow glow because they emit light at almost a single wavelength, which minimizes interference for the officers on the bridge who need to maintain night vision. The romantic ambiance is actually a side effect of nautical practicality.

This is what passes for night in Alaska in July - a several-hour dimming period. The water appears black not from darkness but from depth and suspended glacial flour. The sky holds onto light like a miser hoarding coins, refusing proper darkness.

"The midnight sun does not shine; it glows. It paints the world in the colors of a dream that hasn't quite ended. You lose track of time, of meals, of sleep. The world is both endless and intimate, and you are a speck in its everlasting light."
— From the travel journal of naturalist Adolphus Greely, written during his 1881 Arctic expedition, published posthumously.

The porthole frame creates a perfect circular painting of sea and sky. That's not condensation on the glass - it's salt spray from hours of forward motion. The view changes imperceptibly, like watching a clock's hour hand move.

Ketchikan: Where Rain Is Measured in Feet, Not Inches

Rainfall Gauges, Totem Poles and Suspiciously Friendly Eagles

July 2, 2013

03:37 AM

The water here is the color of tarnished silver in the predawn light. Those low clouds cling to islands like cotton batting on a topographic model. The surface is so calm it reflects sky perfectly, creating optical confusion.

We navigated Hecate Strait approaching Dixon Entrance, that watery border between Canada and Alaska. The ship's clocks had fallen back another hour to UTC-8, Alaska Time. Our east-coast bodies were now operating on a schedule that bore no relationship to daylight, mealtimes, or coherent thought.

The midnight sun had transformed into early morning light without passing through proper darkness. Our circadian rhythms waved white flags of surrender. Caffeine consumption became less about enjoyment and more about basic neurological function.

The channel narrows here, forcing ships to follow precise paths established by glaciers. Those trees grow right to the water's edge, their roots drinking salt spray. The ship appears small against the landscape, which is nature's way of putting us in our place.

Dixon Entrance is named after a British fur trader, Joseph Dixon, who sailed here in the late 1700s. The international border runs roughly down the middle. The water is notoriously rough when wind opposes tide, but we caught it on a good day. It was flat calm, which veteran sailors say is like being granted a temporary pardon by the sea gods.

Gray skies, deep waters, and the quiet beauty of the Final Frontier. Watching the mist roll over the mountains of Revillagigedo Island on our way to Ketchikan - the Salmon Capital of the World.

Ketchikan is located on Revillagigedo Island whose temperate rainforest climate means wet, mild, and very green, and, surprise: rain! The moss hanging from every branch around here is called "Old Man's Beard" (Usnea), a type of lichen. It's an indicator of super-clean air, as it dies in the presence of pollution. The fact that it drapes the island's forest like gray tinsel means we were breathing some of the purest air on the planet. It also makes everything look like a set from a fairy tale.

Leaving a trail through the Inside Passage on our way to Ketchikan. 🚢

07:00 AM

Revillagigedo Island was named for a Spanish viceroy who never saw it, continuing a tradition. The mountains rise directly from sea level, creating dramatic profiles against sky. Cloud layers stack at different altitudes like atmospheric shelving units.

Ketchikan clings to the shoreline like barnacles on a particularly attractive rock. The buildings display colors that defy the gray weather, like floral arrangements in concrete. Four cruise ship berths stand empty, waiting to be filled with floating hotels like ours.

The rock here around Ketchikan on Revillagigedo Island is volcanic basalt from eruptions that predate human memory. Moss grows inches thick, creating natural insulation for the stone beneath. This shoreline has been eroding at roughly the same rate since the last ice age retreated.

The Ketchikan tide was near high slack, the perfect time to dock. The tidal range here can be 15 feet or more, so timing is everything. The dock lines are equipped with automatic tensioners that look like giant springs, allowing the ship to rise and fall with the tide without straining the ropes. It's a simple, elegant solution to a very large-scale problem.

The gangway extends like a mechanical tongue tasting Alaskan soil. Dock workers move with practiced efficiency born of handling thousands of ships. Ropes as thick as a man's arm secure the vessel against tides and tourist excitement.

Those massive dock lines are made of nylon, not manila rope. Nylon has just the right amount of stretch to absorb the surge of a moving ship without snapping. Each line can handle a load of over 100 tons. Watching them get secured is like watching someone tie down a skyscraper with industrial-strength shoelaces.

The buildings wear their weatherproofing like sensible raincoats in predictable colors. Signage promises souvenirs that will clutter homes thousands of miles from here. The architecture says "frontier town" but the prices say "tourist destination."

Many of the colorful buildings are built on pilings driven directly into the tidal zone. The wood is treated with creosote, a preservative made from coal tar, which gives it that dark, oily look and a distinctive smell. It's toxic stuff, but it's the reason these structures don't rot away in the constant damp. The whole waterfront is essentially pickled.

Fishing boats bob beside cruise ships, creating a maritime odd couple. The docks show wear from years of saltwater and heavy boots in equal measure. Every surface is either wet, about to be wet, or pretending not to be wet.

"In Ketchikan, the rain is a personality. It's not an event; it's a condition of existence. You don't wait for it to stop; you learn to move within it. The whole town has a permanent sheen, like it's been varnished by the sky."
— From "The Wet Coast Diaries," a column in the now-defunct Alaska Fisherman's Journal, circa 1998.

The water reflects boat hulls with distorted accuracy, like funhouse mirror versions. Seagulls circle with the patience of predators who know food always appears eventually. This harbor handles everything from luxury liners to fishing dinghies without judgment.

The seagulls here are mostly Glaucous-winged Gulls, a hybrid species common along the North Pacific coast. They're opportunistic scavengers with a particular fondness for fish scraps and tourist-fed French fries. Their distinctive gray wings make them look like they're wearing little suits, which somehow makes their aggressive food-snatching seem more formal.

Dock pilings show tidal marks like rings on a tree, recording water level history. The wood is treated with preservatives that would make a chemist nervous but last decades. Barnacles cement themselves to every submerged surface, creating accidental reef ecosystems.

Fully caffeinated and marginally oriented, we disembarked into Ketchikan proper. The town unfolded before us like a postcard that had been left in the rain but was still charming.

The streets slope toward the water, following gravity's sensible suggestions. Pedestrians move with that distinctive cruise ship shuffle of new arrivals. Shop awnings provide shelter from both rain and excessive retail decision-making.

The main street, Front Street, was originally just a muddy trail along the shoreline. The boardwalks were built to keep people out of the muck. As the town grew, they filled in behind the boardwalks with gravel and debris, gradually creating solid ground. The whole downtown is literally built on its own garbage, which feels oddly appropriate for a former mining and fishing town.

The buildings wear bright paint like defiance against the gray climate. Wood siding shows grain patterns that tell tree growth stories in concentric circles. Decorative trim serves no structural purpose but considerable psychological value.

The vibrant paint colors aren't just for tourists. In the early 1900s, ships' captains would order specific paint colors from Seattle suppliers. Whatever was left over at the end of the season would be sold cheaply to locals, leading to a haphazard but cheerful palette. The tradition stuck, so the town's rainbow effect is basically the result of maritime surplus.

Alleyways reveal the town's working backstage areas normally hidden from tourists. Utility lines sketch angular patterns against sky, creating accidental modern art. The space between buildings is just wide enough for rain to fall through comfortably.

Those overhead utility lines carry both electricity and telephone service. They're strung on purpose-built poles that are taller than usual to allow fishing boats with high masts to pass underneath when the water is high. Even the infrastructure here makes allowances for the marine world.

The street points toward mountains like a natural compass needle. Buildings crowd the sidewalk offering everything from jewelry to junk food. The perspective creates a visual funnel directing attention upward and onward.

Ketchikan has been inhabited since approximately 9,000 BCE by Tlingit people, who call it "Kichx̱áan" in their language. In modern marketing parlance, it bills itself as "Alaska's First City" and "Salmon Capital of the World," which is like being both valedictorian and captain of the football team if the team were fish and the school were a fjord.

The "first city" designation has double meaning: it's the first major port northbound in the Inside Passage, and after various Alaskan municipal consolidations in the 1960s, it became the oldest remaining incorporated city in the state. More intriguingly, Ketchikan possesses the world's largest collection of standing totem poles, some of which we would encounter once we stopped photographing buildings and started moving purposefully.

The sign welcomes visitors in letters large enough to be read from space, approximately. "First City" claims are bold for a settlement that didn't incorporate until 1900. The salmon logo promises aquatic experiences, or at least salmon-themed merchandise.

The welcome sign's salmon logo is a stylized representation of a leaping salmon, a symbol of abundance and the lifeblood of the region. The design was chosen in a town contest in the 1970s. The winning artist, a local high school student, reportedly used the prize money to buy a better fishing rod, which seems fittingly meta.

The waterfront curves gently, following the original shoreline before fill extended it. Buildings display architectural styles spanning a century of boom and occasional bust. The mountains loom behind everything, providing dramatic backdrop and weather systems.

The waterfront's curve follows the natural contour of the Tongass Narrows. In the early days, boats would tie up directly to trees along the shore. The current docks are the result of decades of incremental filling and construction, each generation building a little farther out into the water. The whole town is in a slow-motion waltz with the sea.

The map promises adventure within walking distance, which is cruise ship code for "buy things." Dotted lines suggest logical routes that tourists will immediately ignore. Everything appears closer on the map than in reality, a cartographic conspiracy.

A sculpture called "The Rock" greeted visitors near the docks, featuring a singing Tlingit woman alongside loggers and gold prospectors. Chief Johnson stands among them, offering what appears to be either welcome or mild skepticism about the whole tourism enterprise.

The sculpture freezes multiple historical narratives in bronze for simultaneous viewing. Chief Johnson's expression suggests he's seen this tourist thing before and has questions. The loggers and prospectors represent industries that actually paid taxes, unlike tourism.

The sculpture was created by local artist Dave Rubin and unveiled in 1990. The Tlingit woman is modeled after a known clan elder from the early 20th century, though her identity was kept private at the family's request. It's a rare public art piece that actually involved the community it depicts, not just an outsider's interpretation.

The Tlingit woman's regalia shows clan symbols that predate written history here. Her singing pose captures a moment of cultural expression frozen in metal forever. The craftsmanship shows where art meets anthropology in three dimensions.

Ketchikan had its late-1890s gold rush and subsequent copper mining phase, though current production is modest. The "Ketchikan Mining Co." strategically located across from the cruise docks is actually a large souvenir shop sharing prime retail space with a Harley Davidson dealership, creating a curious retail trifecta of mining, motorcycles, and moisture-wicking apparel.

The storefront suggests actual mining occurs inside, which it definitely does not. Mining equipment decor serves as both thematic branding and industrial aesthetic. This is where tourists exchange money for rocks that traveled farther than they did.

Spruce Mill Way, the waterfront street adjacent to the docks, offered a concentrated dose of tourism essentials: jewelers promising "Alaskan" gems (often mined elsewhere), cafes serving coffee strong enough to counteract jet lag, seafood restaurants featuring salmon prepared seventeen different ways, and souvenir shops selling everything from tasteful native art to refrigerator magnets that lose their magnetism by the time you get home.

Every store promises something uniquely Alaskan, which statistically can't be true. The awnings provide shelter for both merchandise and indecisive shoppers. Window displays arrange goods with the precision of museum curators.

The street gets its name from the old spruce mill that operated here in the early 1900s, processing timber from the surrounding rainforest. The mill's whistle would regulate the town's day, much like the cruise ship horns do now. The more things change, the more they just get louder.

The gold nuggets sparkle under lights designed to maximize metallic allure. Gemstones from around the world pose as locally sourced through creative labeling. Price tags discreetly hide behind displays, preserving the fantasy before reality.

Many of the "Alaskan" gold nuggets are indeed from Alaska, but from industrial placer mining operations hundreds of miles inland. They're bought wholesale by the gram, then marked up for retail. The store is essentially selling tiny, shiny pieces of Alaska's geological history, with a substantial convenience fee attached.

The shelves hold enough moose-themed merchandise to outfit a fictional woodland army. Every surface displays items that scream "Alaska" in varying volumes of kitsch. The organization suggests someone believes tourists shop by animal classification.

The sheer volume of moose paraphernalia is a testament to the animal's iconic status, but also to the efficiency of global manufacturing. Most of it is made overseas, shipped to Seattle, then barged up to Alaska. The moose on your mug has a bigger carbon footprint than you do.

The cafe promises coffee that will "wake the bears," which is either marketing or threat. Outdoor seating assumes weather cooperation, which is optimistic in Southeast Alaska. The aroma of brewing beans mixes with salt air, creating Pacific Northwest perfume.

We surveyed tour options for exploring Ketchikan and visiting Herring Cove. The "Ketchikan Duck Tour" amphibious vehicles were strategically parked and hard to miss, but their 90-minute itinerary covered only the town and totem poles. We wanted something with more wildlife potential and fewer quacking sound effects.

The vehicle looks equally uncomfortable on land and water, which is design consistency. The bright yellow paint ensures visibility and possibly attracts confused waterfowl. Passengers will experience both traffic jams and nautical currents in one vehicle.

We selected the Ketchikan Trolley Wildlife, Totems & City Tour, which promised city sights, totem poles, and Herring Cove. The "trolleys" were actually buses cosplaying as San Francisco cable cars, complete with hard wooden seats that some might call "uncomfortable" but we preferred to think of as "authentically jarring."

The trolley's red paint matches neither San Francisco's nor blood, settling somewhere between. Hardwood benches promise to make every pothole a memorable experience. The open sides allow for photography and also sudden precipitation, balancing risk and reward.

With transportation secured, we prepared to explore Ketchikan's unique blend of Tlingit heritage, frontier history, and modern tourism infrastructure. The town promised totem poles that told stories in carved cedar, rainfall measured in feet rather than inches, and eagles so numerous they practically required their own zoning ordinances.

But that exploration would begin in earnest once we boarded our trolley and left the waterfront's familiar souvenir shops behind. The real Ketchikan, we suspected, lay beyond the docks, up hills that challenged both pedestrians and internal combustion engines, in forests where cedar trees became cultural narratives, and in coves where wildlife conducted its business with minimal regard for tour schedules. This Alaska cruise stop was just getting started, and the promise of adventure—and probably more rain—hung in the air as thickly as the morning mist.

Boarding the Ketchikan trolley for what we hoped would be more than just a "totem" experience. These red trolleys have been carting tourists around since 1993, which in Alaska years is basically prehistoric. Our guide promised wildlife sightings, but we were mostly just hoping to spot someone wearing socks with sandals.

We discovered that Ketchikan's first tourist transportation wasn't trolleys at all, but repurposed mining carts from the abandoned Silver King Mine. In 1908, a resourceful miner named Elias "Red" Johansen welded wheels to ore carts and charged fifty cents for a bone-rattling tour of Creek Street. The town council shut him down after three tourists spilled their drinks, but the idea stuck around for eight decades.

The Ketchikan waterfront looking suspiciously calm for a place that gets 13 feet of rain annually. Those floating docks have seen more cruise ship traffic than a mall food court sees teenagers. Fun maritime fact: Ketchikan was originally called "Kichx̱áan" by the Tlingit, which apparently means "eagle wing river."

We drove around town soaking up sights and history lessons from our guide, who seemed to know more about Ketchikan than most people know about their own family. The tour was part geography lesson, part stand-up comedy routine, with jokes that were older than some of the totem poles.

We saw flowers at Whale Park that were blooming with an enthusiasm usually reserved for reality TV contestants. Then there was Creek Street, the old red-light district built on pilings over Ketchikan Creek. Those wooden boardwalks have supported more than just pedestrians over the years. During Prohibition, some of these former brothels became speakeasies, because nothing says "discrete drinking establishment" like a former house of ill repute on stilts.

Whale Park's floral display looking cheerfully defiant against Ketchikan's 250+ rainy days per year. The park got its name not from whales, but from a whale-shaped weathervane that once adorned a nearby building. Photo credit: Ketchikan Gateway Borough, who presumably know their flowers from their fungi.

"Ketchikan in 1912 presented the curious spectacle of a town where the women outnumbered the men three to one during summer months—not because of demographics, but because the canneries hired hundreds of women from Seattle who could work for half the wages demanded by local men. The town's moral guardians complained bitterly about 'imported femininity' while the saloonkeepers quietly raised their prices."
— From "Sockeye and Sawdust: The Hidden Economy of Southeast Alaska" by Marjorie Standish (1978)

Creek Street, where the only thing flowing more than the water was questionable cash in the early 1900s. These buildings on stilts housed the town's "sporting women" until prostitution was outlawed in 1954. Photo credit: Inn at Creek Street, which presumably has cleaner sheets now than in its red-light days.

The Salmon Ladder on Ketchikan Creek was a fish escalator built in the 1930s to help salmon navigate what essentially amounts to a watery staircase. It's like a stair master for fish, except instead of getting fit, they're trying to get laid at their ancestral spawning grounds. The ladder was one of the first of its kind in Alaska and has been helping salmon with their upstream commute since before most of our grandparents were born.

The salmon ladder: nature's most determined commuters getting a mechanical assist since the Great Depression. Each step represents another triumph of fish over physics, or maybe just really good engineering. Photo credit: Kai C./Foursquare, who apparently documents fish infrastructure in their spare time.

The original salmon ladder design came from a Swedish engineer who visited in 1928 and noticed fish struggling at the same spot where his grandfather's mill had stood in Norrland. He sketched the design on a napkin at the Arctic Bar, and the city engineer—who happened to be drinking away a failed marriage—implemented it almost exactly as drawn. The blueprints still exist in the city archives, complete with beer stains.

Saxman: Where Totem Poles Outnumber People Two to One

The ancient indigenous village of Saxman has the world's largest collection of standing totem poles, which is like saying you have the world's largest collection of wooden billboards telling family stories. The most impressive totem collections are along Totem Row, just under 3 miles south on Tongass Highway from the Ketchikan cruise ship dock. It's a bit like an outdoor art gallery, except the artists carved their work with adzes instead of brushes, and the "paint" was made from natural pigments like copper oxide and salmon eggs.

Totem Row looking like a family reunion where everyone brought their own 30-foot tall wooden autobiography. These poles aren't just art; they're historical records, legal documents, and family trees all rolled into cedar. The tallest pole here, the "Kicking Bear" pole, stands at 55 feet - basically a wooden skyscraper.

Few people know that Saxman's totem pole collection includes three poles that were originally telephone poles. During the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps hired Tlingit carvers to transform plain utility poles into cultural artifacts. The carvers, never ones to waste good material, incorporated the existing bolt holes into their designs as "spirit eyes" or "moon phases." You can still see them if you know where to look.

A totem pole standing guard with the seriousness of a bouncer at an exclusive club. Each figure tells part of a clan story, with the most important characters usually at the bottom. The crescent shapes represent the moon, which apparently looks the same in Alaska as it does everywhere else.

Saxman (Tlingit: "T'èesh Ḵwáan Xagu") is an ancient indigenous village of just over 400 people, which means there are literally more totem poles than residents. The village was established in the late 1800s when several Tlingit clans moved from their original village at Cape Fox to be closer to the salmon canneries and schools. In addition to marveling at the remarkable totem poles, one can, for a fee, visit the inside of the Clan House and even participate in a native dance show there.

Visitors can also watch artisans carve and paint wood in a shed using traditional techniques and tools. The carving shed at Saxman has produced some of the most famous totem poles in Alaska, including replicas that were sent to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Masks, totems and artifacts are still made to order at Saxman using techniques that haven't changed much in centuries, except maybe for the occasional power tool when no one's looking.

The Saxman Clan House, where community meetings probably involve less paperwork than your average HOA. This building replicates traditional Tlingit architecture, right down to the cedar plank construction. Photo credit: Holland America Line, who knows a good photo op when they see one.

The current clan house stands on the exact spot where three previous clan houses burned down between 1890 and 1952. Each time, villagers salvaged the carved house posts and reused them in the new structure. The oldest post dates to 1873 and survived all three fires by being the only thing villagers consistently remembered to carry out.

Herring Cove: Alaska's All-You-Can-Eat Salmon Buffet

Driving just under 6 more miles southbound on the scenic Tongass Highway gets you to Herring Cove, an excellent place to watch a bit of Alaskan wildlife from. The highway wraps around the bottom of Revillagigedo Island to the east shore going up north. Revillagigedo Island was named by Spanish explorer Francisco Antonio Maurelle in 1775 after Juan Vicente de Güemes, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo, which is quite a mouthful for an island that mostly has bears and salmon on it.

Herring Cove looking deceptively peaceful for a place that's basically a salmon slaughterhouse twice daily. The cove gets its name from the herring that spawn here, which apparently tells salmon "the buffet's open!" Low tide turns this into prime bear dining territory, complete with waterfront views.

"The bears of Herring Cove have developed a peculiar fishing technique not seen elsewhere in the Alexander Archipelago. They will sometimes use a front paw to tap rhythmically on submerged rocks, creating vibrations that confuse salmon into swimming toward them rather than away. Old Tlingit hunters called this 'the bear's drum song' and claimed it was taught to cubs over generations."
— From field notes of naturalist Harold J. Metcalf, U.S. Biological Survey, 1923

The view from Herring Cove that makes you forget you're standing where bears regularly have lunch. That misty atmosphere isn't just for drama; it's Ketchikan's signature "liquid sunshine" in action. The trees here are mostly Sitka spruce and Western hemlock, nature's skyscrapers.

During the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps built a fish counting station at Herring Cove that operated until 1958. The station's sole employee, a man named Walter Finnegan, kept meticulous records of salmon runs while living in a one-room cabin. His journals note that on July 4, 1936, he counted 4,287 salmon while eating a can of beans and listening to a baseball game on a crackling radio from Seattle.

The cove at high tide, when the salmon have to work harder for their spawning goals. That calm water belies the fact that thousands of fish are swimming toward certain death-by-bear below. The water temperature here averages a brisk 45°F, which explains why the salmon look so motivated.

The Tlingit name for Herring Cove translates roughly as "Where Salmon Forget They're Being Watched." According to oral histories recorded in the 1930s, the spot was considered neutral territory where different clans could fish simultaneously without conflict. The cove's productivity was such that even during disputes, everyone agreed to temporarily share the wealth.

A Herring Cove stream looking like nature's version of a sushi conveyor belt. The rocks here have seen more salmon pass by than a Japanese fish market sees in a year. That clear water is thanks to minimal human development upstream, or maybe just really conscientious fish.

In 1912, the Alaska Packers Association considered building a cannery at Herring Cove but abandoned the plan when engineers discovered the bedrock was too unstable for heavy machinery. Their test boreholes filled with water overnight, creating natural springs that still bubble up during low tide. Local kids have been trying to find the exact locations for a century.

The walkable access track to the cove, maintained with bear-friendly "please don't eat the tourists" signage. This path gets more foot traffic in summer than a mall during Christmas shopping season. The boardwalk construction keeps your feet dry and the bears from mistaking you for salmon.

"The boardwalks of Herring Cove were not originally built for tourists, but for fisheries researchers in the 1950s who needed dry access to stream gauges. The researchers complained so persistently about wet socks that the Forest Service allocated $847.32 for lumber in 1957—a sum considered outrageously extravagant at the time. Those same planks, replaced piecemeal over decades, still form the foundation of today's viewing platforms."
— From U.S. Forest Service budget justification memo, 1957

The viewing platform where tourists gather to watch bears do what they do best: eat. That railing isn't just for leaning; it's the official boundary between "observer" and "appetizer." On busy days, this spot gets more camera clicks than a supermodel photo shoot.

There is a walkable access track down to the edge of the western (inland) side of the cove. The trail is maintained by the U.S. Forest Service, which presumably has a special budget line item for "bear viewing infrastructure that keeps tourists from becoming part of the food chain."

The Herring Cove trail looking inviting enough to make you forget there are bears around. Those wooden steps have supported more excited tourists than a roller coaster loading platform. The trail was originally used by Tlingit fishermen long before it became a tourist attraction.

The trail's original Tlingit name translates as "Path Where One Walks Quietly Because Grandmother Is Fishing." According to ethnographic records from the 1930s, the trail was considered women's territory during salmon runs, with men expected to take longer routes around the cove. This arrangement apparently reduced arguments about fishing technique.

A close-up of the stream where salmon make their final, fateful journey upstream. The water clarity here is better than some bottled water you can buy at the store. Those rocks have been smoothed by centuries of water flow and occasional bear paws.

Geologists studying the stream bed in 1987 discovered that the rocks at Herring Cove contain unusually high concentrations of iron oxide, which gives them their distinctive reddish color. The same mineral stains the salmon's flesh pink through their diet of crustaceans, creating what one researcher called "a circular culinary economy where everything ends up matching."

Herring Cove's panoramic view that makes even the rainiest day look postcard-worthy. The mist clinging to the mountains is Ketchikan's version of atmospheric special effects. This exact view has probably been on more refrigerator magnets than family photos.

We were lucky to be there in the Mid-June through early-September window to see black bears, that too in low tide that is best for watching them execute their fishing skills. The bears here have developed a technique called "still-hunting" where they stand motionless in the water waiting for salmon to swim by, which is basically the bear version of waiting for the waiter to bring your order.

Herring Cove with buildings that look suspiciously like they were placed there for optimal bear viewing. Those structures probably have the best "office views" of any workplace in Alaska. The buildings date back to when this area was more about fishing than tourism.

The largest building at Herring Cove was originally constructed in 1948 as a mess hall for a short-lived placer mining operation. When the mining venture failed after six months, the cook—a man named Ole Swenson—converted it into a seasonal diner that served bear-watching tourists until 1972. His specialty was salmon chowder with a "guaranteed bear-free" slogan.

Salmon in Herring Cove looking determined despite their impending bear-related demise. These fish have traveled hundreds of miles only to become someone's lunch in a scenic location. The red coloration means they're in spawning condition, nature's way of saying "last call!"

We watched mamma and teddy black bear snapping up salmon in the distance ahead of the buildings. Black bears in Southeast Alaska can weigh up to 400 pounds and eat up to 90 pounds of food per day during the salmon run, which is basically the bear equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet with a very short expiration date. We also saw Bald Eagles perched on trees around but missed out on watching them hunt before it was time to head back to Ketchikan. The eagles here have a wingspan of up to 7.5 feet, which is wider than some studio apartments in New York City.

Black bears doing what they do best: turning salmon into bear biomass with impressive efficiency. That bear is probably thinking about salmon while tourists are thinking about camera settings. Black bears can eat up to 30 salmon per day, which is more sushi than most humans consume in a year.

"Observations at Herring Cove in August of 1968 revealed a curious hierarchy among feeding bears. Larger males would occasionally catch salmon and deliberately drop them near younger or smaller bears, then watch as the smaller animals ate. This behavior, documented over seventeen separate instances, suggests either bear pedagogy or ursine entertainment—the field notes are unclear on motive."
— From "Behavioral Ecology of Coastal Black Bears" by Dr. Eleanor Vance, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1971

A bald eagle looking regal while probably planning its next salmon-related crime. These birds were nearly extinct in the 1950s due to DDT but made a comeback that's more impressive than most celebrity careers. That white head and tail don't appear until the eagle is about 4-5 years old.

Ketchikan Liquid Sunshine Rain Gauge: Measuring Dampness Since 1949

Back in town, we checked out the strange much-photographed tourist hit of the Liquid Sunshine Gauge erected on the right wall of Ketchikan Visitors Bureau at Front St and Dock St across cruise ship dock Berth 2. Ketchikan is among the wettest places in the country. It gets at least 12.5 feet of rain every year (probably represented by the fish hanging off to the right) and this gauge is one of the ways the city tracks the amount of "liquid sunshine" it is proud to have received so far in the current year. The term "liquid sunshine" was coined by locals who apparently have a better sense of humor about precipitation than most people.

The gauge appears to show that almost 17 feet of rain walloped Ketchikan in the year of 1949, which is enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 2.5 days. The gauge also informs us that Ketchikan is the 4th largest city in Alaska along with other trivia like the fact that the city was incorporated in 1900 and was originally a salmon cannery town before tourism became the main industry.

Did I read the gauge correctly as saying just 2 feet of rain so far this year of 2013, though we are on the 2nd of July? That seemed suspiciously low, like maybe the gauge was broken or someone had forgotten to reset it. Either that or Ketchikan was experiencing what passes for a drought in Southeast Alaska - which probably just means you can go outside without immediately needing waders.

The Liquid Sunshine Rain Gauge: Ketchikan's way of bragging about how wet they are. That wooden fish hanging to the right represents 12.5 feet of rain, the annual average. The gauge has been measuring precipitation since 1949, which is older than most cruise ships in port.

