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Highlights

Anchorage Arrival

Saturday July 26 -

My flight to Anchorage left Seattle at 10AM, so I didn't have to get up to ridiculously early at the start of the trip.  But with a heavy workload the last few weeks, and I really hadn't done the final preparation and planning I had hoped to.  I didn't even finish packing until 1:30AM this morning.  The flight was uneventful, other than once again I lucked out by having an empty seat next to me - that's happened a lot this summer, which is unusual in this era of tightly packed airplanes.  I was at my downtown Anchorage hotel shortly after 1PM, although I wasn't able to check in at that point.  That was alright, as I was able to leave the car there.

One thing I did get done last night was print off some tour information - I had a couple tours I wanted to take from Anchorage.  I set off on foot towards the downtown core to check it out and to visit the travel agency whose information I had printed.  But they couldn't actually book either tour.  They were able to refer me to a nearby agency to book one of them; the other one had to be confirmed through a company that wasn't open on weekends.  Shoot.

I walked over to the other agency and booked Monday's tour, a Prince William Sound cruise out of Whittier.  Then I walked back to the hotel to check in for my five night stay.

It had been raining since I arrived in Anchorage, so I didn't feel like heading out again.  And with the limited sleep last night, I decided to take a nap, even though I spent most of the three hour flight resting.  I basically ended up taking a couple one hour naps, and then figured that I really needed to get up and go get dinner.

After dinner I returned to the hotel, stopping along the way to pick up some munchies for the car for tomorrow's road trip.  Unpacking, prepping for tomorrow's sightseeing and a bit of TV filled the evening.  

A bit of nightlife tonight.  I decided to check out Mad Myrna's, one of two gay bars located within a couple blocks of my hotel.  I've been to a gay friendly bar in Alaska during my Juneau trip back in 2004, but this was my first true gay bar in the state, the 47th state in which I can now say I've been to a gay bar.  New Hampshire is the only state that's left on that list (North Dakota and Wyoming don't have gay bars).

It was actually a pretty decent club with its mix of bar, pools tables, dance floor, and outdoor patio for smoking.  The moderate size mixed crowd seemed rather typical of smaller city gay bars.  But the crowd never seemed to fully get going, and the mixed crowd steadily turned into an overwhelmingly lesbian crowd.  Perhaps the men migrate over to the nearby Raven, but I didn't check that place out tonight.

I didn't stay out too late, though.  With lots of late nights recently and a full day of sightseeing planned for tomorrow, not to mention the fact that Anchorage is an hour behind Seattle, and I was simply more interested in getting a good night's sleep.

It hit me as I wrote that last paragraph how often I think that lately.  There was a time that doesn't seem all that long ago where I could easily combine the late nights out with full days of sightseeing.  But now that I think about it, those days mostly came to an end maybe four to five years ago.  Of course, I'm 47 years old now, so that's pretty reasonable, I suppose.  Just not something that I care to have to acknowledge, I guess.

Seward Day Trip

Sunday July 27 -

My original plan was to drive straight down to Seward and then do my sightseeing on the way back.  But I couldn't resist the views along Turnagain arm, and with most of the turnouts on my side of the highway, I soon changed plans, sightseeing my way down the Seward highway to Seward itself.  That actually worked out for the best because traffic was pretty heavy in the evening with weekenders returning to the city when I made my way back to Anchorage.

Turnagain Arm is a false bay off of Cook Inlet.  It is lined with glacier-carved mountains, and the route is heavily wooded.  Very pretty, but it is hard to say much about it.  If you like snow-streaked mountains, lots of trees and mud flats (it was near low tide, so Turnagain Arm was emptying out), it is a pretty drive.  I stopped at a number of the turnouts, getting pictures of the water, the mountains and some of the flowers along the way.  It was mostly overcast and it sprinkled a few times, but yesterday's steady rain was gone.

Just north of Seward I headed off west off the highway to Kenai Fjords National Park, specifically to Exit Glacier.  I visited Exit Glacier on a similar trip to Seward on my first full day in Alaska during my 1992 trip.  Today, in fact, was in many ways just a repeat of that day.  At the time it was my first glacier, so I was more than a little fascinated with it.  Of course, since then I've seen lots of glaciers - in Alaska, Washington, Canada, Montana, Chile, Argentina, Iceland, Norway and of course Antarctica.  Between its significant retreat over the last 16 years and all that other glacier experience, Exit Glacier is now a bit underwhelming.  Pretty enough, to be sure, and I enjoyed the hike up to the viewpoint in spite of my lack of conditioning this summer, but after Antarctica and other places, it is a lot harder for something like Exit Glacier to measure up.

Then it was into the city of Seward itself.  My primary memory of my 1992 visit was of the marina where the boats are.  If I walked the streets of the city center back then, I had no memory of it (photos from the 1992 trip confirmed that I explored the city back then, too).  This time, after checking out the marina and getting some lunch, I headed into the city center and took a nice walk.  Several points provided me with nice views of Resurrection Bay.  I found a memorial park to Benny Benson, who came up with the design for the Alaska flag, the founder's monument, and the zero mile marker for the Iditarod National Historic Trail, the start of a 938 mile series of trails leading to Nome, used to connect several interior towns to the mail and other aspects of the port city of Seward.

I made a few stops on the way back to Anchorage.  The sun had come out off and on, so I couldn't resist a few repetitive stops.  I'd cover the Turnagain Arm length of the drive a couple more times as this trip had me heading down to the peninsula three times, but I resisted the redundant photo stops on those later trips.