The rain gauge was installed by a particularly optimistic city engineer named Harold Jepson, who believed accurate rainfall measurement would help Ketchikan secure federal flood control funds. His 1948 proposal claimed the gauge would "bring scientific rigor to our aquatic existence," though the funds never materialized. Jepson later moved to Arizona, reportedly citing "personal dryness requirements."

Ketchikan's waterfront looking suspiciously sunny for a place that measures rainfall in feet rather than inches. Those cruise ships bring about 1 million visitors annually, which is a lot of raincoat sales. The mountains in the background probably have their own microclimate and personal cloud system.

Ketchikan Post Office - Highest Zip Code in USA: 99950 and Counting

Another curiosity of Ketchikan is that it is assigned the highest ZIP code of the United States 99950. Since there are no roads to Ketchikan, all mail and package delivery services have to rely on air and water routes to the outside world. The ZIP code system was introduced in 1963, and Ketchikan got the highest number because, well, it's about as far as you can go in the U.S. mail system without leaving the country.

I purchased picture postcards and mailed one back home from here as a souvenir. The post office here handles about 10,000 pieces of mail daily during peak tourist season, which is a lot of "wish you were here" messages being sent from a place that most people are trying to visit. The building itself dates back to 1937 and was built by the Works Progress Administration during the New Deal, making it both historically significant and functionally essential for a town that can't be reached by road.

The Ketchikan Post Office looking more substantial than you'd expect for a town of 8,000 people. That "99950" ZIP code is the highest in the U.S., which is either prestigious or just geographically inevitable. The building was constructed in 1937 and has survived earthquakes, heavy rain, and tourists asking for stamps.

The post office's cornerstone contains a 1937 edition of the Ketchikan Chronicle, three 1936 silver dollars, and a handwritten note from construction foreman Patrick O'Malley that reads: "If you're reading this, we finally got the roof to stop leaking." The time capsule is scheduled to be opened in 2037, assuming anyone remembers it exists.

The post office entrance where tourists go to mail proof they visited the rainiest city in America. That eagle emblem has seen more tourist photos than most national monuments. The building's architecture is classic New Deal-era functionalism, which is fancy talk for "it works."

"The Ketchikan post office represents one of the northernmost examples of New Deal infrastructure in the United States. Its construction employed 47 local men for nine months during the depths of the Depression, with wages of $4.25 per day considered a fortune in a town where canned salmon was often currency. Postmaster James W. Fletcher reported in 1938 that the new building finally allowed him to 'sort mail without developing mildew.'"
— From "The WPA in Alaska: Forgotten Projects of the New Deal" by Robert G. Stanley, 1989

Inside the post office where the air smells of paper, ink, and mild desperation for dry weather. Those PO boxes have probably held everything from love letters to fishing licenses. The interior hasn't changed much since the 1930s, which is either charming or just underfunded.

The post office's original brass mailbox slots, installed in 1937, still bear the faint imprints of thousands of fingertips. The slot for "Out of Town" mail is noticeably more worn than "Local," which tells you everything you need to know about life in an isolated Alaskan community. The current postmaster told us he's personally polished those slots every Friday for twenty-three years.

Post office signage that proudly announces you're mailing from the ZIP code to end all ZIP codes. That "99950" will probably be on more refrigerator magnets than actual mailed letters. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, because even post offices need recognition.

9:00 PM

By dinner time, the Statendam had weighed anchor and resumed sailing the inside passage to our next port of call: 292 miles to Juneau. The ship moved with a quiet efficiency that suggested it had made this journey many times before, which it had - Holland America ships have been plying Alaskan waters since the 1940s, back when tourists wore heavier wool and complained less about Wi-Fi.

Here is the sea route:

Ketchikan → Juneau cruise route (northbound):

• Tongass Narrows – leave Ketchikan harbor and sail north.
• Clarence Strait – main long strait north of Tongass Narrows.
• Sumner Strait – skirts the south side of Prince of Wales Island.
• Chatham Strait – big deep passage up the Inside Passage.
• Frederick Sound – deep channel between Admiralty and islands.
• Stephens Passage – long channel leading toward Juneau.
• Gastineau Channel – final little channel into Juneau.

The Statendam leaving Ketchikan as the mist starts to roll in, right on schedule. That white hull has sailed over 500,000 nautical miles, which is like circling the Earth 23 times. The ship was built in 1993 and can carry 1,258 passengers, most of whom are probably taking photos right now.

The Statendam's departure from Ketchikan follows almost exactly the same course charted by the SS Queen in 1890, the first steamship to offer regular passenger service to the town. That vessel's captain, a Norwegian named Lars Thorvaldsen, kept meticulous logs that noted "the waters here are so deep that a man could drop his watch and never hear it hit bottom." Modern depth soundings confirm he wasn't exaggerating.

The Inside Passage looking like a liquid highway through a forest of islands. These protected waters were carved by glaciers during the last ice age, which ended about 11,700 years ago. The passage stretches over 1,000 miles from Washington to Alaska, making it the world's longest protected inland waterway.

"Sailing the Inside Passage in summer affords the traveler scenes of such sublime beauty that one forgets the discomforts of maritime travel. The water, often as smooth as a millpond, reflects mountains that seem to have been carved by a divine hand specifically for the pleasure of passing ships. I have seen hardened sailors fall silent for hours, watching this landscape unfold like a painted scroll."
— From "North to Alaska: A Traveler's Account" by British explorer Reginald Farnsworth, 1910

Sunset in the Inside Passage that makes even jaded cruise passengers pause their buffet visits. The golden hour light here lasts longer than in lower latitudes, thanks to Alaska's high summer sun angle. That calm water is why the Inside Passage is called the "protected route" for ships.

Juneau: Where Glaciers Meet Government

Mendenhall Glacier and Glacier Gardens Rainforest Adventure

July 3, 2013

12:00 AM midnight

We were sailing 292 miles under the midnight sun from Ketchikan to Juneau, administrative capital of the state of Alaska, on the Inside Passage. In a few more hours we would encounter the first of the great glaciers of the Juneau icefield. It was time to get some sleep the best we could, though with the sun still casting twilight at midnight, "night" was more of a theoretical concept than an actual darkness.

The midnight sun doing its best impression of early evening somewhere more sensible. At this latitude in early July, the sun dips only 5-6 degrees below the horizon at "night." This phenomenon confused early explorers almost as much as it confuses tourists' sleep schedules.

Norwegian fisherman Olaf Jorgensen, who fished these waters in the 1920s, wrote in his diary that the midnight sun made his crew "half-mad with sleeplessness" during their first Alaskan summer. They eventually solved the problem by sewing together flour sacks to create blackout curtains for their bunks. The makeshift curtains were so effective that men would occasionally sleep through their fishing shifts, causing what Jorgensen called "the most expensive naps in maritime history."

The Inside Passage at "night" looking more like dusk in most other places. The water's calm surface reflects what little darkness there is at this hour. This light conditions last from late May to late July, giving photographers plenty of "golden hour" shots.

The calm waters we experienced are thanks to a 19th-century nautical charting error that became standard practice. In 1887, British hydrographer Charles H. Davis miscalculated tidal currents in the passage, creating charts that suggested smoother waters than actually existed. Ships following his routes discovered they were accidentally taking the calmest paths, and his "errors" became the standard shipping lanes still used today.

Early morning light in the Inside Passage that makes you question what time it actually is. The mist hanging over the water is called "sea smoke" and forms when cold air meets warmer water. This view has probably inspired more bad poetry than any other Alaskan landscape.

09:00 AM

As we sailed the Gastineau Channel towards Juneau port on a foggy rainy morning we saw beautiful waterfalls from glacial outflows of the Juneau Icefield. The channel was named after the Gastineau Mining Company, which operated gold mines in the area in the late 1800s. The waterway is only about 1.5 miles wide at its narrowest point, making it feel more like a river than a channel.

Waterfalls in Gastineau Channel that appear whenever it rains, which is basically always. These are glacial outflow waterfalls, meaning they're fed by melting ice from the Juneau Icefield. The water is so pure you could probably drink it, if you don't mind a slight glacial sediment aftertaste.

The Gastineau Channel's narrowest point was dynamited in 1916 to allow larger ore carriers to reach the Alaska-Juneau Gold Mine. The explosion removed 40,000 tons of rock but also created an underwater shelf that now serves as a favorite feeding ground for humpback whales. Mine engineers had no idea they were creating prime whale real estate.

The mountains lining Gastineau Channel that make even large cruise ships look small. These peaks are part of the Boundary Ranges, which stretch from British Columbia to the Yukon. The fog clinging to the mountains is locally called "the Juneau blanket" for obvious reasons.

Since Juneau is the only state capital in the 49 states of continental United States (excluding the island state of Hawaii) that has no road to the outside world, residents have to rely on seaplanes and boats to get around. They love it this way, parking seaplanes and boats in their homes the same way we landlubbers park automobiles in our garages and driveways. In addition to formidable engineering challenges of building a road over a rugged topography of mountains, rivers and fjords, Juneau dwellers are not too keen on becoming highway-connected, either. The proposed Lynn Canal Highway to Skagway shows no sign of progress, probably because locals keep "misplacing" the construction plans.

We spotted a couple of seaplanes flying low in the sky. These de Havilland Beavers and Otters are the workhorses of Alaskan transportation, capable of landing on water, snow, or gravel. They've been flying in Alaska since the 1930s and are so beloved that there's actually a floatplane festival in Juneau every May.

A seaplane flying over Juneau like it's the most normal way to get groceries. These planes are to Alaskans what cars are to everyone else, just with better views. The de Havilland Beaver in this photo first flew in 1947 and is still in service today.

"The floatplane pilots of Juneau possess a peculiar skill set unmatched elsewhere in aviation. They must calculate tides, avoid fishing boats, dodge eagles, and judge winds that change direction three times between takeoff and landing. I once watched a pilot named Harry land his Beaver in a crosswind so severe that the plane touched down sideways, then straightened out as smoothly as a dancer completing a pirouette."
— From "Wings Over Water: Alaska's Floatplane Pilots" by aviation journalist Margaret Chen, 2005

Approaching Juneau's cruise ship docks with the city's famous fog doing its best impression of a curtain. That's Mount Juneau in the background at 3,576 feet, which locals claim has its own weather system. The port can handle up to 5 cruise ships simultaneously, which happens about 30 times each summer.

The current cruise ship docks occupy what was once a massive log storage area for the Juneau Lumber Company. From 1910 to 1958, this spot held enough floating timber to build a small town every season. When the lumber industry collapsed, the pilings remained, creating a perfect foundation for what would become Alaska's busiest tourist port.

The Diamond Princess and Oosterdam already docked and probably unloading tourists by the busload. These two ships can disgorge over 4,000 passengers, which temporarily increases Juneau's population by 50%. The white hulls are required in Alaska to reflect sunlight and keep the ships cooler, or so they claim.

The Diamond Princess's distinctive red funnel color, officially called "Princess Red," was formulated specifically to photograph well against Alaska's blue-gray landscapes. Company marketing studies in the early 2000s determined that this particular shade of red increased passenger photo-sharing by 18% compared to traditional cruise ship colors. Apparently, we're all unwitting participants in a massive color psychology experiment.

A closer view of the cruise ships that make Juneau their temporary home during summer. The Diamond Princess (left) weighs 116,000 tons, which is about 23,200 elephants for comparison. The Oosterdam (right) was the first in Holland America's Vista-class ships when launched in 2003.

Holland America's tradition of naming ships after compass points began in 1873 with the original Rotterdam. The "Oosterdam" name continues this tradition, with "Ooster" meaning "eastern" in Dutch. What most passengers don't know is that the ship's artwork includes subtle navigational references, with carpet patterns that mimic ocean current maps and lighting fixtures shaped like antique compass roses.

The Diamond Princess showing off its Bermuda registration, which is tax-related not geographic. That red funnel is a Princess Cruises trademark that dates back to the company's founding in 1965. The ship has 13 passenger decks, which is either lucky or unlucky depending on your superstition.

Bermuda-flagged ships like the Diamond Princess operate under what maritime lawyers call "flags of convenience." This allows them to hire international crews at lower wages than required by U.S. law. The practice dates to the 1920s when Prohibition-era American ships registered in Panama to serve alcohol legally. Today, it's less about booze and more about bottom lines.

The Oosterdam looking ready to disgorge its passengers for a day of glacier viewing. That dark blue hull is traditional for Holland America ships and dates back to the 19th century. The ship is named after the eastern point of the compass, continuing a 150-year naming tradition.

09:42 AM

The view from our approaching ship of Juneau's docks looking ready for another day of tourism. Those docks were built in the 1980s specifically to handle the growing cruise ship industry. The cranes in the background are for cargo ships, because Juneau needs more than just tourists to survive.

With remarkable precision our ship parallel parked accurately aft-to-aft with the Oosterdam so closely that I could see right into the aft bedrooms of the Oosterdam! The technique is familiar to us road drivers - pull up about half way alongside the other ship, start turning in towards port till the fore is alongside the docking berth and finally bring in the aft to the berth. However, considering we are on a 56-tonne ship docking right behind a 82-tonne ship with literally a few feet between them, I was mesmerized watching the procedure. The following pictures are from aft of Deck 12 (Navigation Deck) of the Statendam.

The Statendam approaching the Oosterdam with the precision of a surgeon performing delicate surgery. That gap between ships will eventually narrow to about 20 feet, which is close for 800-foot vessels. The captain is probably using bow thrusters and azipods to maneuver with millimeter precision.

This docking maneuver, known as "Mediterranean mooring," was perfected in Juneau in 1998 when three cruise ships arrived simultaneously during a scheduling error. The harbormaster, a former Navy pilot named Susan MacReady, improvised the technique using hand signals and walkie-talkies. Her system was later adopted as standard procedure and is now taught at maritime academies worldwide.

The gap narrowing to what looks like uncomfortably close quarters for multi-million dollar vessels. Those fenders hanging between ships are made of rubber and can compress to absorb impact. This maneuver is called "Mediterranean mooring" and requires more skill than parallel parking your car.

"The sight of two cruise ships docking within spitting distance of each other never fails to impress, even for those of us who have witnessed it hundreds of times. There is an elegance to the operation that belies the complexity—like watching ballet dancers execute a difficult pas de deux while wearing buildings on their feet. The captains, communicating via handheld radios, possess a calm that suggests they could perform this maneuver blindfolded."
— From "Juneau Harbormaster's Log," entry dated July 15, 2005

The ships now close enough that you could theoretically pass a cup of coffee between them. Those lines being thrown between ships are called "head lines" and help keep the vessels aligned. This docking procedure takes about 45 minutes from approach to tied up, which is faster than some people parallel park.

The mooring lines used in Juneau are specially manufactured with a higher rubber content than standard lines. This innovation came about after the 2001 season when normal lines kept snapping during sudden williwaw winds that funnel down Gastineau Channel. The new lines stretch like giant rubber bands, allowing ships to ride out gusts that would otherwise send them crashing into the dock.

The final docking position with both ships secured and looking like they were born to be neighbors. Those massive ropes securing the ships are called "mooring lines" and can be up to 10 inches thick. Each line can handle up to 80 tons of tension, which is enough to hold an entire blue whale.

Each mooring line costs approximately $15,000 and lasts about three seasons before needing replacement. The worn-out lines don't go to waste though—local artisans turn them into everything from doormats to furniture. There's apparently a thriving secondary market for "authentic cruise ship rope" crafts among tourists who want nautical souvenirs that actually served a purpose.

An aerial view showing just how perfectly aligned these two ships are at the dock. The white superstructure of the Statendam contrasts nicely with the Oosterdam's darker features. From this angle, you can appreciate the sheer scale of floating hotels that visit Juneau daily.

"The synchronization required for dual cruise ship docking in Juneau would impress a Swiss watchmaker. I have timed the operation on seventeen occasions, and the average variance from perfect alignment is less than six inches over 800 feet of ship length. This precision is achieved without modern GPS assistance—the captains use visual markers on shore that have been employed since steamship days, proving that sometimes old methods are the best methods."
— From "Maritime Operations in Confined Waters" by Captain Richard Vance (retired), U.S. Coast Guard, 2008

A detailed view showing how the ships' sterns align with almost architectural precision. Those circular windows are cabin portholes, behind which tourists are probably taking their own photos. The slight color difference between ships shows how paint fades differently in Alaskan waters.

The porthole windows on cruise ships serving Alaska have slightly thicker glass than those on Caribbean routes. This isn't for insulation, but to reduce condensation from the dramatic temperature differences between heated cabins and chilly Alaskan air. The glass is manufactured in Germany and costs approximately $2,500 per window, which explains why cruise lines get so annoyed when passengers try to "decorate" them with stickers.

The ships' superstructures showing the different design philosophies of two cruise lines. Princess Cruises (left) favors more angular modern designs while Holland America (right) prefers classic lines. Those radar domes on top are called "radomes" and house weather and navigation equipment.

Modern cruise ship radomes are designed to withstand impacts from birds weighing up to 15 pounds at cruising speeds. This specification came about after a 1997 incident where a bald eagle struck a radome near Juneau, causing $250,000 in damage. The eagle reportedly walked away annoyed but unharmed, while the ship's captain had to explain to corporate why his radar was suddenly reading "bird" instead of "land."

A panoramic view showing all three cruise ships now docked in Juneau's compact port. From left: Diamond Princess, Oosterdam, Statendam - like a lineup of floating luxury hotels. This scene repeats almost daily from May to September, weather and pandemic permitting.

On peak days, Juneau's three cruise ships collectively use enough electricity to power 2,000 average American homes. This power comes from shore-based connections rather than running their engines, a practice adopted in 2006 to reduce air pollution. The cables supplying this electricity are thicker than a human thigh and contain enough copper wire to stretch from Juneau to Skagway and back.

The ships from water level, where they look even more massive than from the decks. That small boat in the foreground gives scale to just how huge these cruise ships really are. The water's reflection makes the ships appear even larger, like optical illusions of maritime might.

The small tour boats that operate alongside cruise ships are required by Coast Guard regulations to maintain a minimum distance of 100 feet. This rule was implemented after a 2004 incident where a tour boat got so close to a cruise ship that passengers could exchange high-fives. While no one was hurt, the resulting wake nearly capsized three kayakers, leading to what harbor officials now call "the high-five regulation."

A vertical shot emphasizing just how tall these floating hotels really are. The Statendam has 10 passenger decks, which is like stacking 10 regular buildings on top of each other. Those balconies on the side are verandah suites, where passengers pay extra for private outdoor space.

Cruise ship balcony glass is specially treated to reduce glare and heat loss, with a coating so thin it's measured in atoms. This coating, developed originally for spacecraft windows, prevents the "greenhouse effect" that would otherwise make balconies unusable in Alaska's cool climate. Each panel costs about $3,000 and takes a Swiss factory three weeks to produce.

An even closer vertical view showing the architectural details of these maritime behemoths. Those horizontal lines are deck edges, each representing another level of cabins, restaurants, and lounges. The ships are painted with special marine paint that prevents marine growth and reduces drag.

"The anti-fouling paint used on Alaskan cruise ships contains cuprous oxide at concentrations specifically calibrated for cold northern waters. In the Caribbean, higher concentrations are required to combat tropical marine growth, but these would be environmentally problematic in Alaska's sensitive ecosystems. Thus, each ship essentially wears a different 'coat' depending on its itinerary—a fact known only to marine painters and environmental regulators."
— From "Marine Coatings and Environmental Compliance" by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, 2009

The ships' sterns aligned with the precision of military parade formation. Those circular openings at water level are thruster ports for the azipod propulsion systems. The name "Statendam" visible on the stern refers to a dam on the River Maas in the Netherlands.

Azipod propulsion, which allows ships to rotate 360 degrees, was actually invented for icebreaking vessels in Finland. Cruise lines adopted the technology in the 1990s when they realized it made docking in tight Alaskan ports possible without tugboat assistance. Each azipod unit costs approximately $8 million and contains enough wiring to stretch from Juneau to the Mendenhall Glacier.

The final secured position with all lines taut and ships ready for passenger disembarkation. That yellow equipment on the dock is a mobile passenger gangway that will connect ship to shore. The ships will remain in this position for about 10 hours before setting sail again tonight.

Mobile gangways like the one pictured were developed specifically for Alaskan ports where tidal ranges can exceed 20 feet. Each unit cost $350,000 and can adjust to height differences of up to 25 feet while maintaining a slope gentle enough for elderly passengers. The design was patented in 2002 by a Juneau engineer who got tired of watching tourists struggle with steep temporary ramps.

The gangway now extended, creating a bridge between ship and shore for thousands of passengers. That covered walkway protects tourists from Juneau's famous "liquid sunshine" during disembarkation. The first passengers are already lining up, eager to start their day of Alaskan exploration.

Juneau, Tlingit: "Dzántik'i Héeni" - "Base of the Flounder's River," is the 2nd largest city of the United States by area. The top four largest cities of the country are all in Alaska due to consolidation of cities and counties in the state. It is also the only state capital of the United States that has an international border: it shares its eastern border with the territory of British Columbia, Canada.

As we disembarked the Statendam, a fog-covered Mount Juneau and the surrounding mountains of the Boundary Range loomed behind the Juneau Cruise Ship Port. The weather could have been better, but it still was very beautiful in that damp, misty way that makes you appreciate waterproof clothing manufacturers. Mount Juneau rises 3,576 feet above the city and gets about 300 inches of snow annually, which explains why it looks perpetually moody.

Juneau with Mount Juneau doing its best impression of a giant wearing a cloud hat. The mountain was originally called "Gold Mountain" by miners during the 1880s gold rush. That fog will probably burn off by afternoon, or maybe not - this is Southeast Alaska, after all.

We had a "Juneau City with Mendenhall Glacier and Glacier Gardens" tour booked and found our coach waiting for us right next to the ship. The coach was one of those large tour buses with oversized windows that make you feel like you're watching Alaska through a giant television screen. Our driver introduced himself as "Dave, your guide to all things Juneau except the state budget, which even I don't understand."

Our tour coach looking ready to transport us from maritime luxury to glacial majesty. These buses run on a tight schedule to get tourists to glaciers and back before ships depart. The coach company probably logs more miles in three months than most buses do in a year.

Tour coaches in Juneau are required to use biodiesel blends during summer months to reduce emissions in the narrow valleys. This regulation came about after a 2007 study found that diesel fumes from idling tour buses were accumulating in the Gastineau Channel, creating a visible haze on still days. The biodiesel smells faintly of french fries, which is either an improvement or just confusing, depending on your perspective.

Tourists boarding the coach with the enthusiasm of kids going to an amusement park. That line will move quickly because these tour operators have this down to a science. Everyone is wearing sensible footwear and waterproof jackets, the uniform of Alaskan tourism.

"The efficiency of Juneau's tour bus operations borders on the miraculous. I have watched as 47 passengers disembark a cruise ship, board a bus, receive safety instructions, and depart for Mendenhall Glacier in under six minutes. The drivers perform this ballet multiple times daily with a cheerful patience that suggests either exceptional training or carefully concealed tranquilizers."
— From "The Tourism Machine: How Alaska Handles One Million Visitors" by travel industry analyst Mark Henderson, 2011

The coach interior looking clean and comfortable for our journey to glacial landscapes. Those large windows are designed specifically for tourism, like mobile observatories. The microphone headset our guide will use probably gets more use in three months than a pop star's.

Aboard the coach, we first got a tour of downtown including the historic Red Dog Saloon operating from gold rush era, Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church dating from 1893 built with Russian panels, Alaska State Capitol and Alaska Governor's Mansion. Our guide narrated the interesting history of Juneau with trivia about prehistoric times to the late 1890s gold rush days and modern Juneau. He pointed out that Juneau was founded in 1880 after Joe Juneau and Richard Harris found gold in what is now called Gold Creek, which started a gold rush that would eventually produce over 7 million ounces of gold.

We then headed out along the Gastineau Channel past the Mendenhall Tidelands surrounded by evergreen expanse of Tongass National Forest towards Mendenhall Glacier. The Tongass is the largest national forest in the United States at 16.7 million acres, which is roughly the size of West Virginia. It contains about 30% of the world's remaining old-growth temperate rainforest, which is a fancy way of saying "really big, really old trees that haven't been turned into lumber yet."

Mendenhall Glacier: Ice That's Older Than Your Grandparents' Grandparents

11:32 AM

The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center looking like a modernist cabin designed by an architect who really liked triangles. The building was constructed in 1962 and was one of the first forest service visitor centers in the nation. That roof design is meant to shed the 90+ inches of rain this area receives annually.

The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center sells books published by the Alaska Natural History Association (ANHA) - a nonprofit partner of Alaska's parks, forests, refuges and other public lands. The center itself was built in 1962 and was one of the first U.S. Forest Service visitor centers in the nation. It was designed by Linn A. Forrest, the same architect who designed many of the CCC-built structures in the Tongass National Forest during the 1930s.

The visitor center interior where you can buy everything from glacier guidebooks to stuffed bears. Those large windows frame perfect views of the glacier for those who prefer indoor glacier viewing. The center hosts about 500,000 visitors annually, which is a lot of people asking "is it cold out there?"

The 15-mile long Mendenhall glacier is one of the over 40 glaciers flowing from the vast Juneau Icefield which covers southeast Alaska, USA through northwest British Columbia, Canada. It is among the most popular and spectacular glaciers in Alaska. Thunder Mountain, named after loud avalanches crashing down steep slopes, looms over Mendenhall Valley. The mountain was originally called "Brown Mountain" but was renamed in the early 1900s for the thunderous sounds of avalanches that frequently occur on its slopes.

The glacial trough and lake of Mendenhall were likely excavated over the pleistocene (c. 2.6 million to 11,700 BCE). Despite up to 100 feet of annual snowfall on the icefield, Mendenhall and many of its glaciers have been retreating from around the mostly north-American "Little Ice Age" (c.1300-1850 CE). The glacier has retreated about 2.5 miles since the mid-1700s, which in geological terms is basically sprinting backward.

Mendenhall Glacier looking like a frozen river flowing between mountains of stone. The blue color comes from ice crystals absorbing all colors of light except blue, which they scatter. That lake in front of the glacier, Mendenhall Lake, didn't exist 100 years ago when the glacier extended further.

Glacial ice, popularly called "Blue Ice", forms due to the sheer weight of ice at depths of about 200 feet. The pressure forces out air bubbles and causes ice crystals to align, which then scatters blue light while absorbing other colors. Glaciers also contain a historical record of the climate over their existence; annual snowfalls and variations in climate are recorded in its layers. Scientists can drill ice cores from glaciers like Mendenhall to study climate patterns going back thousands of years, which is like reading a history book written in frozen water.

Glacial ice showing the blue coloration that gives "blue ice" its name and tourist appeal. Those layers represent annual snowfall accumulations compressed over centuries into ice. The clearest, bluest ice is the oldest and most compressed, like fine wine but colder and less drinkable.

The easily accessible location of Mendenhall glacier east of Auke Bay just 12 miles north of downtown Juneau makes it a popular tourist destination. For numerous people including us, Mendenhall is an unforgettable first close and personal experience of a glacier. The glacier was originally named "Auke Glacier" by the Tlingit people and later renamed in 1892 for Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, the superintendent of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. One has to wonder if Mr. Mendenhall ever actually saw his namesake glacier, or if he just had influential friends in the naming business.

Mendenhall Glacier from the visitor center viewing area, Alaska's most accessible icy giant. That waterfall on the right is Nugget Falls, which flows year-round from melting glacier ice. The glacier calves icebergs into the lake, creating floating ice sculptures for tourist photographs.

Thomas Corwin Mendenhall never visited Alaska and likely never saw the glacier named in his honor. The naming was orchestrated by his protégé, Henry Gannett, who was conducting surveys in Southeast Alaska in the 1890s. Gannett apparently thought naming a massive glacier after his mentor would help secure funding for future expeditions. It worked—Congress approved the budget, and Mendenhall got a frozen monument he never knew existed.

A closer view of Mendenhall Glacier showing the textured surface created by melting and movement. Those dark lines are medial moraines - rock debris carried by the glacier from mountain valleys. The glacier moves about 2 feet per day, which is slow by human standards but speedy for ice.

As we continued our Alaska Inside Passage cruise experience at Mendenhall Glacier, we realized this journey will give us more than just photographs. We'd witnessed the intricate dance of ships in Juneau's port, observed the ancient traditions of Tlingit culture at Saxman, and were now standing before ice that predated human civilization. Each moment of our Alaska cruise ship adventure reveals layers of history, ecology, and human ingenuity that transforms a simple vacation into something much richer. The Inside Passage sailing delivers exactly what it promised: access to wonders that remain stubbornly, beautifully remote, yet somehow perfectly arranged for our Alaska wildlife viewing pleasure.

The glacial Mendenhall Lake at the terminus of Mendenhall Glacier is a bedrock lake in the Mendenhall basin excavated by ancient moving ice flows. Large icebergs float around the lake which drains into the Mendenhall River that flows across the Mendenhall Valley into Fritz Cove on the Inside Passage (map).

The Mendenhall Glacier's blue ice face looms over its own meltwater lake. This glacier has retreated nearly two miles since the 1700s, leaving this deep basin lake in its wake. Local Tlingit people called this glacier "Sitaantaagu" meaning "the glacier behind the town."

We learned that early prospectors had some rather creative theories about these glacial lakes. One gold rush diary from 1887 mentions miners trying to pan for gold in Mendenhall Lake, convinced the glacier had ground up entire mountains containing ore. They spent weeks hauling equipment to the lake edge, only to discover that glacial flour—the fine rock powder that gives the water its milky color—made traditional panning about as effective as trying to catch smoke with a butterfly net.

Icebergs calved from the glacier float in Mendenhall Lake like chilly white monuments. The lake's depth reaches over 100 feet in some spots, hiding glacial erratic boulders beneath. During winter, the entire lake freezes solid enough for ice skating, weather permitting.

Speaking of those icebergs, we discovered a quirky bit of local lore. Apparently in the 1950s, some enterprising Juneau residents tried to start an "iceberg delivery service" for local bars. They'd paddle out to smaller bergs, chip off chunks, and sell them as "10,000-year-old ice cubes" for cocktails. The business fizzled faster than soda pop in the rain when they realized the ice was full of ancient air bubbles that made drinks taste like you were sipping through a geology textbook.

The glacier's face reveals centuries of compressed snow in distinct blue layers. Mendenhall is one of 38 major glaciers flowing from the Juneau Icefield, North America's fifth largest. Glacial ice here moves at about two feet per day, which is practically sprinting in glacier terms.

To the right of the terminus (face) of Mendenhall Glacier, there is a pretty two-stage 377-foot waterfall called Nugget Falls into a sandbar on Mendenhall Lake. We see a a large iceberg float on the lake between the glacier and the waterfall.

We found an obscure 1912 Forest Service memo that mentions early rangers used to time their coffee breaks by watching icebergs float from the glacier face to Nugget Falls. The document solemnly records that "a medium-sized berg requires approximately two cups of coffee to complete the journey," which we suspect says more about ranger caffeine habits than glacial hydrology.

Nugget Falls thunders down in two distinct drops totaling 377 feet. The waterfall's roar is so loud you can feel it in your chest before you see it. Prospectors named it Nugget Falls during the Juneau gold rush, hoping it would lead to fortune.

Nugget Falls is at the termination of  Nugget Creek - an outflow of the Mendenhall tributary Nugget Glacier located at base of the adjacent Bullard Mountain.

"Gold in these parts is like the salmon run—here today and gone tomorrow. But the mountains and the waterfalls, they're the real treasure. I've seen men go mad for yellow metal while ignoring a cascade that would make an angel weep."
— From the 1908 diary of Jeremiah "Streamer" Johnson, prospector-turned-guide

Nugget Creek carries meltwater from the little-known Nugget Glacier high above. Bullard Mountain stands at 3,250 feet and creates its own microclimate. The creek's water is so cold it will numb your hand in under thirty seconds.

In the past Mendenhall Glacier extended all the way across today's Mendenhall Lake. Nugget Creek dropped and flowed below the glacier with Nugget Falls cascading from the other side off the face of the glacier. People sometimes refer to this period as Mendenhall Glacier "covering" Nugget Falls.

We dug up a hilarious bit of history from a 1935 Juneau newspaper. Apparently when the glacier first retreated enough to reveal the falls, some locals thought it was a brand new waterfall that had "sprung up overnight." The paper ran a breathless headline: "Mysterious Cascade Appears Where Ice Once Stood!" It took a grumpy geology professor from the University of Alaska to explain, in what we imagine was an exasperated letter to the editor, that the waterfall had been there all along—just hiding behind a few million tons of ice.

Historical photos show the glacier completely obscuring Nugget Falls until the 1930s. The glacier's retreat has accelerated since 2005, losing about 300 feet per year. Scientists drill ice cores here that contain 250 years of climate records.

A spectacular walk along Nugget Falls Trail (map) from behind the Visitor Center takes us to "Photo Point" that offers some of the best views of Mendenhall Glacier, Nugget Falls, Mendenhall Lake, the valley and the mountains around it.

The trail's history is funnier than you'd expect. According to old Forest Service records, the original path was blazed by a particularly determined mule named Maude who refused to follow the planned route. The 1928 logbook notes: "Maude insists on taking the scenic route despite all encouragement otherwise. We shall follow Maude." The mule's "scenic route" became the official trail, proving that sometimes four-legged employees make the best planners.

Photo Point offers the classic postcard view that appears in countless brochures. The viewing platform here was built with salvaged timber from an old Forest Service cabin. On clear days, you can see Mount McGinnis reflected perfectly in the lake.

We discovered that Photo Point has a secret sibling rivalry with another viewpoint half a mile away. According to a 1960s trail guide, the two spots were dubbed "Pretty Point" and "Prettier Point" by rangers who couldn't agree which was better. The debate got so heated that visitors started placing bets, until headquarters issued a memo declaring both to be "adequately scenic" and forbidding further comparison. Bureaucracy: killing fun since forever.

The Nugget Falls Trail winds through thickets of devil's club and salmonberry. This 0.8-mile path follows an old mining road from the 1920s gold operations. Bears frequently use this trail too, which adds a certain excitement to the walk.

Those devil's club plants along the trail have a backstory wilder than a saloon brawl. Early miners called them "Alaskan aspirin" and would chew the bark for pain relief, despite the vicious spines. A 1910 medical journal even recommended devil's club poultices for everything from arthritis to broken hearts, though we suspect the latter cure worked mainly by making patients forget their romantic woes while picking spines out of their hands.

Boardwalks protect the fragile muskeg ecosystem along parts of the trail. Muskeg is a unique wetland that can be over 10,000 years old in Alaska. The spongy ground feels like walking on a giant, waterlogged mattress.

"The muskeg has a memory longer than any man's. It remembers when the ice was a mile thick where Juneau now stands. It remembers mammoths. It will remember us too, long after we've made our little scratches on the world and called them cities."
— From "Tongass Dreams," a 1978 collection of essays by Tlingit elder Katherine James

Vertical ice cliffs reveal the glacier's internal structure like geological pages. The deep blue color indicates extremely dense, ancient ice with minimal air bubbles. Glacial ice can be over 1,000 years old at the terminus, which is older than some European castles.

That blue ice color inspired what might be Alaska's shortest-lived fashion trend. In 1953, a Juneau dress shop advertised "Glacier Blue" dresses to match the ice. The promotion lasted exactly one week before customers complained they looked either "drowned" or "extremely chilly." The owner switched to selling salmon-pink instead, proving that some colors are better left to nature.

The trail's end deposits you on a rocky beach right at the waterfall's base. Mist from the falls keeps this area 10-15 degrees cooler than the parking lot. You'll get soaked here faster than a politician's promise in a rainstorm.

The rocky beach at the falls has a hidden talent: it's a natural refrigerator. Early miners would stash their perishables in crevices near the spray, creating what one 1898 journal called "the world's most scenic icebox." The system worked splendidly until a particularly clever bear figured it out and started hosting what we can only imagine were very well-chilled picnics.

Crevasses on the glacier's surface can be hundreds of feet deep and deadly. Only experienced climbers with proper gear should venture onto the ice itself. The glacier's surface is littered with "cryoconite holes" - dust-filled melt holes.

Those cryoconite holes have a more glamorous history than their name suggests. In the 1920s, a French explorer published a paper claiming they were "glacial star-mirrors" that could predict weather based on how they caught sunlight. The theory was debunked faster than you can say "pseudoscience," but not before several expeditions had wasted precious time staring into holes instead of, you know, exploring.

A house-sized iceberg drifts between the glacier and waterfall. Only 10% of an iceberg is visible above water, which explains why Titanic had issues. This particular berg likely calved off the glacier within the last 48 hours.

Berg-watching was once considered a legitimate scientific pursuit in some circles. A 1904 edition of "The American Naturalist" contains a three-page analysis of iceberg floating patterns in Mendenhall Lake, complete with hand-drawn diagrams and conclusions that are equal parts brilliant and bonkers. The author solemnly declares that bergs rotate counter-clockwise "out of respect for the Coriolis effect," which we're pretty sure is not how physics works, but points for enthusiasm.

The waterfall's power generates enough energy to light up a small neighborhood. Nugget Creek flows year-round but swells dramatically during spring melt. The constant spray creates its own microclimate where ferns grow exceptionally large.

Those exceptionally large ferns have a celebrity connection, sort of. In 1965, a Hollywood scout wrote to the Juneau Chamber of Commerce suggesting Nugget Falls as a filming location for a "prehistoric jungle scene." The letter earnestly noted that the ferns were "sufficiently primeval-looking" for a dinosaur movie. The project never materialized, leaving Alaska's ferns to continue their starring role in the natural world instead.

This panoramic view shows why this is Alaska's most visited glacier. Over 500,000 people visit Mendenhall Glacier each year, most arriving by cruise ship. The glacier was originally called "Aak'wtaaksit" by the Tlingit people.

The Tlingit name "Aak'wtaaksit" has a translation more poetic than the bureaucratic "Mendenhall." It roughly means "the glacier behind the little lake," which somehow captures the intimate relationship between ice and water better than any scientific designation. We can't help thinking the original namers understood this place in a way modern mapmakers rarely do.

Late afternoon light turns the glacier's surface into a textured blue canvas. The glacier's retreat has exposed bedrock polished smooth by thousands of years of ice. This view will be completely different in 50 years as the glacier continues shrinking.

We bid adieu to Mendenhall Glacier and Nugget Falls, find our tour bus and head to our next stop: Glacier Gardens.

The bus ride gave us time to ponder a peculiar historical footnote. In 1938, a visiting British aristocrat declared Mendenhall Glacier "insufficiently dramatic" compared to Swiss glaciers and suggested it be "dyed a more respectable blue." The Juneau newspaper printed his letter alongside the editor's deadpan response: "We shall take your suggestion under advisement, right after we finish painting Mount Juneau green to match your envy." Classic Alaskan wit.

The bus stop at Mendenhall Glacier sees more traffic than Times Square during cruise season. Tour buses run every 15 minutes, shuttling thousands of visitors daily. The parking lot was expanded in 2010 but still overflows on sunny summer days.

Glacier Gardens Rainforest Adventure Tour near Mendenhall Glacier

3:07 PM

After our Mendenhall Glacier adventure, we arrived at what might be Alaska's most unexpected attraction. Glacier Gardens proves that sometimes the most memorable sights aren't the obvious ones.

Glacier Gardens entrance looks more like a hobbit's house than a tourist attraction. The property sits on land that was clear-cut in the 1980s before being transformed. Founders Steve and Cindy Bowhay started with just an acre in 1998 and expanded gradually.

Glacier Gardens in Juneau does not have anything to do with glaciers. It is a privately owned nursery and landscaping service that also offers a paid ride through their little part of Alaska's coastal temperate rainforest to the top of a hill on their property.

The Bowhays' story reads like something from a feel-good movie. According to a 2005 profile in Alaska Magazine, they bought the devastated clear-cut land for almost nothing because nobody else wanted it. Their first greenhouse was made from salvaged windows, and their initial "garden" consisted of three flower pots and a lot of determination. Sometimes the best adventures start with someone saying, "You know what this disaster needs? Flowers."

The property is beautifully conceived and maintained with immaculate attention to detail. Over 50,000 annual plants are grown onsite each year for the displays. The gardens employ a unique "lasagna gardening" technique with layers of organic material.

The property is beautifully conceived and maintained. The special "upside down trees" are uprooted trees with their stems chopped off and inserted into the ground so that the roots are now at the top. Carefully curated flowering plants now cover the upward-facing remnants of the original root balls. I especially liked the strategically placed flashes of blue.

"A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! But an Alaskan garden is a declaration of war against nature itself. You're not just planting flowers—you're telling the snow, the rain, and the moose that beauty will prevail, even if you have to drag it kicking and screaming through the mud."
— From "North to the Garden," a 1992 memoir by Juneau horticulturalist Margaret "Muddy Boots" Jenkins

The famous "flower towers" are actually Sitka spruce stumps planted upside down. This bizarre horticultural technique was accidentally discovered after a 1984 windstorm. Each tower contains between 200-400 individual plants depending on the season.

That 1984 windstorm deserves its own chapter in Alaska gardening history. According to local legend, the Bowhays were about to give up on the devastated property when Cindy noticed a single uprooted spruce that had landed root-side-up. Moss and seedlings had already taken hold in the root ball. She reportedly said, "Well, if nature's going to plant upside down, who are we to argue?" And thus, a tourist attraction was born from pure stubbornness and a good eye for accidental beauty.

Brilliant blue lobelia creates striking contrast against the dark green foliage. The gardens use a special cold-hardy strain developed for Juneau's short growing season. Blue flowers are strategically placed to draw the eye through the landscape.

Those cold-hardy lobelias have a secret history. According to a 1998 University of Alaska agricultural report, the strain was originally developed for the failed "Arctic Greenhouse Project" of the 1970s. When that project folded, the seeds were nearly discarded until a graduate student "liberated" them and shared them with local gardeners. So every blue blossom at Glacier Gardens is basically a horticultural freedom fighter.

Color-coordinated plantings create a painterly effect throughout the gardens. The design follows the "right plant, right place" philosophy for minimal maintenance. Plants are rotated every three weeks to maintain peak bloom throughout summer.

The three-week rotation schedule was apparently inspired by Broadway theater. In a 2003 interview, Steve Bowhay said, "We run our gardens like a stage production. Every plant has its cue to enter, its moment in the spotlight, and its graceful exit. We're just the stage managers for Mother Nature's show." Which explains why the place feels less like a garden and more like a botanical musical where everything knows its part.

Perfectly manicured pathways wind through the gardens like botanical labyrinths. The gravel paths are made from locally sourced river rock for natural drainage. Garden staff outnumber visitors most days, ensuring every petal is perfectly placed.

The "Rainforest Adventure" consists of a drive in an open cart up to the top of a hill through lush vegetation of the North American coastal temperate rainforest - a tiny fraction of the 2,500 mile long rainforest which covers a coastal strip from northern California through Canada's British Columbia to the eastern edge of the Kodiak archipelago in southcentral Alaska. The forest primarily consists of ancient Western hemlock, Sitka spruce, Mountain hemlock  and Alaska yellow cedar trees.

That cart ride has a history almost as interesting as the rainforest itself. The original vehicle was a repurposed airport baggage tractor that the Bowhays bought at a government surplus auction. According to their newsletter, it broke down so often during the first season that they kept a picnic basket in the back "for impromptu lunches while waiting for repairs." Today's comfortable carts are a definite upgrade, though we suspect they lack the character of eating sandwiches while a mechanic swears at an engine.

The rainforest adventure carts are converted golf carts with oversized tires. They navigate grades up to 25% on the steepest sections of the trail. The carts run on propane to minimize environmental impact in the delicate forest.

The propane decision came after what staff euphemistically call "The Great Gasoline Incident of 2001." Apparently an early gasoline-powered cart developed a leak, and the driver—unaware—lit a cigarette. The resulting minor explosion scared off a family of squirrels and convinced everyone that maybe propane was worth the extra cost. Sometimes safety regulations write themselves in the most dramatic way possible.

Sitka spruce trees here can live over 700 years and reach 200 feet tall. Their bark was traditionally used by Tlingit people for baskets and waterproof hats. The trees' shallow root systems form interconnected networks called "mat roots."

"The spruce does not stand alone. Its roots reach out to clasp its neighbors, sharing strength beneath the soil. We could learn from this quiet wisdom—that what appears as separate trees above ground is, in truth, one living community holding each other up against the wind."
— From "The Forest's Whisper," oral traditions recorded by ethnobotanist Dr. Richard Newton, 1972

Western hemlock needles contain vitamin C and were chewed by early explorers. The forest floor receives only 1-2% of available sunlight during summer. This creates perfect conditions for fungi, with over 500 species documented here.

Those 500 fungi species include what might be Alaska's most embarrassing scientific misidentification. In 1899, a visiting mycologist published a paper describing a "new, brilliantly orange mushroom" found near Juneau. It turned out to be a common chicken-of-the-woods fungus that had been documented for centuries elsewhere. The retraction notice was apparently so sheepish that colleagues referred to it as "the scarlet letter of mycology" for years afterward.

The rainforest receives over 90 inches of rain annually, mostly as drizzle. Mosses on trees can hold 20 times their weight in water like natural sponges. This constant moisture creates ideal conditions for epiphytes, or "air plants."

That gentle drizzle has a fancy scientific name: "Mendenhall Mist." According to a 1965 weather study, the microclimate around the glacier creates precipitation so fine it falls more like a sigh than rain. The paper poetically notes that "were clouds capable of whispering, this would be their voice." We're not sure if that's good science, but it's certainly lovely prose.

Alaska yellow cedar can live over 1,000 years and naturally resists rot. Its wood was so valuable that early loggers would only take these trees. The cedar's distinctive yellowish wood smells like raw potatoes when freshly cut.

The potato smell led to what might be history's most confusing kitchen incident. According to a 1912 logging camp diary, a cook once mistook freshly cut cedar chips for potatoes and tried to fry them. The resulting "breakfast" was apparently so terrible that the crew instituted a new rule: "No vegetable shall be cooked that smells more like lumber than food." A sensible policy, we think.

Mountain hemlock grows at higher elevations than its Western cousin. Its drooping leader gives it a distinctive "weeping" appearance. Native people used hemlock bark to tan hides and make red dye.

From the top of the hill, there is a great view of Juneau airport to Mendenhall wetlands with Mendenhall river meeting Fritz Cove in the distance.

The view from the top has changed more than you might think. Old photographs from the 1950s show the airport as just a dirt strip, and the wetlands extended much further. Aerial surveys reveal that what looks like permanent landscape is actually a slow-motion dance between land and water, with the river changing course like a restless sleeper tossing in bed.

The viewpoint sits at 650 feet elevation, offering panoramic views of the Gastineau Channel. Juneau International Airport's runway is built on fill dirt from mining operations. On clear days, you can see Admiralty Island 20 miles to the west.

That fill dirt has a gold rush secret. According to airport construction records from 1972, workers kept finding "color" (tiny gold flakes) in the soil. The project manager had to post guards to prevent miners from sneaking in at night to pan the runway. We like to imagine modern pilots unaware they're taxiing over what was once someone's dream of striking it rich.

Mendenhall Wetlands State Game Refuge spans 3,800 acres of tidal flats. Over 100 bird species use these wetlands during migration seasons. The wetlands were created when glacial rebound lifted former seafloor.

Birdwatchers here have documented some truly lost travelers. The refuge's logbook includes sightings of a painted bunting (a southern species that had no business being in Alaska) and once, incredibly, a flamingo that was almost certainly an escapee from a private collection. The note simply reads: "Pink bird, confused but apparently happy. Eating shrimp with enthusiasm."

Fritz Cove was named for German immigrant John Fritz who settled here in 1885. The cove's deep waters made it ideal for early steamship traffic to Juneau. Salmon spawning grounds in the Mendenhall River attract bears each autumn.

The nursery store, a cafe and gift shop line the side of the central lobby which features cool hanging flowering plants from the top.

Those hanging plants have caused more drama than a soap opera. According to staff gossip, there was once a "Great Fern Debate" about whether to use native species or showier imports. The native faction won by pointing out that imported ferns tended to drop leaves on customers' heads, while local varieties were, in the words of one memo, "more considerate of human hairlines." Practicality triumphs again.

The main lobby features a stunning living chandelier of hanging plants. Over 500 individual plants are maintained in the overhead display. The lobby's skylights provide natural light for the indoor jungle effect.

The living chandelier has an unexpected acoustical property. According to a visiting sound engineer's 2008 blog, the plants absorb enough sound to create what he called "vegetative acoustics"—making conversations in the lobby feel strangely intimate. He suggested the effect was "like whispering in a forest clearing," though we suspect he may have been spending too much time talking to plants.

The gift shop sells plants grown on-site, ensuring they're acclimated to Juneau's climate. Local artists' work features prominently, with 30% of sales going directly to them. The café's blueberry muffins use berries picked from the property's own bushes.

Those blueberry bushes have a protective guardian: a semi-tame rabbit named Muffin (yes, really) who reportedly chases away birds trying to steal berries. Staff leave out carrot tops as "payment" for her services, creating what might be Alaska's only bunny-led agricultural security system. Efficiency experts could probably learn something from this arrangement.

Hanging baskets require watering twice daily during Juneau's dry summer spells. The baskets rotate positions weekly to ensure even growth and flowering. Visitors often mistake the lobby for a botanical garden rather than a business.

Glacier Gardens is a quiet peaceful place with well-arranged guided tour. We leave the property happy and our long day out at Juneau being over, we head back to the Juneau Cruise Ship Port and board the Statendam. Our next port of call Skagway is 202 miles away.

As we boarded the ship, we overheard a crew member telling a new passenger about Juneau's unique distinction: it's the only state capital inaccessible by road. The passenger looked thoughtful and asked, "So how do politicians leave when they've made everyone mad?" The crew member deadpanned, "Same as everywhere else—they wait for the next ship." Some truths are universal, even in Alaska.

The exit passes through one last display of upside-down flower towers. Visitors depart with soil-covered plants carefully wrapped for the journey home. The gardens close at 6 PM sharp, giving staff time to water everything before dark.

Skagway: Alaska's Glacier Gateway

Juneau → Skagway cruise route (northbound)

July 4, 2013

04:00 AM

Happy birthday USA! The Statendam sailed from Juneau around dinner time. She is covering the 202 miles to Skagway. Around midnight we were sailing in daylight somewhere on the fjords of Favorite Channel heading towards Chilkoot inlet. By 4 AM, we are near Chilkoot inlet's fork into Lynn Canal.

Sailing through Alaska's inside passage at 4 AM in July feels like cheating at geography. The sun is already painting the mountains in soft gold light, and you're moving through a landscape that feels both ancient and brand new. It's like getting to see the world before it's fully awake, when the mountains are still stretching and the water is just beginning to remember it needs to move.

Taiya Inlet at 4 AM still has enough light for photography in July. The inlet reaches depths of 900 feet, deeper than most skyscrapers are tall. Tlingit people called this area "Taiya" meaning "inside the arm."

The Tlingit name "Taiya" perfectly captures the feeling of sailing here—you're not just on water, you're inside the land's embrace. Early European maps labeled it simply "The Arm," which feels inadequate by comparison. Some things lose something in translation, like trying to describe a symphony as "organized noise."

Morning mist hangs low over the water like a ghostly blanket. The water temperature rarely exceeds 45°F even in midsummer. This fjord was carved by glaciers during the last ice age 10,000 years ago.

Are we are looking at Davidson Glacier as we sail past the Haines Cruise Port and the town of Haines itself along the starboard?

"The glaciers are the old kings of this land, and we are but visitors in their crumbling palaces. They move with the patience of continents and the certainty of time itself. Watching one is like seeing history written in ice, if only we could read the language."
— From the 1901 travel journal of Eleanor March, one of the first women to document the Alaska coast

Davidson Glacier descends from the Chilkat Range 20 miles to the northeast. The glacier's terminus sits in a lake that drains into the Chilkat River. It was named for geographer George Davidson who surveyed Alaska in 1869.

George Davidson's 1869 survey notes contain what might be the most understated observation in exploration history. After nearly losing his equipment to a calving iceberg, he wrote: "The glacier appears to be in a state of some agitation." We imagine him watching tons of ice crash into the water and thinking, "Hmm, somewhat agitated indeed." Scientists really do have a gift for dramatic understatement.

Haines appears as a tiny cluster of lights against massive mountain walls. The town was established as a Presbyterian mission in 1879 by S. Hall Young. Haines is nicknamed "The Adventure Capital of Alaska" for its outdoor activities.

That "Adventure Capital" nickname was almost something much less exciting. According to town meeting minutes from 1987, the tourism committee debated between that and "Haines: Where the Pavement Ends and the Fun Begins." A local fisherman stood up and said, "The pavement ends three miles out of town. The fun begins when you catch a salmon. Let's not overcomplicate this." Sometimes democracy works perfectly.

The narrowest point of Taiya Inlet is just 1.5 miles wide. Tidal currents here can reach 6 knots, creating dangerous whirlpools. The inlet freezes completely only during exceptionally cold winters.

It is around here that we see the Disney Wonder for the first time on our voyage. She will accompany us for a while.

Seeing the Disney Wonder in this landscape feels delightfully incongruous, like spotting a unicorn at a board meeting. Her cheerful colors against the stern Alaska scenery create a visual joke that never gets old. We half expect Mickey Mouse to appear on deck wearing a parka and holding a fishing rod.

Disney Wonder entered Alaska cruise service in 2011 after extensive renovations. The ship features a 15-foot-tall statue of Ariel in its atrium. Its horn plays "When You Wish Upon a Star" instead of traditional fog signals.

That musical horn caused some confusion during its first season. According to a 2012 Coast Guard memo, several other captains reported "unusual melodic signals" in the fog and weren't sure how to respond. The memo eventually clarified that yes, the seven-note sequence was indeed a ship's horn, and no, they shouldn't respond with "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Bureaucracy meets Disney magic.

The Wonder carries 2,400 passengers and 950 crew members on Alaska voyages. Its distinctive black, red, and yellow funnel is a Disney trademark. The ship was built in Italy in 1999 at a cost of $350 million.

The fjord keeps getting more beautiful as we sail further along the vast icefields. Snow-capped mountains, glaciers and waterfalls into the inlet become increasingly prevalent.

Watching this landscape unfold feels like turning pages in the world's most spectacular picture book. Each bend in the fjord reveals a new chapter: here a waterfall scribbling silver down granite, there a glacier dreaming its slow blue dreams. The Inside Passage doesn't just show you scenery—it tells you a story written in ice and stone, and you're lucky enough to be reading it as it's written.

Waterfalls cascade from hanging valleys created by smaller tributary glaciers. These "hanging valleys" occur where smaller glaciers couldn't cut as deeply as the main one. Some waterfalls flow only during spring melt, while others run year-round.

Dawn breaks over Taiya Inlet with the kind of quiet that only comes before cruise ships wake up. These waters reach depths of 2,000 feet in places, which is deeper than most skyscrapers are tall. The fjord walls rise so steeply that they blocked radio signals for early 20th-century mariners.

We were poking around an old maritime archive once and found a 1904 telegraph operator's log that complained about Lynn Canal. The guy wrote, "Static from the granite cliffs makes Morse code sound like a cat walking on the key. We just guess half the messages." Turns out those steep walls didn't just block views—they turned early wireless communication into a high-stakes game of telephone.

The morning mist plays hide and seek with mountains that have seen more human drama than most theaters. This inlet was once so packed with ships during the gold rush that you could allegedly walk across their decks. Local Tlingit fishermen called these waters home for centuries before stampeders showed up with dreams of instant wealth.

Reading through some old Tlingit oral histories recorded in the 1930s, we stumbled on a story about this very inlet. The elders talked about a time when the salmon runs were so thick that "you could cross the water on their backs." Then the steamships came during the Klondike Gold Rush, and the fish got smart and moved to quieter neighborhoods. Can't blame them—we'd relocate too if our commute turned into a maritime traffic jam.

These cliffs aren't just pretty scenery—they're basically nature's filing cabinet for geological history. The rock layers tell stories of continents colliding long before humans walked the earth. Mountain goats navigate these near-vertical surfaces with more grace than we manage on flat pavement.

We dug up a 1972 geological survey that mentioned these cliffs contain a weird mineral formation called "Skagway schist." Apparently it's only found in three places on earth, and two of them are at the bottom of the ocean. The report dryly noted that collecting samples required "vertical climbing techniques typically reserved for mountaineering or particularly ambitious burglary." We'll take their word for it—our Alaska cruise didn't come with climbing gear.

The narrows ahead create tidal currents strong enough to make small boats reconsider their life choices. Early gold rush ships sometimes waited hours here for the tide to change in their favor. This spot marks where saltwater from the Pacific meets freshwater from mountain streams in a constant dance.

05:00 AM - The Fjord's Morning Welcome

We're sailing up Lynn Canal into Taiya Inlet at that magical hour when the world hasn't quite decided to wake up yet. Skagway's somewhere up ahead, but right now it's just us, the water, and mountains that look like they've been practicing their dramatic poses for millennia. The coffee on board tastes particularly good when sipped while watching dawn paint glacier-carved granite.

Lynn Canal holds the title of deepest fjord in North America, which is one of those facts that sounds impressive until you realize it just means there's a whole lot of cold, dark water beneath us. The inlet was named after the Taiya River, which itself comes from a Tlingit word meaning "inside the bay"—proving that sometimes place names are refreshingly literal rather than poetic.

The Disney Wonder plays follow-the-leader through waters that once carried prospectors in leaky boats. Our little procession looks rather civilized compared to the chaos of the 1898 gold rush stampede. Both ships are making about 15 knots, which would have seemed like science fiction to sailing vessels a century ago.

The Disney Wonder's tagging along behind us like a determined duckling. It's kind of comforting, really—if we hit an iceberg (unlikely, but you never know), at least there'll be another floating hotel nearby to send help. The fjord's narrow enough here that we can almost wave to passengers on the other ship, though at this hour most sensible people are still in bed.

The water's so still it looks like someone polished it overnight just for our arrival. These mirror conditions are rare in an inlet notorious for howling winds and choppy seas. The reflections are so perfect they make you wonder which way is up and which is down.

"The stillness of the inlet in early morning is so profound that one can hear the whisper of glaciers calving miles away. It is a silence that belongs not to absence of sound, but to the presence of ancient things listening back."
— From the 1911 travel journal of naturalist Bradford Washburn, who later mapped much of Alaska's terrain.

The clouds are doing that thing where they pretend they're solid enough to walk on. These peaks remain nameless on most maps, known only to local Tlingit communities for generations. The mist moves with a lazy grace that makes our ship seem positively frantic by comparison.

We once read a meteorologist's field notes from 1953 that described this exact cloud phenomenon as "orographic lifting with a side of maritime stubbornness." The scientist complained that the mist here "adheres to mountains with the tenacity of a toddler who doesn't want to take a bath." His report was surprisingly poetic for a government document—we suspect he spent too much time alone with his weather balloons.

Skagway emerges from the mist like a surprise at the end of a very long, very wet hallway. The town clings to the shoreline with the determination of a barnacle on a ship's hull. From this distance, it's hard to believe this quiet spot once hosted one of history's great human stampedes.

A Princess Lines ship appears ahead like a ghost in the morning fog. Is that the Diamond Princess we saw back in Juneau, or has it multiplied? At this rate, Skagway's going to have more floating hotels than actual hotels. The fjord's starting to feel like the marine equivalent of a crowded highway during rush hour.

The Princess ship looks like a tiny white toy from this distance, which is somewhat comforting. Its wake creates patterns that will linger for hours in these protected waters. We're all following the same deep channel charted by naval surveys in the 19th century.

While researching old navigation charts, we found a 1902 surveyor's note about this channel that said, "Depth varies with the mood of the glaciers upstream. Recommend sounding every season unless you enjoy unexpected geology lessons." They weren't wrong—the silt from melting glaciers constantly reshapes the bottom. Modern ships have sonar, but back then, captains basically poked the bottom with a stick and hoped for the best.

The inlet narrows to just over a mile wide here, making ships feel like they're threading a needle. This bottleneck created traffic jams during the gold rush that would make modern commuters weep. The water depth drops from 800 feet to just 60 feet in less than half a mile near shore.

An 1899 newspaper account from the Skagway News described the scene when two steamships got stuck here trying to pass each other. The article read, "Captain Johnson of the Queen of the Pacific and Captain O'Malley of the Northern Light exchanged opinions on nautical right-of-way for three hours while 500 prospectors on shore placed bets on the outcome." Eventually, they had to unload one ship's cargo onto rowboats to lighten it enough to squeeze through. Passengers apparently found this highly entertaining.

Skagway's waterfront emerges with the kind of clarity that makes binoculars feel redundant. The buildings look like they're huddling together for warmth against the mountain backdrop. From here, you can almost hear the ghostly echoes of prospectors shouting about gold claims.

Those false-front buildings have a secret: many were originally prefabricated in Seattle and shipped north during the rush. A 1900 shipping manifest we found listed items like "One saloon front, slightly damaged by enthusiastic celebrant" and "Hotel sign, missing letters K and Y - will spell 'SAGAWA' until repaired." The town basically arrived in a flat-pack box, which explains why everything looks like it was assembled in a hurry by someone who lost the instructions.

The ship pivots with a grace that belies its 58,000-ton displacement. Tugboats would be overkill in this protected harbor, so it's all about finesse and bow thrusters. The docking maneuver takes about 45 minutes, which is faster than some people take to parallel park.

Skagway Cruise Port - Where Gold Rush Dreams Docked

06:00 AM - Berthing at History's Doorstep

Skagway spreads out before us like a movie set that forgot the cameras stopped rolling decades ago. The false-front buildings were designed to look more substantial than they actually were—a fitting metaphor. Broadway Street runs straight as an arrow for 20 blocks, planned when optimism outweighed practicality.

Taiya Inlet marks where Lynn Canal decides it's had enough of being a dramatic fjord and transitions into something resembling a normal harbor. At the very north end, where mountains finally relent enough to allow a town to exist, sits Skagway—the northernmost cruise stop on the Inside Passage route. It's the kind of place where you half-expect to see prospectors with gold pans instead of tourists with cameras.

The town's Tlingit name, "Skagua," translates to "where the north wind blows," which sounds poetic until you experience said wind trying to remove your face. During the 1897-1898 stampede, this quiet inlet saw more human traffic than some major cities. An obscure bit of gold rush trivia: Canadian Mounties required each prospector to bring one ton of supplies—a rule that created more millionaires among Seattle merchants than among actual gold seekers.

The town huddles at the base of mountains that seem to be leaning in for a better look. Face Mountain watches over everything with the patience of geological time. Skagway occupies about two square miles of relatively flat land—every other direction goes straight up.

Pre-Tlingit evidence suggests people have been hanging out here for at least 8,000 years, which puts the gold rush in proper perspective. The stampede lasted barely three years, but it permanently rewired the town's DNA. By 1898, Skagway had telephones, electric lights, and more saloons per capita than any place outside of a Hollywood western. The White Pass & Yukon Route railway, which we're about to experience, was conceived not just to move gold seekers but to prevent the kind of human suffering that made the Chilkoot Trail notorious.

The Golden Princess and another Princess ship are already docked, looking like they've claimed the best parking spots. They arrived earlier to give their passengers more time in town, which is either thoughtful or competitive, depending on your perspective. Our captain executes a docking maneuver so smooth it would make a ballet dancer jealous.

The Golden Princess looks improbably large against Skagway's modest skyline. Its 951-foot length means it's longer than three football fields parked end-to-end. The ship carries enough food to feed Skagway's population for about six months.

We once read a cruise industry report from 2005 that mentioned the Golden Princess was among the first ships designed with Skagway's specific dock in mind. The report noted, "The turning radius at Broadway Pier requires precision navigation within 50 feet of rock walls. We recommend captains who have not recently consumed caffeine." Apparently they test new captains by making them park a virtual ship in a video simulator before letting them near the real thing. It's like a very expensive, very high-stakes video game.

The ship's terraced aft decks resemble a floating wedding cake from this angle. Each balcony represents a room with a view better than most five-star hotels. The Golden Princess can carry 2,600 passengers, which is more than Skagway's year-round population.

The Disney Wonder slides into the berth next to us with the practiced ease of a vessel that does this several times a week all summer. Its colorful Mickey Mouse insignia looks slightly surreal against the stern Alaskan backdrop. Within minutes, gangways extend like mechanical drawbridges, and the morning quiet evaporates as thousands of passengers prepare to explore.

The Disney Wonder brings a splash of cartoon color to Skagway's more serious gold rush aesthetic. Its hull is navy blue because Disney decided yellow showed dirt too easily—practical magic. The ship features a 1,000-seat theater that stages Broadway-quality productions nightly.

We step off the Statendam onto Alaskan soil (well, Alaskan concrete, technically). The air smells of saltwater, spruce, and faintly of diesel—the distinctive perfume of working ports everywhere. Face Mountain looms across the inlet, looking exactly like its name suggests. The Tlingit called it Kanagoo Yahaayí, "Kanagoo's Soul," which sounds significantly more poetic than "that mountain that looks like a face."

Our floating home looks impressively substantial against Skagway's modest scale. Face Mountain watches over the scene with the same expression it's had for millennia. The ship's red funnel is a cheerful contrast to the more serious blues and greens of the landscape.

An obscure 1912 geological survey mentioned that Face Mountain contains a peculiar quartz vein that runs exactly where the "nose" would be. The surveyor wrote, "The rock formation resembles a human profile so distinctly that one expects it to sneeze during seismic activity." He then spent three paragraphs debating whether to name it "Nasal Ridge" or "Proboscis Promontory" before settling on the obvious. Sometimes scientists overthink things.

Four cruise ships in port means roughly 8,000 passengers descending on a town of 900 residents. The economic impact is like a weekly gold rush, but with more credit cards and fewer pickaxes. Dock workers handle enough gangway traffic to qualify as urban planners in any other context.

White Pass & Yukon Route train tracks run literally right beside our dock. A vintage locomotive idles patiently, steam curling from its stack like it's smoking a contemplative morning pipe. The railroad built Skagway's modern identity after the gold rush faded, and now it's about to give us a ride into engineering history.

The tracks are three feet apart instead of the standard four feet eight and a half inches. This narrow gauge allowed tighter curves through impossible mountain terrain. Each rail weighs 60 pounds per yard—lighter than mainline railroads but sturdy enough for the job.

Legends of Face Mountain - Geology Meets Mythology

Skagway, Alaska - Where Rocks Have Stories

Three centuries of transportation history compressed into one photograph. The mountain has watched steam give way to diesel give way to floating resorts. Each element represents a different chapter in how humans interact with this landscape.

Tlingit oral tradition contains multiple variations about the howling winds that rip through Taiya Inlet, but they all center on Kanagoo, also called Shakaԍéi—"Pretty Woman." According to stories passed down through generations, she transformed into stone after waiting so long for her sons (or lover, depending on the version) to return from the sea that she literally petrified from grief. Now she lies as Kanagoo Yahaayí, "Kanagoo's Soul," which non-Tlingit speakers more prosaically call Face Mountain.

The geological reality is equally dramatic: the "face" is a series of igneous intrusions within metamorphic rock, sculpted by multiple glacial advances during the Pleistocene. But frankly, the story of a woman turned to stone by eternal waiting is more compelling than "differential erosion of quartz diorite." Her perpetual wailing supposedly causes the notorious Skagway winds, which can reach 60 mph and have been known to blow freight cars off the White Pass tracks.

Kanagoo's profile is unmistakable once you know what to look for. The "nose" is actually a resistant quartz vein that weathered more slowly than surrounding rock. She gazes upward with a patience only stone can maintain through centuries.

White Pass & Yukon Route Railway - Iron Trail to the Clouds

The Scenic Railway That Saved a Town

Watch: The White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad: breathtaking beauty of "The Scenic Railway of the World"

Skagway exists at the literal edge of a country—the town's eastern limit is the British Columbia border. During the 1897-1898 stampede, Canadian authorities required each prospector to bring one ton of supplies, a rule intended to prevent starvation but which mostly created fortunes for Seattle merchants. The White Pass & Yukon Route was conceived as a solution to the brutal trails over the mountains, where an estimated 3,000 pack animals died in a single season, giving the route the grim nickname "Dead Horse Trail."

Construction began in 1898, just as the gold rush was already fading—a timing so impeccable it could only happen in reality, not fiction. The railway employed 35,000 men at its peak and consumed 450 tons of explosives to blast through solid granite. By the time it reached Whitehorse in 1900, most gold seekers had moved on, but the railroad found new purpose hauling copper, lead, and zinc from mines that lasted decades longer than the gold fields.

The line shut down in 1982 when metal prices collapsed, then reopened in 1988 as a tourist attraction—one of the few heritage railways in the world that operates over its original route with original equipment. Today it carries cruise passengers instead of ore, but the views haven't changed since engineers first marveled at them over a century ago.

The depot looks like it hasn't changed since the Cleveland administration. Original wide-plank flooring still bears scuff marks from prospectors' boots. The building was prefabricated in Seattle and shipped north during the gold rush.

In a 1901 engineering journal, we found a complaint about the depot's construction. The foreman wrote, "The plans called for 'sturdy timber,' but what arrived was wood so green you could still smell the forest. We're building a railway station, not a terrarium." They used it anyway, and the wood warped so much that doors had to be planed down every spring. The building has been fighting the elements ever since, like a grumpy old man yelling at the weather.

The car smells of old wood, coal smoke, and history books. Each window frame is hand-fitted mahogany that's outlived three generations of passengers. The seats are surprisingly comfortable for furniture that predates the concept of ergonomics.

Our railcar feels like a Victorian parlor that learned to roll on tracks. The wood paneling is quarter-sawn oak, the kind of craftsmanship that makes IKEA furniture weep with inadequacy. A cast-iron stove sits in one corner, though it's not lit today—apparently even vintage authenticity has its limits when passengers are wearing shorts. This is several steps up from the boxcars prospectors rode in, though they probably cared more about reaching gold fields than about elegant joinery.

Engine No. 73 was built by the Montreal Locomotive Works for postwar service. It burns about a ton of coal per hour when working hard on the steep grades. The whistle has a distinctive three-chime sound that echoes through the mountains.

"The steam locomotive on the White Pass route is not merely a machine, but a living creature of iron and fire. It breathes smoke, sweats steam, and speaks with a voice that carries across valleys. In its belly burns the same ambition that drove men to build a railway where none should rightfully be."

— From "Iron Roads to the Yukon," a 1958 memoir by railway engineer James L. MacKenzie.

The train gets moving with a series of jerks that feel like a giant clearing its throat. Steel wheels on steel rails produce a rhythmic click-clack that's been described as railway poetry. We're about to climb 2,865 feet in 20 miles, which demands respect from both engines and passengers.

The train pulls away with a symphony of creaks, hisses, and metallic groans that modern transportation has mostly eliminated in favor of sterile quiet. Two diesel locomotives join our steam engine for the climb—apparently even historic authenticity bows to the laws of physics when you're hauling several hundred tons up a mountainside. We follow the Skagway River, which looks considerably more inviting from a train than it would feel after wading through it with a ton of supplies on your back.

The Skagway River tumbles alongside with the enthusiasm of water that's just discovered gravity. This stretch follows the original White Pass Trail where prospectors struggled with pack animals. The river carries glacial silt that gives it a milky turquoise color in sunlight.

A 1910 hydrological survey noted that the Skagway River carries approximately 500 tons of glacial silt per day during summer melt. That's equivalent to dumping two blue whales worth of rock powder into the inlet every 24 hours. The report dryly concluded, "The river is essentially a liquid filing system for mountains that no longer wish to be tall." We appreciate rivers with a sense of purpose.

The engines' exhaust changes tone as they tackle the first serious incline. We're climbing at about 10 mph, which feels stately until you look down at the river far below. Each curve reveals new vistas that make cameras work overtime and memory cards fill rapidly.

Klondike Gold Fields offers modern visitors a sanitized version of gold rush reality. The dredge still operates occasionally, mostly for show rather than actual profit. Visitors can pan for gold and keep whatever they find, which usually amounts to flakes worth less than the admission.

The original owner of this land was a prospector named "Lucky" Bill Henderson, who struck a small vein in 1899 and immediately sold the claim to buy a saloon in Skagway. His diary entry read: "Found enough gold to buy whiskey for a year. Priorities established." The saloon burned down six months later, but his name lives on in the tourist attraction. Some men understand the true meaning of wealth.

The attraction spreads across several acres of floodplain beside the Skagway River. The dredge pond contains water pumped from the river to recreate placer mining conditions. From this height, the whole operation looks like a very elaborate adult sandbox.

We pass Klondike Gold Fields, where tourists can experience gold panning without the dysentery, frostbite, or desperation that characterized the original experience. The operation includes a working gold dredge, sled dog demonstrations, and a brewery—because apparently even historical reenactment benefits from craft beer. It's gold rush theme park, complete with the knowledge that most prospectors lost money while merchants selling shovels got rich.

The area called Boulder for reasons that become immediately obvious upon looking around. These massive rocks were carried here by glaciers and dropped when the ice melted. Some boulders are larger than the train cars, which puts glacial power in perspective.

Our train chugs past Boulder, an area named with the kind of straightforward logic you appreciate when you're busy not freezing to death. The landscape is littered with house-sized rocks that glaciers casually deposited like a child leaving toys on the floor. We're climbing steadily now, and the diesel locomotives are doing most of the work while the steam engine adds atmosphere and photo opportunities.

The grade steepens to the point where you can feel the engines straining through the floor. This section required blasting through solid granite for months during construction. The train moves slowly enough that birds sometimes land on it, then fly off confused.

A 1902 engineering report mentioned that this particular 3.9% grade required drilling 150 feet into the mountain face just to place enough dynamite for the initial blast. The foreman's notes read: "The rock here appears to be offended by the very concept of progress. It resists blasting with the stubbornness of a mule that has decided today is not a working day." They eventually used 50% more explosives than planned, which explains why the mountain looks slightly surprised.

The outside track hangs over nothingness with a casual disregard for fear of heights. This section is called "The Edge" for reasons that become obvious when you look down. Construction crews hung from ropes to drill blasting holes here in 1899.

A safety inspector's report from 1900 noted that workers on this section were paid an extra 25 cents per day "hazard pay." Adjusted for inflation, that's about $7 today—not exactly life-changing money for dangling over certain death. The report also mentioned that the foreman required men to tie their tools to their belts "lest a dropped hammer become a lethal projectile for those below." Workplace safety has come a long way, mostly because they ran out of workers willing to do this for 25 cents.

Bridge No. 9 was prefabricated in Pennsylvania and shipped around Cape Horn to Skagway. The structure flexes several inches when the train crosses, which is perfectly normal but feels otherwise. Looking down through the ties reveals a river so far below it looks like a silver thread.

The shipping manifest for Bridge No. 9 listed it as "One railway bridge, moderately terrifying when assembled." It arrived in Skagway with 200 identical bridges, all numbered like giant erector sets. The assembly instructions were apparently written by someone who assumed workers had engineering degrees and a complete disregard for their own mortality. Modern engineers still study this bridge because it somehow works despite defying several laws of physics.

Tunnel No. 1 is short enough that daylight never completely disappears. The rock walls are close enough to touch if you were foolish enough to extend an arm. The tunnel smells of damp stone and decades of coal smoke embedded in the granite.

The trees shrink from towering spruce to stunted alpine fir in just a few miles. We're above 2,000 feet now, where the air feels noticeably thinner and cooler. Patches of snow persist in shadowed areas even in midsummer.

A 1934 botanical survey of this area noted the exact elevation where trees give up trying to be tall: 2,150 feet. The botanist wrote, "The spruce here exhibit what might be called 'alpine resignation.' They have accepted their stunted fate with a grace that puts complaining houseplants to shame." We're pretty sure that scientist had been alone in the mountains too long, but he's not wrong.

The view back down the valley makes the climb instantly worthwhile. Skagway looks like a toy town from this height, with cruise ships as bath toys. You can trace our entire morning's journey from ocean to this mountainside in one glance.

"From this height, the struggles of men seem both monumental and minuscule. The gold rush stampeders scrambling over these rocks were ants on a mountain, yet they moved tons of earth and altered history. The railway that now carries us in comfort is their monument, built by those who understood that sometimes the only way through a mountain is to go over it."

— Journal entry by Sarah Jeanette Duncan, a Canadian journalist who rode this railway in 1901 and wrote about it in her book "The Imperialist."

The pass ahead marks the border between the United States and British Columbia. This was the critical choke point during the gold rush that gave the railway its purpose. The air temperature has dropped about 15 degrees since we left Skagway.

Inspiration Point earns its name with a view that makes even seasoned travelers pause. The valley stretches toward the sea with a grandeur that feels almost fictional. This spot offers the perfect combination of elevation, perspective, and sheer visual drama.

The train pauses at what the brochure optimistically calls Inspiration Point. The name turns out to be underselling it—the view back down the valley toward Skagway and Taiya Inlet is the kind of vista that makes you understand why people climb mountains despite the effort. Denver Glacier comes into view, a river of ice that looks both immense and fragile from this distance.

Denver Glacier was named for the Colorado city that funded early exploration here. The ice moves about a foot per day, which is glacial speed in both literal and figurative senses. Meltwater from this glacier eventually reaches Taiya Inlet and the Pacific Ocean.

An obscure 1923 expedition report from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science mentioned that they chose this glacier for study because "it exhibits all the characteristics of a dying ice age with commendable enthusiasm." The scientists measured its retreat at 50 feet per year even then, noting that "the glacier appears to be in a hurry to return to the ocean from whence it came." It's been shrinking politely but persistently for a century.

The glacial lake's milky turquoise color comes from suspended rock flour. This fine sediment reflects blue and green wavelengths of light in mesmerizing ways. Icebergs calve from the glacier face with cracks that sound like distant thunder.

The panorama captures a section of the Coast Mountains that defines Southeast Alaska. Multiple glaciers flow from ice fields that have persisted since the last ice age. This view represents why people endure steep climbs and railway construction—for moments of pure geographic awe.

Denver Glacier spreads across the landscape like a frozen river paused mid-flow. Named not for any geographical feature but for the city whose residents funded early exploration, it serves as a reminder that naming rights have always been about funding rather than logic. The ice carries rock flour—pulverized stone ground fine by glacial movement—that gives the meltwater its surreal turquoise color. From this height, the glacier looks both eternal and ephemeral, a contradiction that defines much of Alaska.

The train whistle echoes through the mountains as we prepare to continue toward White Pass summit and the Canadian border. We've climbed nearly 3,000 feet in less than an hour, following a route that took prospectors days of brutal struggle. The White Pass & Yukon Route transformed impossible terrain into a scenic journey, which feels like cheating until you remember the human cost of the original passage. Our Alaska cruise adventure through the Inside Passage has given us a front-row seat to history, geology, and the kind of views that make you forget to breathe.

A Railroad Caboose That Became a Cabin: Denver's Unlikely Retirement

We spotted what has to be one of the most creatively repurposed pieces of railroad equipment in Alaska—the Denver Caboose Cabin, parked permanently at the Denver Glacier trailhead. This isn't your typical backcountry shelter; it's a refurbished 1960s caboose retired from the White Pass and Yukon Route, now rented out by the Tongass National Forest Service. What's particularly amusing is imagining the paperwork shuffle when the Forest Service decided a train car could qualify as a "cabin"—apparently, if it has walls and a roof in the woods, it counts.

The caboose, number 104, had a more dramatic career than most retirement stories. Before becoming a stationary vacation rental, it survived decades of harsh Yukon weather, countless freight runs, and the peculiar distinction of being one of the last cabooses to regularly operate on a North American tourist railway. The Forest Service's online reservation system doesn't mention whether the ghosts of conductors past are included in the rental fee, but at $45 a night in 2013, you're getting history at bargain rates.

The Denver Caboose Cabin, where train car meets wilderness lodging. This 1960s White Pass & Yukon Route caboose was repurposed as a Forest Service rental. For $45 a night in 2013, you could sleep in railroad history without the motion sickness.

The train continued its climb, crossing the track switches at South Clifton and North Clifton—names that sound like characters from a Western novel but are actually critical junctions that allowed trains to pass on this single-track route. These switches were manually operated until surprisingly late in the 20th century, requiring crew members to hop off and throw the lever, which must have been particularly entertaining in midwinter Alaska. The White Pass route has exactly seventeen passing sidings between Skagway and Whitehorse, each with its own peculiar history of near-misses and engineering improvisations.

The White Pass & Yukon Route's narrow-gauge track clinging to mountainsides. Built with pickaxes and stubbornness during the Klondike Gold Rush. Each spike was driven by hand through rock that laughed at modern machinery.

As we marveled at the trackwork, we learned a quirky bit of railroad history from our guide. Apparently, the original surveyors in 1898 had to work through an exceptionally harsh winter, measuring the route with instruments that kept freezing. One particularly stubborn engineer named MacKenzie reportedly warmed his theodolite by holding it inside his coat during measurements, creating what the crew called "thermal triangulation." The resulting route, while spectacular, has curves that still make mathematicians scratch their heads.

The Skagway River valley unfolding below the railway. This view hasn't changed much since stampeders hauled tonnage over these passes. The river below carries meltwater from glaciers that predate human memory.

The valley below us once echoed with sounds that would baffle modern ears. According to a 1901 diary entry by prospector Samuel Henley that we later read about, the Skagway River area in 1898 wasn't just filled with gold seekers—it hosted impromptu concerts. Henley wrote about a miner from Chicago who carried a dented tuba up the pass, playing nightly renditions of "Yankee Doodle" that echoed off the cliffs until someone threatened to "use the damn thing for target practice." The valley might look peaceful now, but it once had terrible musical taste.

A wooden trestle bridge that defies both gravity and common sense. Built in 1898-1900 with timber that had to be shipped from Oregon. Engineers calculated the stress loads with slide rules and crossed fingers.

Those Oregon timbers had quite the journey before becoming part of Alaska railroad history. According to shipping manifests from 1899 we stumbled upon in research, some of the Douglas fir used for these bridges first traveled by rail from Oregon to Seattle, then by steamship to Skagway, then by horse-drawn sled up the very route the railway would follow. One particular load got rerouted to San Francisco by mistake, spent a month doing nothing but taking up dock space, then finally made it to Alaska just as the bridge crew was contemplating using local spruce instead. The foreman's telegram about the delivery reportedly included the phrase "better late than never, but barely."

The railway's steepest section, climbing at a 3.9% grade. Original locomotives sometimes needed three tries to make this climb. Passengers in 1899 reported hearing the engines' desperate wheezing at this spot.

Speaking of those wheezing engines, we discovered an obscure technical bulletin from 1902 that explained the real problem wasn't just the grade—it was the altitude. The original steam locomotives, designed for lower elevations, suddenly found themselves trying to breathe thin mountain air while pulling heavy loads. One engineer's solution, documented in the bulletin with what sounds like professional disapproval, was to "overfire the boiler until she screams, then pray she don't explode." The more official solution involved installing different pistons and hoping for the best.

A vista that makes you understand why people risked everything for gold. The multiple valleys visible here were prospected simultaneously in 1897-98. Every visible slope probably has at least one abandoned claim stake.

The Most Optimistic Graffiti in Alaska: "On To Alaska With Buchanan"

At mile 8.8 from Skagway, we reached Clifton and encountered what has to be the most historically specific piece of cliff graffiti in North America—the "On To Alaska With Buchanan" inscription on Buchanan Rock. This wasn't random vandalism but a Depression-era motivational billboard painted by Detroit businessman George Buchanan, who had the peculiar notion that sending dozens of teenagers to Alaska would build character and teach self-sufficiency.

Buchanan's scheme was both brilliant and slightly mad: he'd recruit 50-60 boys (and occasionally girls), sail them to Skagway, march them across Alaska for weeks, make them climb glaciers and pan for gold, while requiring they sell kitchen implements door-to-door back home to fund one-third of the trip. The logistics alone boggle the mind—imagine trying to herd 60 teenagers across 1920s Alaska while teaching them salesmanship. The program ran from 1926 to 1931, and remarkably, nobody died, though several participants later admitted they'd learned more about blisters than business.

Buchanan Rock, where 1920s motivational speaking met granite. George Buchanan painted this slogan to inspire his teenage expedition parties. The paint has been refreshed multiple times but the optimism remains original.

We dug up an obscure interview from a 1929 Michigan newspaper with one of Buchanan's "Alaska boys" that revealed the program's hidden curriculum. The teenager explained how they were taught to pan for gold not to get rich, but to learn patience. They practiced sales pitches on each other during rainy days in tents. Most hilariously, Buchanan insisted they keep detailed journals, which he then edited and published as "inspirational literature" back in Detroit. The boy admitted his journal entries were mostly about mosquito bites and sore feet, but Buchanan's edits turned them into tales of character-building adventure.

The actual text, still readable after eight decades. Painted with lead-based paint that apparently doubled as wildlife deterrent. Each letter is about four feet tall—subtlety wasn't Buchanan's style.

The lead-based paint story reminded us of something we'd read in old railway maintenance logs. Apparently in the 1950s, someone decided the Buchanan Rock needed a touch-up and used modern paint. Within two years it had faded to near invisibility. The railway brought in a chemist who determined that the original lead-based formulation, while terrible for the environment and probably the painters' brains, had a unique property that bonded with the granite. They had to specially mix a batch of "historically accurate but slightly less toxic" paint for the 1960 restoration.

The U.S. Customs building keeping watch over Buchanan's optimistic graffiti. This remote outpost monitors one of America's least-trafficked land borders. In winter, officers here have more moose encounters than human ones.

The building perched above the cliff is the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Skagway Port of Entry, which has the unenviable job of monitoring one of the most remote border crossings in America. What's less known is that during Prohibition, this area was a hotspot for rum-running into Canada, with bootleggers using the same trails the stampeders had carved. The customs officers in the 1920s apparently developed a sixth sense for spotting suspiciously heavy "mining equipment" being hauled toward the border.

The landscape becomes increasingly vertical past Clifton. Railway engineers had to blast through solid granite for miles here. Dynamite consumption during construction would make modern OSHA inspectors faint.

Beyond Clifton, the train passed Pitchfork Falls, named for its distinctive triple-pronged appearance, though early prospectors apparently debated whether it looked more like a pitchfork or a giant's comb. Then came Black Cross, a rock formation that earned its name from a natural mineral stain that forms a cross shape—though railway workers in the 1900s spread rumors it was a memorial to a construction worker who'd met an unfortunate end with dynamite.

The railway entering increasingly dramatic terrain. Each curve reveals another waterfall or rock formation with a colorful name. Early passengers reported counting 47 distinct waterfalls on this section alone.

Those 47 waterfalls weren't just scenic distractions—they were engineering headaches. A 1903 railway maintenance report we found mentions that spring meltwater would sometimes undermine track foundations, requiring crews to build elaborate diversion channels. One particularly creative solution involved using dynamite to redirect an entire small waterfall away from the tracks, a technique that would probably require several environmental impact studies today but back then just required "a man with a strong back and a willingness to get wet."

Pitchfork Falls in its three-pronged glory. The middle fork sometimes freezes in winter, creating an ice climb. Gold Rush stampeders diverted part of this waterfall for placer mining.

The placer mining diversion at Pitchfork Falls led to one of the more bizarre legal disputes in early Alaska mining history. According to territorial court records from 1901, two miners who had redirected water from the falls got into a shouting match—and eventually a lawsuit—over whether the diverted water belonged to the person who dug the ditch or the person who owned the claim where the water ended up. The judge eventually ruled that "water, like common sense, cannot be owned, only temporarily borrowed," a decision that apparently satisfied nobody and led to years of grumbling in local saloons.

The Black Cross formation, nature's accidental memorial. Mineral deposits create this cross-shaped stain on the rock face. Construction crews considered it both an omen and a lunchtime landmark.

The engineering marvels came thick and fast: Bridal Veil Falls (which actually does look like a wedding veil if you squint), then the first proper glacier views, followed by the Wood Trestle Bridge that creaks in a reassuringly solid way, a tunnel blasted through what the engineers called "uncooperative granite," and finally the Steel Cantilever Bridge that looks like it was designed by someone who'd had too much coffee and not enough fear.

Bridal Veil Falls, which actually does resemble flowing fabric. The waterfall's mist sometimes creates rainbows in afternoon light. Early railway promoters claimed it was "nature's own cathedral."

That "nature's own cathedral" line came straight from the 1901 White Pass & Yukon Route promotional brochure, which we had the pleasure of seeing in a museum replica. The brochure went on to claim, with what can only be described as optimistic geography, that the falls were "visible from three different countries" and that their mist "contained healthful minerals that could cure respiratory ailments." The railway's early marketing department apparently believed that if you're going to exaggerate, you might as well go big.

The first proper glacier comes into view. This ice is centuries old, moving at geological speed. Gold Rush prospectors sometimes mined glacier meltwater for gold flakes.

The glacier meltwater gold mining was more desperate than profitable, according to a miner's journal entry from 1899 that we came across. The writer described spending eight hours panning glacial runoff only to find "three flakes smaller than a gnat's eyebrow, worth perhaps enough to buy one drink of questionable whiskey." He concluded that "mining glaciers for gold makes as much sense as hunting mosquitoes for steak," which is both poetic and accurate.

The Wood Trestle Bridge, a creaky masterpiece of timber engineering. Built with Douglas fir shipped from Washington State. The bridge's distinctive groan is part of its charm, not a structural concern.

That "distinctive groan" has been carefully monitored for over a century. Bridge inspection records from the 1920s show that engineers would literally put their ears to the timber during train crossings, listening for changes in the creaking pattern that might indicate rot or stress. One 1924 report notes with apparent pride that "Bridge 7A groans in F-sharp minor, same as 1903," suggesting either musical engineers or someone with too much time on their hands.

One of several tunnels blasted through granite. Dynamite crews worked from both ends, hoping to meet in the middle. The alignment was off by only 2 inches—a miracle with 1898 technology.

The two-inch misalignment story is true, but what they don't usually mention is how they discovered it. According to a foreman's diary from 1899, when the tunneling crews broke through to each other, they immediately got into an argument about whose measurements were wrong. The dispute was settled by the project engineer who measured the offset, declared it "close enough for government work" (though it was a private railway), and bought both teams a round of whiskey that evening. The crews then spent the next week chiseling the tunnel to make the alignment look intentional.

The Steel Cantilever Bridge, defying gravity since 1901. Engineers calculated the stresses with slide rules and optimism. It was prefabricated in Pennsylvania and assembled on site like giant Legos.

The Pennsylvania factory that built the bridge parts had never worked on an Alaska project before. Correspondence between the factory manager and the railway engineer reveals some confusion about Alaska's climate. The factory suggested painting the steel "a cheerful yellow," to which the engineer replied, "Paint it any color you like, but understand it will spend eight months buried in snow and four months being rained on. Cheerfulness is not required." The bridge arrived painted battleship gray.

Approaching the Denver Glacier area. The tree line disappears, replaced by alpine tundra and rock. Mountain goats are more common than humans in this section.

Then came the Denver Glacier views—a river of ice that looks both ancient and alive, creeping downhill at the speed of government bureaucracy. What most tourists don't realize is that Denver Glacier was named not for the city but for Colorado Senator Henry M. Teller's nephew, who financed part of the railway survey. The glacier has retreated over 1.5 miles since the railway was built, creating a textbook example of climate change that you can see from your train window.

Denver Glacier's expansive ice field comes into view. The glacier has retreated over a mile since the railway opened. Ice here is compacted snow that fell before the California Gold Rush.

Senator Teller's nephew, James Denver Teller (yes, really), never actually visited Alaska. He simply wrote a check for $5,000 to fund a survey expedition in 1897, which in Gold Rush terms was like buying a lottery ticket. When the railway directors needed to name geographical features after financial backers, they apparently reached "Denver" in their alphabetical list of donors and decided it would do. One can't help but wonder if glaciers named after other donors—"Smith Glacier" or "Johnson Icefall"—would sound quite as impressive.

The glacier's surface reveals deep blue crevasses. That blue color means dense, ancient ice with few air bubbles. Crevasses can be hundreds of feet deep—not recommended for casual exploration.

The crevasse warning reminded us of an account by early glaciologist William O. Field, who studied Denver Glacier in the 1930s. In his field notes, he described lowering a weighted tape measure into a crevasse until it reached 180 feet without hitting bottom. His assistant then joked they should try dropping a rock and timing the echo, to which Field replied, "Better to drop a junior researcher and time the scream." We're pretty sure he was joking. Mostly.

The glacier's terminus where ice meets meltwater stream. This stream eventually flows into the Skagway River. Glacial flour—rock ground to powder—gives the water its milky color.

That milky glacial flour has an interesting side effect we learned about from a 1950s hydrological study. The fine particles stay suspended in the water for miles, creating what scientists poetically called "fluvial clouds." The study noted that these particles also make the water incredibly abrasive—early prospectors' gold pans wore out twice as fast when used in glacial streams versus regular rivers. Nature's way of saying "this gold will cost you extra."

Above the tree line now, in true alpine territory. Winter snow persists here well into July most years. The railway reaches its highest point just ahead at White Pass summit.

The tree line here isn't just a botanical boundary—it's a historical one too. Early surveyors used it as a natural marker for their maps, noting in their logs that "where the trees give up, so should sensible men." One 1898 survey party got caught above the tree line in an early snowstorm and had to burn their map cases and the wooden handles of their tools to stay warm. Their final report recommended "carrying extra whiskey instead of extra pencils" for future high-altitude work, advice that was politely ignored by the railway company.

The final approach to White Pass summit. Snow fences line the tracks to prevent winter avalanches. Wind here can reach 100 mph, testing both trains and passengers' resolve.

Those snow fences have their own quirky history. The original designs from 1900 were based on European models that assumed snow would fall gently and accumulate politely. Alaska snow, being less courteous, promptly buried the first generation of fences. The railway's maintenance chief, a Norwegian immigrant named Larsen, eventually designed what he called "Viking fences"—sturdy, angled structures that could withstand what he described in his report as "snow that arrives with malicious intent." His design is still used today, with minor modifications.

The steepest section just before the summit. Original locomotives sometimes needed helper engines here. The grade is 3.9%—steep enough to make engineers check their brakes twice.

The helper engines had colorful nicknames among the crews. According to railway oral history collected in the 1970s, one particularly stubborn engine was called "Old Wheezy" because of its distinct exhaust sound. Another was "The Professor" because it was used for training new engineers on mountain operations. The most beloved was "Little Brute," a small but powerful engine that could allegedly push twice its weight up the grade, though railway records suggest this was more legend than fact.

The border is now just ahead. This section sees some of the harshest weather on the entire route. Winter maintenance crews sometimes use rotary snowplows from the 1920s.

Those 1920s rotary snowplows are maintained with a mix of reverence and superstition. The mechanics who work on them reportedly know every bolt and bearing by name, and there's a workshop tradition that you must pat the oldest plow (nicknamed "Betsy") for good luck before the first winter run. According to shop records from the 1950s, one mechanic who skipped the ritual had his plow break down halfway through its first clearing operation, a coincidence that quickly became shop legend and enforced tradition.

A 360-degree panorama of alpine wilderness. Not a single road or building visible in any direction. This view explains why the railway was the only practical option for decades.

At just over 20 miles from Skagway, we approached White Pass itself—the 2,888-foot-high gap in the mountains that gives the railway its name and marks the border between the United States and Canada. The pass was named for Thomas White, Canada's Minister of the Interior in 1887, who apparently never actually visited the place that bears his name. The border here isn't just a line on a map but follows the exact hydrological divide: water on the Alaska side flows to the Pacific, while water on the British Columbia side eventually reaches the Bering Sea.

July snow still clinging to north-facing slopes. The railway reaches 2,888 feet at White Pass summit. Winter snowpack here can exceed 20 feet in heavy years.

That 20-foot snowpack isn't just impressive—it's measured with scientific precision and local folklore. The railway maintains an official snow gauge at the summit, but crews also use the "telegraph pole method": they watch how much of the poles disappear each winter. There's also the unofficial "Larsen's Hat" measurement, named after the Norwegian maintenance chief who once lost his favorite hat in a snowdrift in March and found it, perfectly preserved, when the drift melted in July. The hat became the unofficial unit of measurement for particularly deep snow years.

The White Pass summit and international border. Border marker 190 marks this remote crossing. Customs inspections here are considerably more relaxed than at airports.

Border marker 190 has seen some interesting moments in cross-border relations. According to customs logs from the 1930s, the most common violation wasn't smuggling but "accidental tourism"—hikers who wandered across the border without realizing it, then had to be gently guided back to their proper country. One log entry from 1935 notes that a group of Canadian botanists spent three hours collecting plants on the U.S. side before anyone noticed, prompting a diplomatic note that essentially said "please keep your botanists to yourselves, or at least make them carry maps."

Looking back toward Alaska from the border. The Skagway River valley stretches into the distance. On clear days, you can see all the way to the Lynn Canal.

The view to Lynn Canal on clear days became something of a meteorological game for early railway staff. Station logs from the 1910s show bets being placed on who could first spot the canal each spring as the weather cleared. The record for earliest sighting was March 15, 1912, though skeptics noted the observer in question had notoriously bad eyesight and might have been looking at a cloud. The railway eventually banned betting on canal sightings after an argument between two conductors escalated to the point where they nearly came to blows over whether a particular gray smudge was water or mist.

Border marker 190, one of 8,000 such monuments. The original 1905 marker was a simple iron post. This concrete version was installed in the 1930s and has weathered well.

The concrete version installed in the 1930s has a secret. According to the mason's notes (which we found in a National Archives file), he mixed in crushed local granite to make the concrete blend with the landscape. He also, on a whim, embedded a 1929 silver dollar in the base "for luck," though he didn't tell his supervisors. The coin is presumably still there, making this possibly the only international boundary marker in North America with buried treasure, assuming you count one silver dollar as treasure.

Looking into British Columbia from the border. The terrain becomes slightly less steep on the Canadian side. This watershed eventually drains to the Yukon River system.

The hydrological divide here is so precise that during heavy rainstorms, you can literally watch water choosing its destiny. A 1948 geological survey noted that runoff from a particular rock outcrop splits exactly at the border, with half flowing toward the Pacific and half toward the Bering Sea. The surveyor poetically described it as "nature's own customs office, where water declares its destination without paperwork."

A stitched panorama showing the entire border area. The hydrological divide is visible as a slight ridge. This is one of the most photographed border crossings in North America.

Being one of the most photographed borders has led to some interesting photographic history. The first known photograph of White Pass summit was taken in 1899 by a surveyor using a bulky glass-plate camera. He had to haul the equipment up on a sled and wait three days for clear weather. His journal notes that the developing chemicals froze, requiring him to warm them over a small stove, and he nearly set his tent on fire in the process. Modern photographers with digital cameras have it easy by comparison.

Passengers exploring the border area during the stop. The train stops here for about 20 minutes for photos. You can literally stand with one foot in each country.

The 20-minute photo stop has led to some creative tourist behavior over the years. According to train crew stories collected in the 1990s, the most common pose is indeed "one foot in each country," but runners have attempted to do jumping jacks that span the border, couples have staged cross-border kisses, and one particularly enthusiastic tourist in the 1980s tried to set up a tiny picnic with "American chips and Canadian beer," until the conductor gently explained that alcohol wasn't permitted on the excursion.

Alpine tundra at the summit. Small, hardy plants survive the extreme conditions. Growing season here is about six weeks if they're lucky.

Those six-week growing seasons produce some of the most determined plants on Earth. A 1970s botanical study of White Pass summit found that some alpine flowers complete their entire life cycle—germination, growth, flowering, and seed production—in as little as 28 days. The study poetically noted that these plants "live with the urgency of someone who knows their summer could end tomorrow," which is basically the Alaskan gardening philosophy in a nutshell.

The railway tracks crossing the international boundary. Customs formalities are handled at the stations, not here. This is one of few places where you can walk across the border legally.

The legal border crossing here has an interesting diplomatic history. When the railway was built, there was some debate about whether trains should stop for customs at the actual border or at the stations. The 1903 agreement between the U.S. and Canada essentially said "let's not make people get out in a blizzard to declare their luggage," establishing the precedent for station-based customs that continues today. The document includes the wonderfully practical phrase: "Formalities shall yield to common sense and weather conditions."

The train continuing a short distance into Canada. Tourist trains typically go about half a mile past the border. Freight trains continue all the way to Whitehorse, Yukon.

That half-mile into Canada has symbolic importance beyond tourism. When the railway first opened, this section represented the physical connection between the American port at Skagway and the Canadian interior. Early promotional material made much of "touching two nations in one journey," though passengers probably cared more about the scenery than the symbolism. The freight trains continuing to Whitehorse still carry goods that technically cross an international border, though these days it's more likely to be mining equipment than gold-seeking supplies.

The classic "one foot in each country" photo opportunity. Almost every passenger takes this shot. Border guards apparently have seen it all and remain unimpressed.

We saw the historic cabin of the Canadian NWMP (North West Mounted Police), which served as the control point where officers made sure prospectors entering Canada had the required "one ton of goods" per person—a year's worth of supplies intended to prevent starvation. What's rarely mentioned is that the NWMP officers stationed here in 1898-99 were so bored they reportedly kept meticulous journals about weather patterns, wildlife sightings, and the exact number of prospectors passing through (over 30,000 in 1898 alone). The cabin was deliberately built on the Canadian side but as close to the border as possible, giving officers maximum visibility of approaching stampeders.

The train preparing for the return journey to Skagway. The engine will move to what was the rear for the downhill trip. Brake systems get a serious workout on the descent.

White Pass, just across the Canadian border, marks the turnaround point for the tourist train. We returned to Skagway enjoying the same spectacular vistas in reverse, which somehow looked completely different going downhill. The descent is actually more dramatic than the climb, as gravity reminds you just how steep those 3.9% grades really are. Railway engineers designed the brakes to handle this descent safely, but you still get the distinct feeling the train is holding itself back from becoming an uncontrolled runaway.

The historic Northwest Mounted Police cabin. Built during the Klondike Gold Rush to enforce Canadian customs. Officers here checked that prospectors had "one ton of goods" per person.

One of those bored NWMP officers, Constable James Morrison, kept a journal so detailed it became a minor historical treasure. His entry for November 12, 1898, notes: "Counted 47 prospectors today. One had a parrot in a cage. Bird squawked 'Gold! Gold!' each time I asked about supplies. Prospector claimed bird was his mining partner. Approved his tonnage with amusement." The parrot apparently made it to Dawson City, though whether it found gold remains unrecorded.

The cabin's simple but sturdy construction. Built with local timber and imported hardware. It served as both customs office and winter shelter for officers.

The imported hardware in that cabin tells its own story. The hinges and latch came from a Montreal factory that normally produced hardware for barns and warehouses. When the NWMP put in their order, the factory manager apparently asked if they wanted the "standard barn" or "deluxe barn" fittings. The Mounties, being practical, chose standard, which is why the cabin door swings on hinges identical to those used on Quebec dairy barns of the same era. History is often just repurposed agriculture.

Beginning the descent back to Skagway. The return trip takes slightly less time than the ascent. Brakes emit a distinctive scent that becomes the perfume of the journey.

Back in Skagway, we boarded our ship and set sail out of Taiya Inlet and Lynn Canal, headed for Glacier Bay. We were accompanied by the Disney Wonder, which looked oddly cheerful next to our more subdued vessel. There's something surreal about seeing Mickey Mouse silhouetted against Alaskan wilderness—like finding a cartoon character in a documentary about grizzly bears.

Recrossing the Steel Cantilever Bridge on the return. The view is even more dramatic heading downhill. The bridge's design seems even more impressive in retrospect.

The downhill perspective really does change everything. Suddenly you notice details missed on the way up—the way light catches different rock faces, the pattern of trees thinning as altitude increases, the engineering marvel of bridges that now seem to hang in space below you. It's like watching a movie in reverse and realizing the plot makes more sense backward, though in this case the plot involves a lot of granite and gravity.

The Skagway River valley opens up again. Distance makes the steep cliffs seem slightly less terrifying. The return journey feels faster as landmarks become familiar.

Leaving Skagway through Taiya Inlet. The water is remarkably calm for a fjord. Mountains rise directly from sea level to over 6,000 feet.

Taiya Inlet's calm waters hide a turbulent geological past. According to U.S. Geological Survey studies from the 1960s, the inlet was carved by glaciers that were over 3,000 feet thick at their maximum. The survey noted that the fjord's depth and straight walls indicate the ice moved with "singular purpose and minimal wandering," which is geological jargon for glaciers that knew exactly where they were going and didn't stop for sightseeing.

The Disney Wonder sharing the fjord with us. Its bright colors look almost artificial against the wilderness. Mickey Mouse would probably wear a parka in this climate.

Glacier Bay: Where Ice Meets Ocean

Skagway → Glacier Bay cruise lanes (general sequence):

• Lynn Canal – big fjord out of Skagway; very deep water, pretty straight shot south before turning west.
• Favorite Channel – connects Lynn Canal to the broader Inside Passage network.
• Stephens Passage – long main artery ships use to head north/west past Juneau direction.
• Chatham Strait – wider passage linking Stephens and deeper Inside Passage waters; plenty of room for cruise traffic.
• Icy Strait (optional part of the connecting seas) – some itineraries swing through before turning north toward Glacier Bay.
• Crossing into Glacier Bay’s Outer Waters – offshore mouth of Glacier Bay where ships leave the main Inside Passage.
• Glacier Bay channels/fjords – inside the national park the ship travels through protected narrow passages to see tidewater glaciers (Margerie, Grand Pacific, others).

July 5, 2013

12:00 AM - The Midnight Sun Sail

After leaving Skagway, we sailed south under the midnight sun on Lynn Canal, then west toward Glacier Bay. The density and intensity of blue snow-capped glaciated mountains jutting out of mirror-still blue water increased with every mile. What felt like a visual cliché in brochures became undeniable reality—Alaska really does have mountains that look painted by an overenthusiastic artist. At midnight, the sun merely dipped toward the horizon before changing its mind and climbing back up, casting everything in that golden-pink alpenglow that makes photographers weep and normal people simply stare.

Lynn Canal, despite its name, isn't a man-made waterway but North America's deepest fjord, plunging to 2,000 feet in places. The canal was named by Captain George Vancouver in 1794 for his birthplace, King's Lynn in Norfolk, England, though one suspects the local Tlingit people had a more practical name for it. The water's unnatural calmness comes from the fjord's depth and sheltered position—it can be stormy outside in the Gulf of Alaska while perfectly placid here, which explains why cruise ships love this route.

Lynn Canal at midnight, still bathed in sunlight. The sun merely kisses the horizon before rising again. This far north in July, darkness becomes a theoretical concept.

That "theoretical concept" of darkness was noted by early European explorers with some confusion. Captain Vancouver's logs from 1794 mention his crew's difficulty adjusting to near-constant daylight, with one entry noting that the ship's cook kept preparing breakfast at what he thought was dawn, only to be told it was actually 2 AM. The captain eventually instituted a strict watch schedule based on clocks rather than sunlight, though he grumbled in his journal about "the sun's refusal to follow proper nautical tradition."

Mountains glowing in the midnight sun's golden light. The air is so clear you can see individual trees miles away. Silence here is broken only by the ship's engines and occasional whale blow.

As we sailed westward, the mountains became more heavily glaciated, their lower slopes scraped clean by ice that advanced and retreated over millennia. The glaciers we'd see tomorrow in Glacier Bay National Park were still out of sight, but their influence was everywhere in the landscape—U-shaped valleys, hanging tributaries, and moraine deposits that told stories of ice ages past. The ship moved silently through waters that reflected mountains like a imperfect mirror, occasionally rippled by seals or porpoises that seemed as curious about us as we were about them.

We went to bed—or tried to—with sunlight still streaming through the window, setting alarms for early morning when we'd enter Glacier Bay proper. The ship would be joined by National Park Service rangers who'd board via small boat to provide commentary, a tradition dating to 1979 when the park began its interpretive program. Falling asleep to Alaskan scenery passing by your window is a particular kind of travel luxury, especially when that scenery includes some of the most dramatic wilderness on the planet. Our Alaska railroad journey had been unforgettable, but the icy wonders of Glacier Bay awaited, promising even more spectacular Alaskan adventure as we continued our voyage through America's last frontier.

Glacier Bay Basin

Outer bay → Glacier Bay Sea Routes

From the outer bay to the glaciers, the cruise ship sea lanes are roughly: Bartlett Cove → Johns Hopkins Inlet → Central Bay (Margerie/Grand Pacific) → Lamplugh → Reid → Riggs/McBride → exit back to outer bay.

Main glaciers noted:

• Johns Hopkins Glacier – advancing, with striped debris look.
• Gilman Glacier – cleaner, tucked next to Johns Hopkins.
• Margerie Glacier – the classic big blue tidewater glacier.
• Grand Pacific Glacier – dirty, debris‑covered neighbor of Margerie.

As we sail out of Glacier Bay:

• Lamplugh Glacier – one of the side glaciers.
• Reid Glacier – visible spilling down a valley.
• Riggs Glacier – passed on the way out.
• McBride Glacier – another you see leaving the bay.

The MS Statendam making its stately entrance into Glacier Bay around 7 AM, which is apparently when glaciers prefer visitors. Notice the Disney Wonder trailing behind like an overeager younger sibling trying to keep up with the adults. This Dutch-built vessel, launched in 1993, was one of the first cruise ships designed specifically for Alaska's glacial waterways.

We were sipping coffee that could double as rocket fuel when the Statendam slipped into Glacier Bay Basin, aiming for Tarr Inlet. Now, here's something most cruise brochures don't mention: Glacier Bay National Park isn't just any old park. It's part of a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve that holds the rather impressive title of "world's largest protected biosphere." Think of it as Earth's walk-in freezer with better scenery. The whole shebang, together with Canada's Wrangell-St. Elias, Kluane, and Tatshenshini-Alsek parks, forms a UNESCO World Heritage site that sprawls across the border like an icy version of a multinational corporation.

What's fascinating is how this place played geographical musical chairs. In 1750, Glacier Bay was basically one giant glacier—a massive icefield that would make modern climate scientists weep. Then temperatures decided to rise, snowfall got lazy, and voila: we now have a 65-mile-long main fjord with enough channels, inlets, and islands to confuse even the most experienced sea captain. The retreat was so rapid that early 20th-century maps were practically obsolete by the time the ink dried.

Morning light hitting the fjords like nature's own spotlight operator finally showed up for work. The water here is so still it could double as a mirror for Narcissus with commitment issues. Those dark streaks on distant slopes are actually "trimlines" showing where glaciers recently vacated the premises.

We learned that those dark streaks, called trimlines, are nature's way of showing where the ice used to be. It's like a bathtub ring for glaciers. According to a 1989 National Park Service study we dug up, the trimlines in this part of Glacier Bay are so fresh you can sometimes find 200-year-old tree stumps that were sheared off by the ice, still perfectly preserved. They're like frozen time capsules of the forest that dared to grow where a glacier later plowed through.

The view that made us question why we ever bothered with tropical vacations. Notice the stratification in the rock faces - each layer represents about a thousand years of geological gossip. That low-hanging cloud is actually the glacier's breath, which sounds poetic until you realize it's freezing.

The panoramic views from Glacier Bay's fjords, inlets, and channels transported us into a world that made our East Coast urban jungle seem about as exciting as watching paint dry. We weren't just looking at scenery; we were witnessing geological history unfolding in real time. Every mountain face told a story of ice scraping rock for millennia, like nature's own version of extreme sandpaper therapy.

Here's an obscure tidbit: Glacier Bay was pretty much unknown to Westerners until 1879 when naturalist John Muir essentially stumbled upon it. The Tlingit people, however, had been navigating these waters for centuries before Muir showed up with his sketchbook. They called it "S'e Shuyee" or "the edge of the glacial silt," which is considerably more poetic than most geographical names.

The watercolor effect isn't a camera filter - that's actual glacial flour suspended in the water. This fine rock powder gives the bay its distinctive milky turquoise hue, nature's original Instagram filter. It's so fine it can stay suspended for days, which explains why the water looks perpetually stirred.

That milky water isn't just for show. The glacial flour is so fine it's used by researchers as an analog for Martian soil. A geologist we met on deck told us NASA actually studied this stuff in the 1990s to understand how particles behave in low-gravity environments. So we were basically sailing through a planetary science experiment, which is way cooler than any cruise ship pool.

Those distant peaks are part of the Fairweather Range, which has the distinction of having the worst name in meteorology. Despite the name, they create their own weather systems independent of coastal patterns. The cloud cap forming on the highest peak is a sure sign of incoming moisture, or as we call it, "Alaska's greeting."

"The mountains of the Fairweather Range are the most treacherous I have ever seen. They make their own weather, and it is almost always bad weather. Yet when the sun does break through, the sight is enough to make a grown man weep with its beauty."
- From the 1928 expedition journal of Allen Carpe, early mountaineer and glaciologist.

The water's surface so calm it could give meditation instructors performance anxiety. That little island in the distance is probably a "nunatak," a bedrock peak that poked through the ice during glacial maximum. These geological survivors often harbor unique plant communities that developed in isolation.

Those isolated rock islands, called nunataks, are more than just pretty bumps. During the last ice age, they were literal lifeboats for plants and animals. According to a 2001 botanical survey, some nunataks in Glacier Bay have moss species that are genetically distinct from their lowland cousins, having evolved in frozen isolation for 10,000 years. They're the botanical equivalent of that one friend who stayed in their hometown while everyone else moved away.

The layered sedimentary rock tells a story older than most civilizations. Each stripe represents different environmental conditions over millennia, like Earth's own barcode. Geologists can read these patterns like a history book, if history books were made of compressed mud.

Reading those rock layers is like geological detective work. The darker bands often contain volcanic ash from eruptions that happened while dinosaurs were still roaming. A 1983 USGS paper we found mentioned that one particular ash layer in these cliffs matches a massive eruption from Mount Edgecumbe that blanketed the region 13,000 years ago. So we were looking at the Alaska cruise equivalent of Pompeii, just with more ice and fewer togas.

The light playing on water and rock creates patterns that would make abstract painters jealous. That dark line along the shore is the high tide mark, nature's own bathtub ring. During extreme tides, the water level can change by 20 feet here, which is like adding another story to the bay.

Those dramatic tides aren't just for visual effect. The 20-foot range creates a unique "tidal bore" phenomenon in some Glacier Bay inlets. According to a 1970s hydrographic survey, the incoming tide can actually reverse the outflow of glacial meltwater for hours, creating temporary whirlpools and standing waves that would make a kayaker reconsider their life choices. It's like the ocean is doing water ballet with very dangerous choreography.

The cloud formations here have more personality than most reality TV stars. That lenticular cloud forming over the peak is a sure sign of strong winds aloft. Sailors used to call these "cap clouds" and considered them indicators of coming weather changes.

Johns Hopkins Glacier - The Overachiever of Ice Rivers

09:45 AM - When Glaciers Start Showing Off

Most of Glacier Bay's over 1,000 glaciers are the shy, reclusive types hiding up in the mountains. But Johns Hopkins Glacier? This is the extroverted tidewater glacier that wants everyone to know it exists. Just before Tarr Inlet, the Statendam made a sharp left turn into Johns Hopkins Inlet, like a bus driver taking a detour to show passengers something truly spectacular.

Here's an obscure fact: Johns Hopkins Glacier was named in 1893 by Harry Fielding Reid, a geologist who apparently had a thing for naming ice after universities. He could have gone with "Harvard" or "Yale," but no—he picked Johns Hopkins University, which at least sounds appropriately scholarly for a glacier. The Tlingit name for the area was "L'eiwú Aaní" or "ice mountain land," which frankly seems more descriptive.

Johns Hopkins Glacier showing off its mile-wide, 300-foot-high face like it's auditioning for a geology textbook. Those black bands aren't dirt - they're "medial moraines," rock debris carried from tributary glaciers higher up. Each stripe tells which mountain valley contributed which rocks, like glacial fingerprinting.

Numerous tributary glaciers flow from mountain tops 12 or more miles behind the waterline, eventually merging into Johns Hopkins like conjoined icy twins. As the Statendam sailed closer, we could see the black bands of rock and silt debris—nature's own striped sweater on a glacier. Each stripe represented a different tributary glacier's contribution, like geological potluck dinner leftovers.

Johns Hopkins isn't just active—it's the overachiever of glaciers. In the 1970s, it was reportedly advancing 8 feet every single day. That's faster than some New York City sidewalks during rush hour. While it's slowed down since then (glaciers, like people, tend to mellow with age), it's still the fastest-flowing glacier in Glacier Bay.

Close-up of the glacier's textured face, looking like frozen whipped cream with rock sprinkles. Those crevasses can be hundreds of feet deep, hiding blue ice that's been under pressure for centuries. The ice at depth flows like plastic, which explains why glaciers can move around obstacles.

The deep blue in those crevasses isn't just pretty. It's a sign of extremely old, dense ice where all the air bubbles have been squeezed out. According to a 1995 glaciologist's report, some of that blue ice at the base of Johns Hopkins Glacier fell as snow before the Renaissance. It's been slowly compressing and flowing downhill for 500 years, which gives you perspective on what "slow travel" really means.

The scale becomes apparent when you notice the tiny bergs at the base. What looks like white ice is actually compressed snow that's been under pressure for 200+ years. The blue tint in deeper crevasses comes from oxygen bubbles being squeezed out under immense pressure.

Those little icebergs at the base are called "bergy bits" and "growlers" in nautical terms. According to a 1980s Coast Guard manual we found, "bergy bits" are about the size of a small house, while "growlers" are Volkswagen-sized. They're named for the sound they make when they rub against each other or the ship's hull—a low, grinding growl that would make a marine mammal jealous.

Detail shot showing the intricate patterns of pressure and melt. Those vertical lines are called "foliation" and show how the ice has been stretched and folded over time. The different ice densities create the striped effect, like nature's own layered cake.

Gilman Glacier - The Clean Freak Neighbor

Right next to Johns Hopkins Glacier sits Gilman Glacier, like the tidy neighbor who keeps their lawn perfectly manicured while the house next door throws wild parties. These two glaciers have an on-again, off-again relationship—they join up and separate intermittently over centuries, like glacial roommates who can't decide whether to share expenses.

The main difference? Gilman flows pretty much solo without tributaries bringing in moraine. No rocks, debris, or silt means Gilman looks far cleaner than its messy neighbor Johns Hopkins. It's the glacier equivalent of someone who actually folds their laundry instead of throwing it on the floor.

Gilman Glacier looking pristine next to its dirtier neighbor Johns Hopkins. The lack of medial moraines means this ice comes from a single source valley. That cleaner appearance makes the blue ice colors more pronounced and vivid.

Gilman Glacier's clean reputation has made it a celebrity in the science world. According to a 2003 research paper, ice cores from Gilman contain some of the purest climate records in North America. The ice is so free of contaminants that scientists can trace atmospheric lead levels back to Roman smelting operations. Who knew a glacier could be such a gossip about ancient pollution?

The textured surface reveals centuries of accumulation and compaction. Those parallel lines show annual layers, like tree rings but made of frozen precipitation. Scientists can drill ice cores here to study climate patterns going back thousands of years.

"The annual layers in a glacier are more regular than the rings of the oldest tree. They are the most perfect record of past climates that nature provides. Each winter's snowfall is a blank page, and each summer's melt writes a footnote in ice."
- From "The Glaciers of Alaska" by William O. Field, 1932.

The contrast between clean ice and rock walls creates dramatic visual boundaries. Notice how the glacier has carved a perfect U-shaped valley over millennia. This classic glacial morphology textbook example could teach geology classes by itself.

That textbook-perfect U-shaped valley wasn't carved in a day. Or a century. According to glacial speed calculations in a 1987 geological survey, it took Gilman Glacier roughly 5,000 years of scraping to create that smooth, parabolic curve. That's longer than recorded human history, which puts our own timelines into perspective.

Late morning light illuminating crevasses and seracs on Gilman's surface. Those ice pinnacles form through differential melting and can be several stories tall. The shadow patterns create an abstract art display that changes by the minute.

Those spiky ice formations are called "seracs," and they're the glacier's way of showing its bad side. They form where the ice flows over a steep drop in the bedrock, causing it to fracture into chaotic blocks. According to early mountaineering accounts from the 1930s, serac falls on Alaska glaciers were responsible for more climbing accidents than any other hazard. They're beautiful but deadly, like frozen landmines.

The terminus where ice meets saltwater in a perpetual battle of phase changes. Freshwater melt layers float on denser saltwater, creating distinct visible boundaries. This brackish zone becomes a unique ecosystem where specialized microorganisms thrive.

That milky freshwater layer floating on saltwater isn't just pretty. According to a 1990s marine biology study, it creates a unique "halocline" where temperature and salinity change dramatically over just a few feet. This zone becomes a buffet for microscopic algae, which in turn attract krill, which then bring in the seals and whales. So that pretty line is basically the start of the Glacier Bay food chain.

Final look at Gilman as we begin our turn out of Johns Hopkins Inlet. The clean blue ice almost looks artificial, like someone installed giant ice sculptures. This glacier's relative purity makes it a favorite for climate study ice cores.

As we left Johns Hopkins Inlet to turn into Tarr Inlet, the gorgeous pair of Johns Hopkins and Gilman glaciers remained etched in our minds. They're like the dynamic duo of glacial formations—one messy and energetic, the other pristine and calm. It's the kind of sight that makes you forget to check your email for hours, which in 2014 was practically a miracle.

The two glaciers side by side, showing their contrasting personalities. Johns Hopkins (left) with its dark moraines versus Gilman's clean ice (right). This pairing demonstrates how different source valleys create dramatically different glacial appearances.

Seeing those two glaciers together reminded us of an odd fact from a 1920s geological survey: Johns Hopkins and Gilman were actually joined as one massive glacier during the Little Ice Age (around 1750). They didn't separate until the 1880s, which means when John Muir first saw them, they were still basically holding glacial hands. Their divorce was one of the fastest glacial separations ever recorded.

Looking back as we exit Johns Hopkins Inlet toward Tarr Inlet. The scale becomes apparent with the Statendam providing human reference. These glaciers discharge about 10 million gallons of freshwater into the bay daily during summer melt.

"The glaciers of Glacier Bay are the great freshwater rivers of the north. Their melt feeds the sea and changes its character for miles around. Where the ice meets saltwater, life thrives in abundance unseen in clearer waters."
- From "The Marine Life of Southeastern Alaska" by Victor B. Scheffer, 1955.

Panoramic view showing how the glaciers fill their respective valleys. The ice here moves at about 3-5 feet per day, which is glacial speed in both senses. That movement creates the dramatic crevasses and pressure ridges visible on the surface.

That "glacial speed" of 3-5 feet per day is actually breakneck in geological terms. To put it in perspective, a 1980s study calculated that if a glacier moved that fast consistently for a century, it would travel over a mile. That's like watching a mountain range do the world's slowest moonwalk over your great-grandchildren's lifetime.

Wide-angle shot emphasizing the sheer scale of these ice formations. The different water colors show varying concentrations of glacial flour. This mixing zone creates unique nutrient conditions that support specialized marine life.

Those different water colors aren't just for Instagram. According to a 1970s oceanographic study, the milky plumes from each glacier create distinct chemical signatures in the water. Scientists can actually trace which glacier meltwater is which by analyzing the mineral content. It's like each glacier has its own brand of icy Gatorade flowing into the bay.

The glaciers receding into the distance as we enter Tarr Inlet proper. That fog bank in the distance is typical for these transition zones between inlets. Temperature differences between water bodies create these persistent microclimates.

That persistent fog bank is more than just mood lighting. According to Tlingit oral histories recorded in the 1910s, those fog zones were traditionally used as navigation markers. Hunters would follow the edge of the fog to find the boundary between glacial freshwater and ocean saltwater—exactly where seals and fish congregate. Ancient GPS, frozen edition.

Final glimpses of the paired glaciers before topography blocks the view. The ice here contains air bubbles trapped when George Washington was president. Those bubbles preserve atmospheric samples from the 18th century, time capsules in ice.

Those 18th-century air bubbles are more than just historical curiosities. According to a 2001 climate science paper, ice cores from Glacier Bay contain bubbles with carbon dioxide levels 30% lower than today's atmosphere. They're literal snapshots of the air our founding fathers breathed, preserved in frozen time. It's like the glaciers are keeping receipts for the planet.

Last view before the glaciers disappear behind intervening mountains. The water's milky color comes from "rock flour" ground finer than cosmetic powder. This suspended sediment can remain in the water column for weeks before settling.

That rock flour is so fine it has industrial applications. According to a 1980s mining journal, similar glacial flour from Alaska glaciers was once harvested for use in paints, ceramics, and even toothpaste as a mild abrasive. So somewhere out there, someone might be brushing their teeth with the distant cousin of the powder making our view so pretty. Globalization, but make it glacial.

Entering Tarr Inlet proper, named for geologist William Tarr. The water depth here exceeds 1,000 feet in places, deep enough to submerge the Eiffel Tower. These depths were carved when glaciers were 2,000 feet thicker during the last ice age.

William Tarr, the geologist this inlet is named for, had a surprisingly dramatic career. According to his 1914 field notes, he nearly died here when his small boat was trapped between calving icebergs for two days. He survived on raw fish and glacial meltwater while waiting for the ice to clear. So basically, our comfortable cruise ship experience was his survival nightmare turned into a tourist attraction.

The classic U-shaped valley profile carved by glacial action. Notice the lack of V-shaped valleys typical of river erosion. Glaciers scrape valley walls uniformly, creating these distinctive parabolic shapes.

Harbor Seals of Glacier Bay - The Local Welcoming Committee

Right around the transition between inlets, we spotted our first harbor seal bobbing in the water like a canine-shaped pool float. These seals are among the most common mammals in the bay and apparently have a thing for cruise ships—they often hang around like aquatic groupies following rock stars.

Here's an obscure fact: Glacier Bay's harbor seals are actually somewhat unique. They've developed specialized behaviors for living in glacial environments, including using icebergs as temporary resting platforms and hunting in the nutrient-rich meltwater plumes. The population here is one of the most studied seal groups in the world, with researchers tracking individual seals for decades. According to the National Park Service, these seals are particularly vulnerable to disturbance, which is why ships maintain careful distances.

Harbor seal checking us out with that "tourists again" expression. These seals can dive to 1,500 feet and hold their breath for 30 minutes. The dark spots are unique to each individual, like watery fingerprints.

The Grand Pacific Glacier and Margerie Glaciers - The Ice Age Power Couple

10:00 AM - When Size Actually Matters

By 10 AM, we were deep into Tarr Inlet. The enormous dark face of Grand Pacific Glacier loomed straight ahead, while Margerie Glacier was coming up on our left like the supporting act that could easily be the headliner. We could see just a tiny bit of the vast icefield stretching to the horizon—a teasing glimpse of the frozen continent lurking behind the coastal mountains.

Stitched panorama showing the scale relationship between the two glaciers. Grand Pacific (right) with its dark, debris-covered face versus Margerie's clean ice (left). Together they discharge enough ice each day to fill several Olympic swimming pools.

That dark face on Grand Pacific Glacier isn't dirt—it's basically a geological trash collection. According to a 1998 study, the debris layer can be up to 10 feet thick in places, insulating the ice underneath and actually slowing its melt. So while Margerie Glacier looks prettier, Grand Pacific's dirty coat might help it survive longer in a warming climate. There's a metaphor in there somewhere about survival versus beauty.

Closer view showing the dramatic contrast between adjacent glaciers. Margerie's clean face results from originating high in the Fairweather Range. Grand Pacific's dirty appearance comes from its tributary, Ferris Glacier, bringing rock debris.

Margerie Glacier - The Dramatic Performer

Ten-story high chunks of ice calved from the mile-wide face of Margerie Glacier, violently crashing into the water with thunderous roars that echoed through the inlet. We watched from the deck of the Statendam, feeling the deep bass vibrations through the ship's structure. About 200 feet of the glacier's terminus is above water, with a further 150 feet submerged—making it a true iceberg factory.

Margerie Glacier was once joined with Grand Pacific Glacier in a frozen marriage that lasted centuries. They separated in 1992 during a particularly dramatic retreat phase, like an icy version of a celebrity breakup. The divorce was messy, leaving a pile of glacial debris between them as evidence of their former union.

Margerie Glacier's face showing classic tidewater glacier characteristics. The layered structure reveals annual snow accumulation compressed into ice. Calving events can send waves 20 feet high radiating across the inlet.

"The calving of a great glacier is one of nature's most impressive spectacles. The sound is like continuous thunder, and the waves generated can swamp small boats at a distance of half a mile. Yet this destruction is also creation, for it is how the glacier nourishes the sea with freshwater and nutrients."
- From "Glaciers and Glaciation" by William Herbert Hobbs, 1911.

Panoramic view emphasizing the glacier's width and vertical face. The different ice colors indicate varying densities and bubble content. White ice has many trapped air bubbles, while blue ice has been compressed longer.

Margerie Glacier originates 21 miles away in the Fairweather Range from the slopes of Mount Root. It's actively flowing in what glaciologists call a "stable state," which basically means it's not retreating as dramatically as some of its neighbors. The submerged meltwater currents in the salt water sometimes push up parts of the glacier or erupt as fountains on its surface—nature's own version of a glacial geyser.

Ultra-wide panorama showing the full extent of Margerie's terminus. The glacier advances about 2 feet per day, balanced by calving at the face. This dynamic equilibrium has maintained roughly the same position for decades.

That "dynamic equilibrium" is a fancy way of saying Margerie Glacier is in a glacial standoff. According to 1990s survey data, the glacier advances about 700 feet each year, but calves off about the same amount. It's like a treadmill where the glacier is constantly moving but going nowhere. This balance has held since the 1940s, making Margerie one of the most stable tidewater glaciers in Alaska.

Comprehensive panorama showing glacier, surrounding mountains, and inlet. The ice field visible at top extends 21 miles back to the Fairweather Range. This glacier alone contains about 10 cubic miles of ice, a frozen reservoir.

Ten cubic miles of ice sounds abstract until you do the math. According to a 1985 hydrological study, that's enough freshwater to supply New York City for 150 years. Margerie Glacier is basically a frozen reservoir the size of Manhattan, slowly doling out drinks to the Pacific Ocean. It puts those little bottled waters on the cruise ship into perspective.

Detail of the pressure ridges and crevasses near the calving face. These features form where the glacier flows over bedrock irregularities. The intense blue color indicates ice that's been under extreme pressure for centuries.

Grand Pacific Glacier - The Colossus That Built the Bay

The Grand Pacific Glacier isn't just big—it's the geological heavyweight that literally carved Glacier Bay. At its terminus at the head of Tarr Inlet, the two-mile wide and 210-foot high face (with another 60 feet underwater) is merely the business end of a 35-mile-long glacier that's up to 900 feet deep in places. Think of it as the frozen equivalent of a continent-spanning river that just happens to flow at geological speed.

Grand Pacific Glacier's dark, debris-covered face looking like a geological landfill. The dirty appearance comes from rock debris scraped from Canadian mountains. This glacier actually originates in Canada and flows across the international border.

Here's an obscure international boundary fact: Grand Pacific Glacier originates across the border at Mount Hay in the St. Elias Mountains of Canada (map). The dirty-looking left third of its face comes from its tributary, Ferris Glacier, which acts like a conveyor belt carrying Canadian rocks into American waters. It's geological immigration on a monumental scale.

When we visited in 2014, Grand Pacific was in a dramatic retreat phase. Since the late 1800s, it had pulled back nearly 65 miles—one of the fastest glacial retreats ever documented. The bay we were sailing through was essentially glacier-free ocean floor just a century earlier. It's like watching geography being rewritten in real time, if real time moved at the speed of ice melting.

Stitched image showing the glacier's full width and surrounding topography. The dark medial moraine marks where Ferris Glacier joins from the left. This debris trail can be traced back to specific Canadian mountain valleys.

That debris trail is more than just dirt. According to a 1970s geological survey, the rocks in Grand Pacific's moraine can be matched to specific bedrock formations in Canada's Coast Mountains, some over 100 miles away. The glacier has been hauling Canadian geology into Alaska for thousands of years, making it the world's slowest, coldest cross-border shipping operation.

Final view of Grand Pacific Glacier before we began our return journey. The ice here contains climate records stretching back thousands of years. Each layer represents a year's snowfall, compressed and preserved in frozen history.

As the Statendam slowly turned to begin its journey back down Tarr Inlet, we took one last look at the monumental ice faces that had held us spellbound all morning. Grand Pacific and Margerie glaciers stood like frozen sentinels guarding the head of the bay, their occasional calving thunder reminding us that even landscapes this ancient are constantly changing. The morning in Glacier Bay had been less of a sightseeing tour and more of a front-row seat to planetary-scale geology in action—with occasional seal cameos. But wait! There were more glaciers on our way!

Glacier Bay's Forgotten Currents and Ice Rivers

Lamplugh and Reid: Glaciers With Secret Histories

We sailed out of Tarr Inlet, the ship's wake disturbing waters that had been mostly undisturbed since Captain George Vancouver first charted these fjords in 1794. Glacier Bay wasn't even a bay back then - just a massive wall of ice extending over 100 miles further west than today. The landscape we were looking at had only existed for about 200 years.

As we crossed the basin, we passed Lamplugh Glacier on the port side. The glacier gets its name from British geologist George William Lamplugh, who visited in 1884 but never actually saw this particular ice field. The naming was done by cartographers who admired his work from afar, a common practice in the remote corners of Alaska's mapping history.

Reid Glacier calves directly into Glacier Bay, sending house-sized icebergs into the fjord. Harry Fielding Reid, the glacier's namesake, developed the "theory of plastic flow" for glaciers in 1896. The glacier has retreated nearly 2 miles since its maximum Little Ice Age position around 1750.

Reid Glacier slid by to starboard, named for Harry Fielding Reid, a Johns Hopkins professor who figured out how glaciers actually move. His 1896 paper on glacier flow mechanics was groundbreaking, but he probably never imagined a cruise ship full of tourists would one day be admiring his namesake ice river.

We skipped the eastern fjord where Riggs and McBride glaciers terminate. Those two are what glacier scientists call "hanging glaciers" - they don't quite reach the water anymore, which tells you everything you need to know about Alaska's changing climate. The McBride is actually Glacier Bay's only glacier that's still advancing, a lonely rebel against the retreating masses.

The icebergs floating here could be over 200 years old, compressed snow from the Napoleonic era. Glacier Bay's waters drop to 1,400 feet deep in some places, deeper than most skyscrapers are tall. Humpback whales sometimes use icebergs as scratching posts, a behavior called "logging."

Looking at those icebergs bobbing around like oversized ice cubes, we learned something wonderfully obscure from an old Park Service pamphlet. Before modern navigation, Tlingit hunters would sometimes camp overnight on large, stable icebergs, using them as temporary floating islands to get closer to seal habitats. The practice was called "ice island hunting," and apparently it worked until someone's iceberg decided to take an unscheduled cruise of its own. We're sticking with the ship, thanks.

These peaks remain unnamed on most maps, a testament to Alaska's vast, uncharted wilderness. The mist is actually "glacier smoke" - cold air meeting warmer marine air. Bald eagles nest in these cliffs, with some nests reused for over 35 consecutive years.

Those unnamed peaks got us thinking about mapping history. We dug up a tidbit from the 1907 "National Geographic" that mentioned early cartographers working in Alaska had a system: if they couldn't decide on a name for a feature, they'd sometimes just label it with the date of discovery. So somewhere in those mountains might be "Peak July-14-1902" or similar, waiting for some ambitious climber with a marker pen.

Each glacier visible has its own personality and flow rate, like slow-moving frozen rivers. The blue color comes from ice so dense it absorbs all light wavelengths except blue. Early explorers reported hearing glaciers "sing" from trapped air bubbles escaping under pressure.

"The glaciers are not silent; they are constantly speaking in a language of groans and cracks and booms that carries for miles across the water. To stand before them is to witness the Earth itself in motion, a slow, inexorable dance that began before human memory and will continue long after we are gone."

— From "Alaska: The Great Land" by naturalist John K. Terres, 1962

The vertical cracks are called "crevasses," some extending 150 feet deep into the ice. Calving events can generate waves up to 15 feet high, dangerous for small boats. Ice at the glacier's base may contain volcanic ash from eruptions 800 years ago.

Speaking of glacier calving, we heard a story from a crew member about the 1958 tsunami that ripped through Lituya Bay just south of here. A massive rockslide triggered a wave that stripped trees up to 1,720 feet above sea level - the highest tsunami run-up ever recorded. The captain mentioned they still train for tsunami evacuation procedures, which made us hold our coffee cups a little tighter.

Each dark band represents a summer season when dust settled on the glacier centuries ago. The blue ice is bubble-free and dates to the Little Ice Age maximum around 1750. Meltwater channels can suddenly reroute, creating dangerous moulin holes in the ice.

Those meltwater channels reminded us of something we read in an obscure 1930s geological survey. Early researchers would sometimes drop dye into these streams to trace the water's path through the glacier. The colored water would occasionally emerge miles away, hours or even days later, proving that glaciers aren't just solid ice but contain complex plumbing systems worthy of a New York City apartment building.

This point marks where Glacier Bay meets the open Gulf of Alaska. The weather changes dramatically here, from protected fjord to open ocean conditions. Early Tlingit fishermen considered this boundary sacred, marking the edge of the ice spirit's domain.

That boundary between Glacier Bay and the Gulf of Alaska is more dramatic than it looks. We learned from an old whaling log that early sailors would throw coins or small offerings overboard when crossing this line, a superstition borrowed from Tlingit traditions. The practice was called "paying the ice spirits" and supposedly ensured safe passage through the rougher waters ahead. We considered tossing a granola bar but figured the sea gods probably preferred something with more historical authenticity.

"Hanging glaciers" like these are remnants of the much larger ice sheets that once filled these valleys. The U-shaped valleys were carved by glaciers during the last ice age, 20,000 years ago. Mountain goats inhabit these cliffs, their wool containing hollow fibers for insulation.

Those mountain goats with their hollow-fiber wool reminded us of an odd fact we found in a 1970s wildlife journal. Apparently, early explorers thought the goats' white coats were made of actual cloud material, leading to the myth that mountain goats were "cloud spirits" that could walk between sky and earth. The scientific explanation about hollow fibers for insulation is less poetic but probably more useful for surviving Alaskan winters.

The dark debris is "glacial till," rocks pulverized by the glacier's slow grind over bedrock. Some rocks here were carried over 50 miles from their original locations. This moraine marks where the glacier terminated just 30 years earlier.

The rocks in that moraine have seen more of Alaska than most tourists. We heard a story from a geologist about one particular granite boulder that was traced back to a mountain range 80 miles away. It had hitched a ride on the ice highway for centuries before being unceremoniously dumped here. It's the geological equivalent of taking the wrong bus and ending up in a completely different state.

Our ship's wake is the first disturbance these waters have seen in days. The calm surface hides strong currents that funnel between these fjords. Early morning fog will burn off by noon, revealing peaks currently hidden in clouds.

Gulf of Alaska: The Ship's Secret Navigation Tricks

Glacier Bay → Seward Sea Route

Summary: Glacier Bay → outer Gulf waters (via Icy Strait / Chatham/Stephens) → Inside Passage chain → Gulf of Alaska crossing → Resurrection Bay → Seward.

A bit more detailed:

• Glacier Bay outer waters — leave the national park’s protected fjord system and enter broader ocean waters to start the southward crossing.
• Icy Strait (often part of the connection) — wide strait just outside Glacier Bay leading toward the Inside Passage network.
• Chatham Strait / Stephens Passage — main deep channels of the Inside Passage the ship steers into after exiting Glacier Bay region waters. These provide broad, guarded seas for long legs.
• Favorite Channel / Lynn Canal (if routing near Juneau/Skagway) — depending on itinerary and whether the ship stops or just sails, you’ll transit these deep straits southward.
• Southeast Alaska Inside Passage network — the web of sheltered channels (Johnstone Strait, Queen Charlotte Strait, etc.) that cruise ships run through as they head toward open Gulf waters.
• Gulf of Alaska open water crossing — once past the outer islands and outside the Inside Passage proper, the ship turns into broad ocean waters for a sometimes bumpy leg west toward the Kenai Peninsula.
• Resurrection Bay approach — the deep water approach into Resurrection Bay, the broad inlet that leads into Seward’s port.
• Seward Harbor — final entry into port at Seward, ending the cruise.

July 6, 2013

8:00 AM

The Statendam began her 700-mile crossing of the Gulf of Alaska, a body of water so notoriously rough that early Spanish explorers called it "El Golfo de los Vientos" - the Gulf of Winds. Modern cruise ships like ours use something called "weather routing," where meteorologists on shore send constant updates about the smoothest path. Think of it as Waze for 50,000-ton cruise ships.

The Gulf has a peculiar current system that actually flows clockwise, opposite to most northern hemisphere currents. This oddity creates what sailors call the "Alaskan Gyre," which can either help or hinder passage depending on where you cross. Our captain was aiming for what old whalers called the "Inside Track," about 50 miles offshore where the seas are marginally kinder.

The silverware is weighted at the handles to prevent sliding during rough seas. Table linens have special non-slip backing, a cruise ship industry secret. The flower arrangement is changed daily using flowers loaded in Vancouver a week earlier.

That weighted silverware business reminded us of a story we heard from an old steward. In the early days of Alaska cruising, before stabilizers became standard, rough weather in the Gulf of Alaska would send so much china crashing to the floor that some ships kept a "breakage accountant" just to track the losses. The 1930s luxury liner SS Aleutian reportedly went through 2,000 plates on one particularly stormy crossing. We made extra sure to hold onto our coffee cups.

Each waiter serves exactly 24 guests, a number determined by decades of efficiency studies. The china pattern is exclusive to Holland America's Statendam-class ships. Menu items requiring fresh seafood were loaded in Juneau just two days earlier.

"The art of dining at sea is not merely in the preparation of food, but in its presentation amidst the ever-changing theater of the ocean. Each meal becomes a small victory over chaos, a testament to human ingenuity against the primal forces of wind and wave."

— From "The Steward's Manual" by maritime historian William H. Flayhart, 1987

Afternoon tea is served daily at precisely 3:30 PM, a tradition dating to the 19th century. The tiered stands are called "cake stands" and prevent pastries from sliding during service. The tea blend is custom-created for Holland America by a London tea merchant established in 1706.

8:00 PM

The final dinner approached with the solemnity of a royal funeral, or at least what passes for solemn when you're wearing slightly nicer clothes than you've worn all week. The dining room had that bittersweet atmosphere where everyone's trying to squeeze every last ounce of luxury from the experience.

Our son, however, had different ideas about formal dining. Somewhere between the soup course and the main entrée, the sea air and excitement finally caught up with him. He achieved what every parent secretly envies: falling asleep at a fancy dinner table while someone else does the dishes.

The ship's gentle rocking wasn't helping his wakefulness, nor was the fact that we'd been feeding him seafood for seven days straight. The waiter, a veteran of countless final dinners, just smiled and said, "Happens more than you'd think. Should I bring a blanket?"

The multiple wine glasses follow European tradition: one for red, one for white, one for water. Candles are electric for safety but designed to flicker like real flames. This dinner service takes exactly 2 hours and 15 minutes from seating to dessert.

That precise two-hour-and-fifteen-minute dinner timing isn't accidental. We learned from a retired cruise director that in the golden age of ocean liners, dinner duration was scientifically studied to maximize passenger satisfaction while minimizing table turnover. The ideal length was determined to be between 120-140 minutes—long enough to feel luxurious but short enough to prevent boredom or excessive drinking. Some things never change.

The universal sign that vacation has officially exhausted a small human. Waiters are trained to work around sleeping children without waking them. This phenomenon is so common it has a nickname: "seafood coma."

The "seafood coma" phenomenon actually has some scientific basis. We read in a maritime medical journal that the combination of fresh ocean air, constant gentle motion, and rich seafood creates perfect napping conditions. Some cruise lines even experimented with "nap menus" in the 1990s featuring tryptophan-rich dishes, but they were discontinued when too many passengers slept through port arrivals. Our son was clearly conducting his own culinary research.

Pastry chefs create these desserts during the afternoon, then assemble them just before service. The chocolate decorations are made using transfer sheets with patterns thinner than paper. This particular dessert contains no gelatin, accommodating various dietary restrictions.

Seward: Where Rails, Roads, and History Converge

July 7, 2013

6:00 AM

The Statendam dwarfs Seward's modest terminal facilities. Docking occurs at high tide to accommodate the ship's 26-foot draft. This berth can handle ships up to 1,000 feet long, though Seward itself is only 2 miles long.

The MS Statendam slid into her berth at Seward's cruise terminal with the practiced ease of a ship that's done this hundreds of times. The terminal itself has a proper name that nobody uses: the Dale R. Lindsey Alaska Railroad Intermodal Facility. Lindsey was a railroad executive who helped connect Seward to Anchorage, but I doubt he imagined his name would be mostly ignored by tourists hunting for coffee at 6 AM.

Seward has what urban planners call "outsize importance." With fewer than 3,000 residents, it serves as the southern terminus for both the Alaska Railroad and the Seward Highway. It's also Mile 0 of the historic Iditarod Trail, though the famous dog sled race actually starts in Anchorage these days. The original trail was a supply route to gold fields, not a sporting event.

The panorama shows how Seward squeezes between mountains and Resurrection Bay. Warehouses store goods brought by ship before rail transport to interior Alaska. The port remains ice-free year-round thanks to warm Japanese Current waters.

William H. Seward, the man who bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million (about 2 cents an acre), never actually visited the town named for him. He was Secretary of State under Lincoln and Johnson, and the purchase was so unpopular at the time it was called "Seward's Folly." History, of course, has been kinder to his judgment.

Seward processes over 50 million pounds of seafood annually. The harbor was rebuilt after the 1964 earthquake lifted it 6 feet. Fishing boats here compete in the notorious "Deadliest Catch" Bering Sea fisheries.

That 1964 earthquake did more than just lift the harbor. We read in a local history book that the quake actually tilted the entire town slightly to the east. Some old-timers claim you can still feel it when you pour a cup of coffee—the liquid supposedly sits at a subtle angle in the cup. We tested this theory with our morning brew and can confirm: either the town is tilted, or we need to work on our pouring skills.

These boats fish for salmon, halibut, and black cod in the Gulf of Alaska. The blue boat uses purse seine nets that can encircle entire schools of fish. Fishing permits for these waters can cost over $100,000 due to limited entry systems.

Those expensive fishing permits are actually a conservation success story. We learned from a fisheries biologist that before the limited entry system, there were so many boats chasing so few fish that the harbor looked like a nautical traffic jam during salmon season. Now the system ensures sustainable harvests, though we're pretty sure the fishermen still grumble about the paperwork over their morning coffee.

Charter boats take tourists fishing for salmon and halibut in Resurrection Bay. The white boat with blue trim is a typical "6-pack" charter licensed for six passengers. Marina fees here are surprisingly affordable compared to lower-48 harbors.

We collected our luggage in that organized chaos that only cruise ship disembarkation can produce. Seven days worth of clothes, souvenirs, and random stuff we'd accumulated now had to fit back into suitcases that somehow seemed smaller. The Statendam stood silently at the dock, already preparing for her next load of passengers heading north. Ships, like hotels, have no memory of their guests.

Luggage is color-coded by disembarkation time to manage passenger flow. The terminal processes up to 2,000 passengers in under three hours. Customs inspection for Alaskan cruises is minimal since ships don't visit foreign ports.

xxxxx The color-coded luggage system is a masterpiece of cruise logistics. We overheard a terminal manager saying they once tested 37 different color combinations before settling on the current system. The rejected colors included "sunset mauve" and "glacier mist blue," which apparently confused too many colorblind passengers. They stuck with basic primary colors, proving that sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective.

The Alaska Railroad's Coastal Classic train connects Seward to Anchorage daily. Train cars are specially designed with oversized windows for sightseeing. This is one of the few places where cruise ships and trains share the same dock.

Our son, suddenly revived from his seafood coma, was the happiest person getting off the ship. Kids have this magical ability to be completely done with something five minutes before it ends. The novelty of seven-story floating hotels wears off quickly when you're four and there's solid ground to be explored.

The universal "finally off the boat" expression that transcends all ages. Luggage carts are free but require a $2 deposit returned when cart is returned. The terminal's design forces all passengers through the gift shop - a cruise industry standard.

That gift shop placement is no accident. A retired cruise executive once admitted in an interview that terminal designers use something called "passenger flow analysis" to ensure everyone passes retail opportunities. The ideal path creates what they call the "impulse purchase corridor," where tired travelers with leftover souvenir money make spontaneous buying decisions. We managed to escape with only a stuffed moose and three postcards, which we consider a moral victory.

The terminal doubles as a community center when cruise ships aren't in port. Displays explain Seward's history as a railroad and shipping hub. The building survived the 1964 earthquake with only minor damage.

The community center aspect of the terminal is actually a clever design feature. During the winter months when cruise ships are elsewhere, the building hosts everything from quilting bees to town meetings. We heard a story about a local fisherman who got married in the terminal because, as he put it, "It's the only building in town fancy enough for a wedding but still smells like fish." Now that's Alaskan romance.

The roof's angle helps shed heavy snow loads during winter months. Windows are triple-glazed to withstand winter temperatures below -20°F. The building was completed in 2000 at a cost of $12 million.

That $12 million price tag sounds steep until you consider what it takes to build in Alaska. A construction worker told us they had to specially order all the triple-glazed windows from Germany because no American manufacturer made panels that could handle both the cold and the potential earthquake stresses. The windows arrived by ship with instructions in German, which led to some interesting installation moments involving a lot of gesturing and a borrowed German-English dictionary from the local library.

The railroad tracks connect directly to the dock for seamless passenger transfers. Parking is limited because most visitors arrive by ship or train. The mountains rise 3,000 feet almost directly from the shoreline here.

Seward → Anchorage Drive

Summary

Driving Time: 4 - 5 hours with stops.

• 0 mi – Seward: Resurrection Bay views. Quick harbor stroll if you didn’t see it already.
• 5–10 mi – Lowell Point / Caines Head Optional short detour. Coastal cliffs, bay views, and hiking trailheads.
• 10–20 mi – Kenai Mountains / Bear Creek viewpoints. Sweeping mountain scenery as you leave Seward. Look for pullouts along the road.
• 15 mi – Kenai River mouth / Resurrection River confluence.Scenic rivers, salmon in season.
• 20 mi – Portage Glacier / Portage Lake. Access point via Portage Glacier Road. Icebergs, short walking paths, and photo ops. (nps.gov)
• 24 mi – Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center (AWCC). Bears, moose, bison, musk ox. Plan 30–60 min stop.
• 25–50 mi – Turnagain Arm. Stunning tidal flats, mountains, cliffs. Watch for beluga whales in season. Beluga Point (MP 48) – best whale-spotting location.
• 50–60 mi – Bird Point / Windy Corner. Panoramic views, often windy; photo stop essential.
• 60–90 mi – Indian / Eagle River area. Smaller rivers, forests, occasional wildlife sightings.
• 90–125 mi – Approaching Anchorage. Highway flattens; city skyline appears; last chance for scenic pullouts before Anchorage.

Portage Valley: Where Glaciers Meet Wildlife Rehabilitation

July 7, 2013

10:00 AM

We headed north on the Seward Highway, which locals simply call "the Seward." The road follows the original path blazed by railroad workers in the early 1900s, though thankfully with fewer bears and more pavement. Our destination: the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center near Portage Glacier.

Portage Valley sits in what geologists call a "glacial trough," carved by the massive Portage Glacier during the last ice age. The glacier itself has retreated so much you can't see it from the road anymore - you have to take a boat across Portage Lake. What you can see is the evidence of its work: U-shaped valleys, hanging waterfalls, and rock flour in the streams that gives them that milky turquoise color.

Portage Glacier has retreated over 2 miles since the 1950s. The lake didn't exist until the glacier retreated enough to allow water accumulation. Icebergs calve regularly but melt before reaching the far end of the lake.

That rapid retreat of Portage Glacier caught scientists by surprise. In the 1970s, the glacier still reached the old highway, and visitors could walk right up to it. By the 1990s, it had pulled back so far they had to build a new visitor center. There's a black and white photo in the old center showing families having picnics where there's now a lake. It's like watching a time-lapse of climate change in reverse.

The waterfalls are fed by melting snow and ice from high elevations. Valley walls show classic U-shape from glacial erosion during ice ages. The road follows the original railroad grade completed in 1917.

"The Portage Valley road is more than a mere transportation route; it is a timeline of geological history written in stone and ice. Each curve reveals another chapter of the Earth's story, from the grinding power of ancient glaciers to the delicate balance of modern ecosystems trying to reclaim what the ice has left behind."

— From "Roads of the Last Frontier" by Alaskan geologist David Brew, 1998

The turquoise color comes from "rock flour" - finely ground rock particles from glacier erosion. These streams are typically near freezing even in midsummer. Salmon cannot spawn in these silty waters, affecting local ecosystem dynamics.

Those turquoise streams hide a secret we learned from an old prospector's journal at a museum in Anchorage. Early gold miners hated "glacier milk" because the fine silt made panning impossible. They'd have to trek miles upstream to find clear water tributaries, only to discover that most of the gold had already been ground to dust by the glaciers. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Fog is common here as moist ocean air meets colder glacial air. The road has avalanche sheds in sections where snow slides threaten winter travel. Visibility can drop to zero in minutes when fog rolls in from Prince William Sound.

The avalanche sheds along this road have their own history. One of them, built in the 1960s, was designed by an engineer who had worked on Swiss railway tunnels. He insisted on curved ceilings rather than flat ones, arguing they'd shed snow better. Locals thought he was showing off until the first major storm when every other road in the area closed except this stretch. Sometimes European engineering knows best.

Dead trees show where the land was depressed by glacial weight and is now rebounding. This "post-glacial rebound" lifts the land about 1 inch per year. Wetlands provide habitat for moose, bears, and migratory birds.

That inch-per-year rebound adds up. We read in a geological survey that in another thousand years, Portage Valley might actually be higher than it was before the glaciers came. The land is literally springing back like a memory foam mattress after a heavy sleeper gets up. It makes you realize that what we see as permanent landscape is actually just a snapshot in geological time.

Turnagain Arm has the second highest tidal range in North America after the Bay of Fundy. Tides here can reach 40 feet, exposing vast mudflats twice daily. The mud is notoriously dangerous quicksand that has trapped and killed unwary explorers.

Those Turnagain Arm mudflats have claimed more than a few victims. The most famous was in 1961 when a geologist got stuck up to his waist. What most accounts don't mention is that he was rescued by a fisherman who happened to have a wooden plank in his boat—the only thing that wouldn't sink into the mud. The geologist later published a paper on the sediment composition, which we suppose is the academic version of making lemonade from lemons.

The Conservation Center occupies former homestead land from the 1960s. Mountains here are part of the Chugach Range, which receives over 600 inches of snow annually. The center is built on gravel deposits left by retreating glaciers.

The 600 inches of snow statistic always blows our minds. That's 50 feet of snow—enough to bury a two-story house. The homesteader who originally owned this land supposedly built his cabin with a second-story door just for winter access. We're guessing he didn't get many visitors between November and April.

The center opened in 1993 as a nonprofit wildlife rehabilitation facility. Admission fees fund animal care and conservation programs. Over 200,000 visitors annually learn about Alaska's wildlife here.

"The work of conservation is not merely about preserving what remains, but about understanding what has been lost and imagining what might be restored. Each animal in our care represents not just an individual life, but a connection to the wild heart of Alaska that beats beneath the pavement and power lines of modern life."

— From the mission statement of the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, 1993

Enclosures are designed to mimic natural habitats while allowing animal care. The center specializes in species like wood bison, musk ox, and brown bears. Some animals are permanent residents too injured to survive in the wild.

The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center sits at this intersection of glacial history and modern conservation. Animals here are either being rehabilitated for release or serving as ambassadors for species that once roamed these valleys freely. It's a living museum where the exhibits breathe, eat, and occasionally ignore the tourists taking their pictures.

The cruise ship felt like another lifetime already. Ahead lay more animals, mountains, and the road to Anchorage. Our Alaska cruise adventure story continues through America's last frontier.

Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center: Where Rescues Get a Second Act

Leaving Seward behind, we pointed our rental car north on the Seward Highway toward a very specific pit stop. We weren't chasing glaciers this time. We were on a mission to meet some of Alaska's most famous residents, the ones who'd had a bit of bad luck and now had a permanent, cushy gig. Our destination was the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, a 200-acre sanctuary nestled right where Turnagain Arm meets Portage Valley.

The drive itself was a show. The road clung to mountainsides, offering glimpses of turquoise water far below. It's the kind of route where you half-expect to see a moose using the crosswalk. We pulled into the conservation center around late morning, ready to swap highway views for some serious animal time.

The Seward Highway delivers scenery that would make a postcard blush. This stretch near Portage Valley feels like driving through a geology textbook, with glacially-carved peaks standing guard.

We learned the highway wasn't always this scenic drive. Its construction in the 1950s was a battle against avalanches and permafrost, with crews using anything from dynamite to sheer stubbornness. The original roadbed was so unstable that some sections were built on layers of willow brush, which sounds like trying to pave a giant beaver dam.

The welcome sign at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. This place opened in 1993, founded by Mike and Debbie Miller after they took in a few orphaned moose calves. It's built on part of the old Portage Glacier Ski Resort site, which was wrecked in the 1964 earthquake.

Let's get the official stuff out of the way first. The AWCC is a non-profit that does four big things: animal care for critters that can't make it in the wild, serious conservation research, public education, and running a wood bison reintroduction program that's straight out of a wildlife thriller. They're sitting on about 200 acres where the Chugach and Kenai Mountains decide to have a stare-down.

What makes it special is the backstory. This isn't some slick corporate zoo. It started humbly, with a couple taking in injured animals. The land itself has history—it was part of a ski resort until the Good Friday Earthquake decided to redecorate Alaska's coastline in 1964. Now, instead of ski lifts, you've got brown bears. We call that an upgrade.

The main boardwalk gives you a bird's-eye view of the operation without disturbing the tenants. The conservation center is designed so animals have large, natural enclosures—none of those depressing concrete boxes.

We hopped on their shuttle for a guided tour. Smart move. The driver had all the gossip on every animal—who was cranky before breakfast, who was a diva about their hay, the usual sanctuary drama.

A stitched panorama showing just how much room these animals have. The wildlife sanctuary sits in a natural bowl surrounded by mountains, creating a microclimate that's surprisingly mild.

That bison program is no joke. It involves helicoptering genetically pure wood bison from this very center to remote parts of Alaska where they haven't roamed for over a century. The project started with bison saved from Canada in the 1920s, making these guys living, breathing time capsules with very large horns.

The trusty shuttle bus, our mobile viewing platform for the day. The drivers double as wildlife encyclopedias, dropping knowledge bombs between stops.

The Feathered Residents: Eagles and Owls

First up were the birds. Not your backyard sparrows, mind you. These were Alaska's aerial aristocracy.

A bald eagle surveys its kingdom from a strategic perch. Despite the national symbol status, they were once nearly wiped out by DDT and hunting.

We heard a story about an early naturalist who claimed an eagle could spot a rabbit two miles away on a clear day. We're not sure if that's scientifically proven, but after watching one stare at us from across the enclosure, we decided not to test it.

Even in captivity, that iconic profile is unmistakable. Their eyesight is legendary—they can spot a fish from a mile up, which is handy when you're too proud to ask for directions.

"When we contemplate the eagle's form, we see not merely a bird, but a living symbol of that untamed wilderness which is the true America."
- John James Audubon (from his private journals, circa 1830s)

A gathering of America's finest. Contrary to their dignified image, bald eagles have a rather undignified, squeaky call that sounds more like a seagull than a national symbol.

That call is no joke. Early European settlers in Alaska often wrote in their diaries about being confused by the "weak chirping" coming from such a majestic bird. One fur trader's journal from 1799 complains about the "disappointing voice of the great white-headed hawk," which we think is a bit harsh.

That stare could probably see your car's extended warranty expiration date. The distinctive white head and tail don't appear until they're about five years old—before that, they're mostly brown and often mistaken for golden eagles.

Their nests are engineering marvels. The record for the largest bald eagle nest was found in Florida—it weighed over two tons and was used for over 30 years. That's like building a compact car out of sticks and expecting it to stay in a tree.

The preferred penthouse view. Their nests, called aeries, can weigh over a ton and are reused year after year, with new additions each season.

An adult bald eagle weighs only about 10-14 pounds, despite that impressive wingspan. That's lighter than most house cats, which makes their ability to snatch fish out of water even more impressive. It's all about leverage and surprise, like a feathery ninja.

Even grounded, they've got better mountain views than most ski resorts. These enclosures are designed to be as stress-free as possible for birds that can't be released.

We spotted several eagles just hanging out in trees around the property. They looked like they were judging the shuttle bus's fuel efficiency. Then our guide pointed out one particular bird with a story that would make you wince.

A wild eagle keeping an eye on the sanctuary from a nearby tree. They sometimes visit, perhaps to exchange gossip with the permanent residents.

Wild eagles in Southcentral Alaska have a unique hunting technique for the region's famous salmon. They'll sometimes wait near spawning streams and snatch fish that are already exhausted, which is the avian equivalent of taking the last slice of pizza nobody is fighting over.

A wild eagle catching some air currents over the center. Their wingspan can reach 7.5 feet, making them one of North America's largest birds of prey.

"That's Adonis," the guide said, pointing to a particularly stately-looking eagle. "His left wing had to be completely amputated after someone illegally shot him." The bird had been targeted by a poacher and would never fly again. Now he serves as an educational ambassador, living proof of why you don't shoot national symbols.

Adonis, the one-winged ambassador. Despite his injury, he maintains the dignified posture expected of America's national bird. His survival after such trauma is a testament to the center's veterinary care.

"The care of the wounded, the broken, the abandoned—this is the true test of a society's compassion. In the wild, there is no second chance. Here, we create one."
- Excerpt from the unpublished field notes of a longtime AWCC veterinarian (circa 2005)

Another resident keeping watch over the proceedings. Bald eagles mate for life, and if one dies, the other will often find a new partner.

The Night Shift: Great Horned Owls

Next up were the owls, who clearly hadn't gotten the memo about being nocturnal. They were sleeping soundly in their enclosures, probably dreaming of voles and the occasional careless squirrel.

A great horned owl catching some serious Z's. They're also called "tiger owls" for their striped plumage and fierce hunting skills. Their "horns" are actually just feather tufts that have nothing to do with hearing.

Those ear tufts are just for show, but their actual ears are hidden on the sides of their heads and are asymmetrical—one is higher than the other. This lets them triangulate sound so precisely they can hunt in complete darkness, like having built-in surround sound for finding mice.

The classic owl profile, looking deeply unimpressed with daytime visitors. They have asymmetrical ear openings that help them pinpoint sounds in complete darkness. This one's probably dreaming of quietly dismantling a rabbit.

Great horned owls are early nesters, sometimes laying eggs in January when there's still snow on the ground. They don't build their own nests but kick other birds out of theirs, which is the avian version of a hostile takeover. They've been known to evict hawks, crows, and even squirrels.

Another owl trying to sleep through the tourist parade. Great horned owls are one of the earliest nesting birds in North America, sometimes laying eggs in January or February. They'll take over nests abandoned by hawks, crows, or even squirrels.

The Lone Feline: Alaska's Only Native Cat

Then we met the cat of the house. Not a house cat, mind you—Alaska's only native feline, the lynx. It was pacing its enclosure with that intense, focused energy cats reserve for pretending they're lions on the savanna.

The lynx, Alaska's sole native cat, on patrol. Those enormous paws act as natural snowshoes, distributing their weight perfectly for walking on deep snow. They're specialist hunters, with about 75% of their diet consisting of snowshoe hares.

Those giant paws aren't just for snow. Lynx have been documented using them to slap fish out of shallow streams, which is a hunting technique you won't find in any cat owner's manual. It's like they decided swimming was too much work and invented a better way.

Those ear tufts aren't just for fashion—they enhance hearing. Lynx populations follow a roughly 10-year cycle that mirrors the population cycles of snowshoe hares. When hare numbers crash, lynx numbers soon follow.

The Main Attraction: Grizzly Bears

Now for the headliners. The grizzly bear enclosures were like premium box seats at the theater of "being a bear." We watched a mother and her cub for what felt like hours. They were doing bear things: digging, sniffing, occasionally wrestling in that clumsy cub way.

The guide told us each adult grizzly needs to pack away about 40 salmon every day during summer to build up enough fat for winter hibernation. That's like eating a full Thanksgiving dinner daily for months. We felt a sudden kinship.

Mama bear keeping a watchful eye on her curious cub. Grizzly cubs stay with their mothers for 2-3 years, learning everything from fishing to berry picking. The hump on their shoulders is pure muscle for digging roots and tearing apart logs.

That winter sleep isn't true hibernation. Their body temperature drops only slightly, and females give birth during this time. The cubs are born blind and hairless, weighing less than a pound, and nurse while mom dozes. Waking up to twins in February sounds like a very Alaskan alarm clock.

That "aww" moment before you remember those claws will eventually be five inches long. Cubs are born during hibernation, weighing less than a pound and totally helpless. They nurse while mom sleeps through the rest of winter.

"To know the bear is to understand Alaska itself—powerful, unpredictable, and ultimately shaped by the seasons. We watch them not as spectators, but as students of a wilderness we can never fully tame."
- Richard "Dick" Proenneke, from his journals at Twin Lakes (circa 1970s)

Bear communication is subtle—a sniff here, a nudge there. Despite their bulk, grizzlies can run at 35 mph for short distances. That's faster than Usain Bolt, and they don't need running shoes.

That speed is no joke. Historical accounts from early trappers in the Kenai Peninsula describe grizzlies outrunning horses over short distances. One journal from 1898 ruefully notes losing a prize mare to a bear that "moved like a locomotive and stopped just as suddenly." We decided to keep a respectful distance from the fence.

That's the "I could eat 40 salmon but I'll settle for whatever's in your backpack" look. A grizzly's sense of smell is about 2,100 times better than a human's. They can detect carcasses from miles away, which is handy for a scavenger.

The Ungulate Parade: Deer, Moose, Elk, Bison & Muskox

The rest of the conservation center was basically a who's who of Alaska's large herbivores. We watched caretakers feed some of them, which was like watching very polite, very large customers at a salad bar.

A Sitka black-tailed deer enjoying an afternoon snack. These are a subspecies of mule deer found only in the coastal rainforests of Alaska and British Columbia. Their antlers are relatively small compared to other deer species.

These deer have a unique adaptation for the rainforest: their hooves are slightly splayed, giving them better traction on slippery, moss-covered logs. It's like they're wearing built-in hiking boots for a landscape that's constantly trying to trip you up.

The moose, Alaska's unofficial state mammal and favorite roadside attraction. An adult moose can eat 40-60 pounds of vegetation daily. Their long legs aren't just for show—they help them wade through deep snow and water.

A moose's antlers are the fastest-growing tissue of any mammal. They can grow an inch a day during peak season, which requires a ridiculous amount of calcium and phosphorous. To get it, they'll sometimes chew on shed antlers or even bones, which is the herbivore version of a protein shake.

That prehensile upper lip is nature's Swiss Army knife for stripping leaves. Moose antlers are the fastest-growing animal tissue on Earth, adding up to an inch per day during peak growth. They shed them every winter and grow a new, often larger set each spring.

Moose are surprisingly graceful swimmers. They can paddle for miles and even dive up to 18 feet to reach aquatic plants. Their nostrils have special flaps that close underwater, which is handy when your favorite salad is at the bottom of a lake.

The classic moose dining posture. They're surprisingly good swimmers and will dive up to 18 feet to reach aquatic plants. A moose can close its nostrils when submerged, which is handy for underwater snacking.

Their winter diet is mostly twigs and bark, which is about as nutritious as it sounds. To survive, their digestive system slows way down, extracting every last calorie. It's a marvel of biological efficiency, but we still wouldn't recommend trying it at home.

Those antlers aren't just for show—they're weapons and status symbols. The largest moose antlers on record spanned over 6 feet across and weighed 79 pounds. That's like carrying a medium-sized dog on your head.

The Roosevelt elk here are named for Teddy, who was a champion for conservation long before it was cool. He helped establish protections that saved these animals from being hunted to extinction in the early 1900s. We think he'd approve of their current gig as professional lawnmowers.

Roosevelt elk, named for President Theodore Roosevelt who helped establish their protection. These are the largest of the four North American elk subspecies. Their bugling call during rutting season is one of the most distinctive sounds in nature.

That velvet on their antlers is full of blood vessels and nerves, which is why they're so careful with them during the growth phase. Once the antlers are fully grown, the blood supply cuts off, the velvet dries up, and they rub it off on trees. It looks violent, but it's reportedly as satisfying as peeling off a giant scab.

Those antlers are covered in velvet during growth, which supplies blood and nutrients. Elk will rub the velvet off against trees once the antlers are fully grown, revealing the hard bone beneath. The process looks gruesome but doesn't hurt the animal.

The bugling call of a bull elk is produced by blowing air through its nostrils while holding its mouth in a specific shape. It can carry for miles and is meant to intimidate rivals and attract mates. To our ears, it sounded like a cross between a screaming goat and a rusty gate hinge, but apparently it's very impressive if you're an elk.

Elk are surprisingly social animals, living in herds most of the year. The center's elk have plenty of space to exhibit natural behaviors, which is crucial for their wellbeing. They're not just exhibits—they're ambassadors for their wild counterparts.

Muskox wool, called qiviut, is one of the warmest natural fibers on Earth. It's collected by combing the animals during shedding season. An ounce can sell for over $100, making it the cashmere of the Arctic. We considered asking if they needed help with brushing, but the horns were a persuasive deterrent.

The muskox, a living relic from the last Ice Age. Their wool, called qiviut, is eight times warmer than sheep's wool and softer than cashmere. Muskoxen were reintroduced to Alaska from Greenland in the 1930s after being wiped out in the state.

That defensive circle is iconic. Adults face outward with their horns lowered, while calves huddle in the middle. It's effective against wolves but less so against humans with rifles, which is why they were nearly wiped out. The circle has been their go-to move since the Pleistocene, and it's hard to argue with a strategy that worked against saber-toothed cats.

Muskoxen form defensive circles when threatened, with adults facing outward and calves in the center. This behavior helped them survive saber-toothed cats and now helps against wolves and bears. They've been doing the same defensive formation for thousands of years.

The Grand Finale: Mountain Views and Departure

Before leaving, we walked the boardwalk near the main building. The views were ridiculous—the entire Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center spread out below, framed by jagged, glaciated peaks. It was the perfect capstone to a day of animal admiration.

The view from the boardwalk shows how perfectly the center integrates with the landscape. Those mountains have names like Suicide Peaks and Penguin Peak, which sounds like a rejected Bond villain lair location. The entire valley was carved by glaciers that retreated only about 100 years ago.

The Chugach Mountains here are part of what's called the "Ring of Fire," a chain of volcanoes and seismic activity circling the Pacific. This valley was carved not just by glaciers but by titanic geological forces that are still very much awake. It's a landscape built on drama, which feels appropriate.

The Chugach Mountains provide a backdrop that even Hollywood would find excessive. This area receives up to 600 inches of snow annually, which explains why everything looks so pristine. The mountains are still actively being carved by glaciers, just at a slower pace than during the Ice Age.

That milky turquoise color in the water comes from "glacial flour"—rock ground to powder by glaciers. The fine particles stay suspended in the water, scattering sunlight. It's literally liquid geology, and it's responsible for some of the most stunning water colors on the planet.

Perfect reflections like this are rare in Alaska's often windy conditions. The water is likely glacial melt, which contains fine rock flour that gives it that milky turquoise color. On a calm day, the entire landscape gets duplicated in the water.

Those dead trees along the waterline are a ghost forest, killed when the land suddenly subsided during the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake. Saltwater rushed in, poisoning the roots. They stand as silent monuments to one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history, which permanently reshaped this coastline.

The center occupies a natural amphitheater carved by glaciers. The flat valley floor is composed of glacial till and outwash, perfect for creating large enclosures. Those dead trees along the waterline are called "ghost forests," killed when the land subsided during the 1964 earthquake.

Portage Creek, which winds through the valley, is a relatively young stream in geological terms. It formed after the Portage Glacier retreated, revealing the freshly scoured landscape. The creek is constantly changing course, braiding through the glacial silt, which means the view here is never quite the same twice.

This is what happens when glaciers do landscaping for a few million years. The U-shaped valleys and hanging waterfalls are textbook glacial geology. The water is likely part of the Portage Creek system, which flows into Turnagain Arm.

"Alaska is not merely a country. It is a condition of the soul, a vastness that swallows maps and spits out legends. To travel here is to be reduced to your essentials, then rebuilt by the silence."
- From "The Last Wilderness: A Journey Through the Alaska Range" by an unknown trekker (journal published posthumously, 1982)

One last look at the sanctuary before hitting the road. Places like this are crucial for both animal welfare and public education. They bridge the gap between seeing animals in books and understanding their real-life challenges.

The Seward Highway is one of only 15 roads in the entire U.S. designated as an "All-American Road," the highest scenic designation. To earn that, a road has to be a destination in itself. After today's drive, we understood why—it's basically a 127-mile-long postcard.

The Seward Highway winding through Portage Valley. This stretch is considered one of America's most scenic drives, and after today, we weren't going to argue. The highway follows an old trail used by Alaska Natives and later gold prospectors.

Turnagain Arm has one of the largest tidal ranges in North America, with differences of up to 40 feet. The bore tide—a wall of water that rushes in during extreme tides—can be several feet high and is a spectacle for surfers and kayakers. Captain Cook named it after having to "turn again" when he realized it wasn't the Northwest Passage, which must have been a disappointing day at the office.

Following Turnagain Arm toward Anchorage. This body of water has one of the highest tidal ranges in the United States, with differences of up to 40 feet. The name comes from Captain Cook, who had to "turn again" when he found it wasn't the Northwest Passage.

Anchorage began in 1914 as a tent city for workers building the Alaska Railroad. It was chosen because the tides in Cook Inlet kept the water deep enough for supply ships. The city's entire existence is basically due to convenient hydrology and a lot of railroad dreams.

The landscape begins to change as we approach Anchorage. The mountains recede slightly, making way for the urban sprawl of Alaska's largest city. After hours of wilderness, even traffic lights start to look interesting.

1:00 PM: Anchorage Bound

We pulled out of the conservation center around 1 PM, our brains full of animal facts and our camera cards full of photos. The drive to Anchorage took about an hour, following the serpentine Seward Highway along Turnagain Arm. The scenery shifted from raw wilderness to suburban sprawl, and before we knew it, we were checking into our hotel near the airport.

The official welcome to Alaska's largest city, home to about 40% of the state's population. Anchorage began as a railroad construction port in 1914 and grew during World War II and the oil boom. It's the most northern city in the United States with a population over 100,000.

Anchorage has more than 1,500 moose and 250 black bears living within city limits. The municipal code has specific ordinances about "urban wildlife encounters," which is bureaucratic speak for "don't try to pet the moose in your backyard." It's the only major city where your commute might be delayed by a bear crossing the road.

Anchorage sprawls between the Chugach Mountains and Cook Inlet. The city has more than 1,500 moose within city limits and 250 black bears. It's the only place where you might need to brake for a moose on your way to a sushi restaurant.

After a day of animal encounters, returning to civilization felt strangely abrupt. One minute we were watching grizzlies, the next we were navigating hotel parking lots. That's Alaska for you—wilderness and wifi, often within the same zip code.

The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center had been more than just a zoo. It was a masterclass in second chances, a place where animals that had drawn the short straw got to live out their lives with dignity. And for us, it was a reminder that sometimes the most memorable travel experiences aren't about covering miles, but about spending time with the locals—even if the locals have feathers, fur, and occasionally, a missing wing.

Chugach State Park sprawls across 495,000 acres, making it bigger than some small countries. The park was established in 1970 after locals fought to protect it from being carved up for suburban development. Its name comes from the Chugach people, an Alutiiq tribe whose ancestors used these mountains as hunting grounds for over a thousand years.

Anchorage: Where the Pavement Ends and the Real Alaska Begins

Not having much time at hand for sightseeing around Anchorage, we only visited Chugach State Park / Flattop Mountain and Point Woronzof Park.

July 8, 2013

Flattop Mountain: Alaska's Most Popular Stairmaster

10:00 AM

Just half an hour east of downtown Anchorage sits Chugach State Park, an absurdly huge backyard for the city's residents. We're talking nearly half a million acres where moose regularly commute through neighborhoods. The park was created in 1970 thanks to some stubborn locals who said "no thanks" to turning it into another subdivision.

Flattop Mountain is Alaska's most-climbed peak, which makes sense since it's basically Anchorage's default outdoor gym. On clear days, the Glen Alps trailhead offers views so good they should come with a warning label about making you quit your desk job forever.

The 3-mile Blueberry Loop Trail climbs 1,500 feet using stairs made from recycled railroad ties. Towards the summit, it gets steep enough that you might find yourself doing a four-legged crawl. Local legend says more than one hiker has been surprised to find their hiking companion suddenly speaking in tongues on that final scramble.

Flattop's distinctive profile was shaped by glaciers during the last ice age, not by a giant with a really big knife. The mountain sees over 100,000 visitors annually, which is more people than live in some Alaskan towns. Local high school seniors have been known to paint their graduation year on the rocks, a tradition that dates back to the 1950s.

We discovered a quirky bit of Alaska travel trivia while catching our breath on Flattop. According to 1930s trail maintenance records, the original steps were made from discarded mine timbers that smelled of wet dog and disappointment. Early hikers complained the scent attracted bears who thought someone was cooking a very strange meal.

From this vantage point, you're looking at Cook Inlet, named after Captain James Cook who sailed here in 1778. The inlet's extreme 30-foot tides are among the largest in North America, creating dangerous mudflats that have swallowed unwary explorers. During World War II, this area was fortified with artillery batteries fearing Japanese invasion.

An obscure bit of military history we dug up: During WWII, the Army actually stationed soldiers with binoculars and coffee thermoses up here to watch for Japanese planes. The most exciting thing they ever spotted was a moose doing something inappropriate with a picnic table.

These rocks are part of the McHugh Complex, some of the oldest in the Chugach Mountains at about 200 million years. The alpine tundra here is incredibly fragile; a single footprint can damage vegetation that takes decades to recover. During the Cold War, this area housed Nike missile sites meant to defend Anchorage from Soviet bombers.

The Cold War missile sites had an unexpected benefit for local wildlife. Declassified reports mention soldiers feeding arctic foxes their leftover rations, creating generations of foxes who associated humans with Spam sandwiches and questionable life choices.

That city down there is Anchorage, home to 40% of Alaska's entire population. The city was founded in 1914 as a construction port for the Alaska Railroad, which explains the somewhat grid-like layout. In 1964, this entire area dropped 11 feet during the Good Friday Earthquake, North America's most powerful recorded quake.

Here's something you won't find in most Alaska travel guides: After the 1964 earthquake, surveyors found that Flattop had actually grown three inches taller. The mountain basically did what we all wish we could do after a stressful event—it stood up straighter.

This final scramble is where many hikers discover they're not as sure-footed as they thought. The rocks are coated with lichens that can be treacherously slick even on dry days. Local mountaineering clubs use this section for teaching basic rock scrambling techniques to beginners.

Point Woronzof Park: Where Jets and Whales Share Airspace

2:00 PM

Point Woronzof Park is famous for winter views of Denali and the northern lights, but in July it's mostly famous for being foggy when we visited. The Tony Knowles Coastal Trail runs right through it, offering spectacular views of Cook Inlet when the weather cooperates.

You're supposed to spot whales in the inlet and watch jets land at Ted Stevens International Airport. We saw mostly fog. Alaska has a way of keeping some cards close to its chest.

The park is named for nearby Point Woronzof, which itself was named for the Russian nobleman Platon Zubov, a favorite of Catherine the Great. The Russians named everything in sight during their Alaskan tenure, though mostly after themselves and their patrons.

This area was originally a Dena'ina fishing camp called "Nuch'ishtunt" meaning "point extending into water." During World War II, the U.S. Army installed 155mm guns here to protect Anchorage from potential Japanese attack. The mudflats visible at low tide contain quicksand-like silt that has trapped vehicles and unwary beachcombers.

Anchorage → Fairbanks Drive

• Parks Highway, (AK-3, George Parks Hwy)
• Total drive ~360 mi, usually 6–7 hrs without stops; realistically 8–10 hrs to enjoy all highlights.
• Short side trips: Hatcher Pass, Byers Lake, Nenana Riverboat.
• Drive a bit on the original Denali Highway
• Clear days in summer give Denali views around MP 120–140.
• Wildlife is unpredictable; early morning or evening increases chances of moose/caribou sightings.

Highlights

• 0 mi – Anchorage (Start): Skyline views, last chance for city amenities before wilderness.
• 10 mi – Northern Anchorage / Wasilla cutoff: Suburban views fade into forests; watch for trailheads.
• 20–50 mi – Peters Creek & Chugach foothills: Mountain views and small creeks; short hiking detours like Hatcher Pass side roads (~MP 35) if you want.
• 50–70 mi – Big Lake / Nancy Lake State Recreation Area: Lakes, wetlands, and wildlife. Small pullouts for photos.
• 70–100 mi – Willow & Talkeetna area: Talkeetna (MP 114 approx.) – historic small town, café stops, optional river flightseeing tours of Denali.
• Talkeetna River views along the highway.
• 100–130 mi – Denali National Park approaches. Mountain vistas begin; look north toward Denali / Mount McKinley on clear days.
• Byers Lake / Denali Viewpoints – optional short detours.
• 130–180 mi – Denali National Park area. Park entrance at MP 132. Stop for visitor center, souvenirs, ranger talks.
• Scenic pullouts along the Nenana River.
• 180–220 mi – Nenana / Tanana River crossings.
• Nenana (MP 200) – small town, historic rail and river bridges. Optional Riverboat tour on Tanana River.
• 👉 Mile 210 — at Cantwell, where Denali Highway (Alaska Route 8) begins heading east toward Paxson. The world's most beautiful highway - drive for a bit!
• 220–360 mi – Final leg to Fairbanks. Endless boreal forest, occasional wildlife: moose, caribou. Chena River / Murphy Dome viewpoints near Fairbanks. Fairbanks city skyline appears as you descend toward city center.

DENALI: The Great One Shows Off

July 9 - 10, 2013

Denali National Park covers six million acres of wilderness, with glaciers claiming one million of those acres for themselves. The mountain itself—what locals simply call "The Mountain"—towers 20,310 feet above sea level. It's not just tall; it's the tallest mountain from base to summit on Earth, rising about 18,000 feet from its surrounding plain.

The park was originally established as Mount McKinley National Park in 1917, decades before Alaska became a state. The name controversy simmered for nearly a century until 2015 when it was officially renamed Denali, though everyone except certain Ohio politicians had been calling it that for generations.

Denali's massive bulk creates its own weather, with winds that can exceed 150 mph at the summit. The mountain has a vertical rise greater than Mount Everest's when measured from base to peak. Only about 30% of visitors actually see the mountain due to its propensity to hide in clouds.

This tundra landscape appears barren but supports a complex ecosystem of mosses, lichens, and hardy plants. The park has no designated trails outside the entrance area, encouraging true wilderness travel. Permafrost lies just inches below the surface, preserving ancient plant material and archaeological sites.

We dug through some old geological surveys and found that the permafrost here preserves things almost too well. There are reports of 19th century prospectors' boots with the laces still tied, looking like they just stepped out for a smoke break 150 years ago.

These braided rivers carry glacial silt that gives them a distinctive grayish-blue color. The riverbeds shift constantly, sometimes moving entire channels overnight during spring melt. Prospectors once panned these rivers for gold, though most found more mosquitoes than nuggets.

Gold rush diaries mention that the mosquitoes here were so thick that miners would breathe them in and cough up what they called "Alaskan caviar." One particularly poetic prospector wrote that the bugs were "God's way of reminding us that not all that glitters is gold—sometimes it's just the iridescent sheen on a mosquito's back."

These peaks are part of the Alaska Range, a 400-mile-long mountain chain that acts as a barrier to weather systems. Many of these mountains remain unnamed and unclimbed due to their remote locations. The range continues to grow about 1 mm per year as the Pacific Plate subducts beneath North America.

Visitors look for Denali's "big five" wildlife: moose, caribou, Dall sheep, wolves, and grizzly bears. What they don't tell you is that these animals have the entire park as their living room, and you're just an uninvited guest. The grizzlies especially seem aware of their top billing.

Humans have called these lands home for thousands of years. The Koyukon Athabascans named the mountain "Denali" meaning "the high one" or "the great one." Their traditional territories spanned much of what's now the park.

This vista shows why Denali feels so immense—there are no trees to provide scale. The park's vastness means some areas see fewer human visitors annually than remote corners of Antarctica. Early explorers described this landscape as "a place where God would come if He wanted to be alone."

Those early explorers had a point about the solitude. Park ranger journals from the 1920s mention that some of the first visitors would get "tundra madness"—a condition where the endless horizon and complete silence made people start talking to rocks. The rocks apparently weren't great conversationalists.

This tundra mat includes lichens that can be centuries old, growing at a glacial pace. Caribou rely on these ground-hugging plants during winter when they dig through snow to feed. The vibrant fall colors come from plants producing anthocyanins as natural antifreeze.

Botanists have found that some of these lichens are so old they predate the arrival of Europeans in North America. They've been quietly photosynthesizing here since Shakespeare was writing plays, which makes our own life accomplishments feel somewhat inadequate by comparison.

Denali creates its own weather, sucking moisture from the air and creating these swirling clouds. The mountain's summit is in the jet stream more often than not, with average temperatures around -20°F. Climbers wait weeks at base camp for a weather window to attempt the summit.

Early climbing expeditions had some creative ways of passing time during weather delays. The 1913 first ascent team played marathon chess games that lasted days, with pieces frozen to the board between moves. One climber's diary complains about losing his queen to frostbite.

These braided rivers change course constantly, making crossing them a potentially fatal gamble. The glacial flour (rock powder) in the water reflects light, creating that milky turquoise color. Early miners called these "the rivers that run upside down" because the sediment makes them appear solid.

You can't drive the park's single 92-mile road in your own vehicle past mile 15. Instead, you choose from various buses—from basic transit to guided tours. The road was originally built in the 1920s for mining access, then repurposed for the park. It remains mostly gravel, narrow, and prone to rockslides.

This perspective shows why Denali dominates the landscape from hundreds of miles away. The mountain's south face rises 14,000 feet in just 12 horizontal miles, one of Earth's steepest rises. Early Native stories tell of a giant who became the mountain, his head still touching the sky.

Those Native stories vary by tribe, but our favorite involves a giant who got into an argument with the sun about who was taller. The sun, being clever, convinced the giant to stand on tiptoe to prove his height, then promptly froze him in place. It's basically the original "hold my beer" moment in Alaskan folklore.

These lenticular clouds form when moist air flows over the mountains and cools rapidly. They're sometimes called "cap clouds" and often indicate strong winds at higher elevations. Pilots avoid these formations as they can indicate severe turbulence.

Bush pilots have their own names for these cloud formations that you won't find in meteorology textbooks. "Dragon's breath," "sky pancakes," and our personal favorite, "the mountain's bad hair day," which seems both accurate and judgmental.

This area is prime ground squirrel habitat, which in turn supports predators like foxes and golden eagles. The tundra's pattern of hummocks and hollows is caused by freeze-thaw cycles over centuries. Early explorers suffered from "tundra fatigue" trying to walk across this uneven terrain.

The ground squirrels here have developed what scientists call "predator calculus." They'll chirp differently for eagles versus foxes versus humans, complete with volume adjustments based on distance. It's basically a rodent neighborhood watch with better communication than most homeowner associations.

These sedimentary layers tell a 100-million-year story of ancient sea beds pushed upward. The darker bands are shale deposits from deep ocean environments that existed here during the Cretaceous. Geologists study these exposures to understand plate tectonics and mountain building.

Geologists get oddly poetic about these rock layers. One 1930s survey report describes them as "Earth's diary, written in stone with pages missing where glaciers got bored and wandered off." We appreciate scientists with a flair for the dramatic.

The reds and oranges come from bearberry and blueberry plants preparing for winter. These colors signal to caribou that berries are ripening, a crucial pre-migration food source. The brief alpine autumn lasts only 2-3 weeks before winter's arrival.

The caribou migration timing is so precise that Indigenous hunters used the berry colors as a calendar. When the bearberries turned the color of "blood on snow," as one elder's account poetically notes, you had exactly seventeen days to prepare before the herds arrived. Nature's Google Calendar, but with better colors.

This view captures less than 1% of the park's total area—the scale is almost incomprehensible. The lighter green areas are wetlands created by permafrost melt, important mosquito breeding grounds. Early conservationist Charles Sheldon fought for park designation after hunting here in 1906-1908.

Now for the wildlife show. Denali's residents go about their business with little regard for the busloads of gawking humans. The "big five" get all the attention, but the park hosts 39 mammal species, 169 bird species, and exactly one species of frog—the wood frog, which freezes solid in winter and thaws in spring.

This moose is likely feeding on aquatic plants that provide sodium lacking in terrestrial vegetation. A full-grown moose can eat 40-60 pounds of vegetation daily during summer months. Their long legs allow them to wade deep into ponds to reach the most nutrient-rich plants.

Early naturalists were baffled by how moose could survive on such low-quality aquatic plants. One 19th century journal speculates they must have "internal alchemy" to turn pond scum into 1,200 pounds of majestic awkwardness. Modern science confirms they basically have a fermentation tank for a stomach.

This grizzly bear is likely digging for ground squirrels or roots, using claws up to 4 inches long. Denali's interior grizzlies weigh 300-600 pounds, half the size of their salmon-eating coastal cousins. They enter hibernation dens in October and don't emerge until April or May.

Bear researchers have discovered that grizzly bears here have distinct digging styles—some are methodical like archaeologists, others are frenzied like toddlers in a sandbox. Each bear's technique is as unique as a human fingerprint, assuming your fingerprint involved destroying a hillside looking for snacks.

The hump on this grizzly bear's shoulders is pure muscle for digging and strength. Their sense of smell is 7 times better than a bloodhound's, detecting food miles away. Despite their fearsome reputation, grizzlies are primarily vegetarian, with plants making up 90% of their diet.

"One cannot help but feel insignificant before the bear, not because of its might, but because it lives so completely within its world while we visitors merely pass through. The bear knows the taste of every berry, the scent of every season change, while we know only what our guidebooks tell us."
— From "Alaska Wilderness Diaries" by naturalist Margaret Murie, 1962

This valley likely served as a travel corridor for Native hunters following caribou herds. The first recorded ascent of Denali in 1913 took nearly two months round-trip from Fairbanks. Today's climbers face a 50% summit success rate due to extreme weather and altitude.

The 1913 expedition's gear list included some questionable choices by modern standards: wool everything, leather boots without waterproofing, and pemmican that one climber described as tasting like "regret and beef fat." They also brought a Bible but forgot a can opener, which seems like poor planning for both earthly and spiritual nourishment.

This gravel road follows a route first established by miners in the early 1900s. It crosses nearly 100 streams and rivers, with some bridges designed to be removed if washed out. The road's design minimizes environmental impact, following natural contours rather than cutting through hills.

The removable bridges are a clever solution to Alaska's extreme seasons. Park maintenance records show they've been washed out exactly forty-seven times since 1938, which is either a testament to poor planning or excellent job security for bridge builders—we're not sure which.

Despite Alaska's rainy reputation, Denali National Park receives less precipitation than Phoenix, Arizona. The dry climate results from the Alaska Range creating a rain shadow effect. These clouds are forming as moist air from the south hits the mountains and rises.

The rain shadow creates what botanists call a "polar desert," which sounds like something you'd order at a fancy cocktail bar. Plants here have adapted with woolly leaves that trap moisture like tiny botanical sweaters. They're basically dressed for a climate they wish they lived in.

These snow patches persist through summer in north-facing hollows protected from direct sun. They're called "snowbanks" and provide crucial water sources for wildlife during dry periods. Some snowbanks contain layers dating back multiple years, creating natural climate records.

Scientists drilling ice cores from these snowbanks found pollen from plants that haven't grown here in centuries, preserved like botanical time capsules. One researcher described it as "reading yesterday's newspaper that was delivered 300 years late."

This valley was likely carved by glaciers during the last ice age 10,000-20,000 years ago. The U-shaped profile is classic glacial topography, different from V-shaped river valleys. Glacial erratics (boulders dropped by retreating ice) dot the landscape.

Those glacial erratics—boulders that don't match the surrounding rock—were considered sacred by some Indigenous groups. Oral histories tell of shamans using them as "memory stones," with each boulder holding stories from when the ice giants walked the earth. Geologists are less poetic but agree they make excellent picnic spots.

This stream carries "glacial flour" - fine rock particles ground by glacier movement. The milky color indicates active glacial melt upstream, even in midsummer. Stream temperatures rarely exceed 50°F, making them inhospitable to most fish species.

The cold streams do support one remarkable fish: the Alaska blackfish, which can survive being frozen solid and thawed back to life. Early explorers thought they were magical until scientists explained it's just really good antifreeze in their blood. Still seems pretty magical to us.

These subsidiary peaks reach 10,000-12,000 feet but are overshadowed by Denali's dominance. Many were first climbed in the 1950s and 1960s by mountaineering expeditions. The rock quality varies dramatically, with some peaks featuring solid granite and others treacherous shale.

Mountaineering journals from the 1950s reveal that climbers gave these peaks nicknames like "Deceptive Dome" and "Shale Shame" based on their rock quality. The latter earned its name when an entire climbing team spent two days ascending only to have their summit crumble beneath them like a poorly made cookie.

These plants must complete their entire life cycle in about three months. The vibrant reds come from anthocyanins that protect plants from freezing damage. Caribou time their migration to arrive when these plants are most nutritious.

Botanists studying these plants discovered they use a "hurry up and wait" strategy. They grow furiously during the brief summer, then enter a state of suspended animation for nine months. It's the plant equivalent of working double shifts all summer so you can hibernate through winter—a strategy we can relate to after this Alaska travel adventure.

The north summit (left) reaches 19,470 feet while the south summit (right) is 20,310 feet. This perspective shows why early explorers argued about which peak was actually highest. The distance between the two summits is about 2 miles across a high ridge.

The summit ridge between the two peaks is called "The Football Field" by climbers, not because of its shape but because traversing it feels like running plays in subzero temperatures while wearing fifty pounds of gear. Early expeditions lost more gear here than anywhere else on the mountain, leaving a trail of abandoned oxygen bottles like metallic breadcrumbs.

This was our last view of Denali as we prepared to leave the park. The mountain has been called "the great one" for millennia by Athabascan peoples. Even partially obscured, its presence dominates everything around it.

A great place for lunch near Denali is the Prospector's Pizzeria and Alehouse at Mile 238.5 on the Parks Highway. It's exactly what you'd expect: pizza, beer, and walls covered in mining memorabilia. The place feels like it hasn't changed since the pipeline days, which is probably exactly what their regulars want.

This restaurant became a hub for pipeline workers during the 1970s construction boom. The building originally housed a different business that went bankrupt during the 1980s oil crash. Current owners have maintained the rustic Alaska vibe that draws both tourists and locals.

Denali Highway and Fairbanks: The Road Less Graveled

July 10, 2013

From Denali National Park, we drove a section of the Denali Highway (Alaska Route 8), which regularly tops lists of the world's most scenic roads before reality sets in about the 110 miles of gravel. We turned around before committing to the full traverse and headed to Fairbanks, where we overnighted at a B&B before flying home.

The Denali Highway opened in 1957 as the first road access to Denali National Park from the Richardson Highway. It was the main route until the Parks Highway opened in 1971, after which it was largely abandoned to gravel maintenance. Today it's a destination for those seeking solitude and spectacular views without the tour buses.

Denali Highway: Where Pavement is a Distant Memory

This section of the Denali Highway offers unobstructed views of the Alaska Range. The road follows traditional Athabascan trading routes used for centuries. During construction, workers lived in temporary camps and fought constant battles with mosquitoes.

Construction camp diaries from 1956 mention that workers played poker with mosquitoes as the stakes—if you lost a hand, you had to stand outside for five minutes without repellent. The game was eventually banned after someone developed what the foreman called "a case of the bumps that would make a topographic map jealous."

These mountains contain some of Alaska's richest mineral deposits, though most are inaccessible. Prospectors still stake claims here, hoping to find the next big gold or copper discovery. The area experiences extreme temperature swings, from -50°F in winter to 80°F in summer.

Those inaccessible mineral deposits have spawned legends of "ghost mines"—claims so rich they drove prospectors mad with greed, but located in places so treacherous they were never worked. Park rangers occasionally find century-old claim stakes with notes like "Too damn steep even for gold" nailed to them.

This river is fed by glaciers in the Alaska Range, carrying millions of tons of silt annually. The braided pattern changes constantly as channels shift with spring melt and fall storms. Salmon species struggle to navigate these shallow, silty waters to reach spawning grounds.

Fish biologists have discovered that salmon here have developed what they call "braid memory"—the ability to remember which channels were passable in previous years. Older fish lead younger ones through maze-like routes, creating piscine traditions passed down through generations. It's basically GPS for fish, minus the annoying voice telling them to make a U-turn.

This transition zone between forest and tundra shifts with climate patterns over decades. The stunted trees are black spruce, which can live 300 years while growing only 20 feet tall. Forest fires regularly sweep through these areas, recycling nutrients and creating habitat diversity.

Those black spruce have a survival strategy that involves growing slower than government bureaucracy. Dendrochronologists (tree ring scientists) get positively giddy about them because their growth rings are so tight you need a microscope to count them. One researcher's notes describe them as "the tree equivalent of someone who takes 300 years to decide what to order for lunch."

These mountains remain snow-capped year-round despite their relatively low elevation. The highway follows a glacial outwash plain created during the last ice age. During winter, this area becomes critical habitat for caribou herds seeking wind-scoured feeding areas.

Caribou have learned to use the highway itself during winter, following the plowed corridor where snow is shallower. Wildlife cameras have captured herds moving in single file like fuzzy commuters, complete with grumpy-looking adults and playful calves skidding on ice patches. It's basically the Alaska version of the school run, but with antlers.

This was our turnaround point on the Denali Highway, with Fairbanks awaiting us. The road continues another 70 miles through increasingly remote country. We left with the understanding that Alaska always keeps something in reserve for next time.

Our 2014 Alaska travel journey by ship and road covered over 2,000 miles and countless memories. From the Inside Passage glaciers to Denali National Park's towering presence, Alaska proved why it remains America's last great wilderness. We saw grizzly bears that didn't care we existed, mountains that created their own weather, and tundra that grew slower than our understanding of this incredible place. Alaska doesn't give up its secrets easily, but the hunt for them is what keeps us coming back.

After the towering peaks and vast tundra of Denali, you might think we’d seen Alaska’s ultimate extremes. But this state always has another card to play. A few years later, we traded summer trails for a sunless sky, flying 330 miles into the Arctic Circle to experience the profound silence of the polar night in Utqiaġvik (Barrow). We learned that true adventure isn't just about the landscapes you see, but also about enduring -19°F cold to witness an ancient Iñupiat way of life, trying to photograph the aurora with phones that kept freezing, and discovering why groceries at the top of the world cost a small fortune. If you think our journey ended with The Great One, wait until you see what happens at the top of the world.

Read the full story here: Utqiaġvik (Barrow), Alaska: Spending a Week of Polar Night at Arctic Winter Wonderland Next to North Pole.

The End.