Back to Anchorage.  I got settled into the room, checked my photos and began recharging a camera battery.  With the sun out, I headed to the heart of downtown to do some city center sightseeing.  The Alaska Railroad Station, the Coastal Trail, a monument to Captain Cook.  Even a view of where the top of Mt. McKinley/Denali would be visible if the clouds weren't out.  The mountain is a weather maker, and so I'm pretty sure that all I saw was a distant cloud.

Back to the hotel to prepare for Monday's cruise.  No nightlife tonight.  After the full day I was just plain tired.

Whittier-Prince William Sound Day Trip

Monday July 28 -

After checking with a local travel agent about a possible day trip to Nome (no such luck, this time), I hit the road and headed down to the Kenai Peninsula for the second time on this trip.  Near Portage, I hit a side road and drove to Whittier, where I was scheduled to take a Prince William Sound cruise - 26 Glaciers, the name of which implied that we'd see a fair number of glaciers.

Whittier is a coastal town separated from the main roads by a mountain range.  During World War II, Whittier became a military outpost, so a train tunnel was drilled through the mountain.  It remains an active train tunnel, but it has been refurbished to allow a single lane of vehicle traffic through it when the train isn't using it.  The schedule is such that if you're a bit late, you could wait a half hour to pass through the tunnel, so I headed there early, giving me two opportunities to make the tunnel on the way into Whittier.

Once in the village, I parked the car and then began to explore the city.  There really isn't a whole lot to Whittier itself from a sightseeing standpoint.  A small cluster of cafes and shops cater to tourists, but there isn't much of an actual business district.  That shouldn't be surprising for a village that according to my map has fewer than 200 permanent residents.  However it is a convenient cruise ship port because it is connected by rail and bus to nearby Anchorage, and for Anchorage visitors like me, it is the closest point for finding a Prince William Sound sightseeing cruise.  There in fact was a large cruise ship in port, but unlike other Alaska cities I've been to when a ship is in port, there was little in the way of tourists roaming the streets.  In fact, because of the way the tunnel works, I think that most of the tourists that I ran into during my exploration of the town were there for the Prince William Sound tour.

The tour eventually got underway (late) after some confusion at the docks.  In spite of a fair amount of space to spread out, they bunched two different sound tour lines and a cruise ship-related line all in the same poorly marked space, so the tour organizers seemed to get bombarded with the same questions.

But that mess was soon forgotten as the cruise got underway.  I took a Prince William Sound tour out of Valdez back in 1992, but that approached the sound from the east, whereas Whittier is on the west.  One result is that there was no overlap of sites between the two tours.  Instead, this tour focused on Port Wells/Harriman Fjord/College Arm channels.  We'd see a number of impressive and minor glaciers, including a number of tidal glaciers that we'd pull up pretty close to in our boat.  No Antarctica, to be sure, but the scenery was quite pretty, and we saw a number of minor calving events.

Early on our way we saw some distant orcas, the first I've seen in the wild.  They stayed pretty far away from the boat, unfortunately, and didn't cooperate for photos, although  through dumb luck I barely captured one in a picture, complete with its blow.

On the other hand we'd see sea otters.  Lots of sea otters.  And most seemed to take our arrival rather nonchalantly, so we had plenty of opportunity to get lots of cute photos of these cute animals.  There were a few tending to their young that would back off from the boat, but they were interesting for that reason.  Some harbor seals and lots of birds rounded out the animal side of the sightseeing.

The tour lasted about three hours.  I had seen plenty of Whittier before the cruise, so once we disembarked, I hightailed it to my car so that I could make the next tunnel run - no reason to hang around Whittier for an extra hour.  On the walk back to the car, I did get some photos of a couple bald eagles that were hanging out in the trees near the parking lot.

There was a bit of a delay in passing back through the tunnel - a train filled with cruise ship passengers was bringing them to the ship in the harbor.

Once on the other side of of the tunnel, I stopped at the Portage Lake, a favorite stop from 1992.  The visitor center was closed for the day, but I could still check out the lake and a trail.  In 1992, the lake was filled with small icebergs that had calved off of Burns and Portage glaciers, but that wasn't the case this time.  Burns Glacier had clearly receded from the water.  Portage Glacier is around a corner and thus was not directly visible from this spot, but given the nearly ice free condition of the lake, I figured it had receded away from the water, too.  As a result, the site isn't nearly as interesting as it was back in 1992.

Back to Anchorage.  Fast food dinner, given my late return.  A bit of night life, but nothing was going on, so I made an early evening of it.

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Kenai Peninsula Day Trip

Tuesday July 29 -

To date, my three trips down to Kenai Peninsula have all focused on the eastern side of the the Peninsula.  One of my goals for this trip was to head down the western side, all the way down to Homer with a visit to the city of Kenai.  That was today's plan.  I'd do most of my sightseeing on the way down to Homer, so I'd know about how much time I'd have to stay there before heading back.  The roundtrip, with the side trip to Kenai, was about 500 miles.  When looking at a map of Alaska, the Kenai Peninsula just doesn't look all that big, but when you drive it, you'll get an appreciation for just how big Alaska really is.

For the most part, I drove straight through to the city of Kenai, which is about 30 miles further from Anchorage than Seward is.  I had an old brochure from Kenai from my 1992 trip which had motivated my return there.  

Originally the site of an Athabascan (Dena'ina) settlement, the Russians began to dominate the region by the late 1700s, and Kenai was one of their outposts.  The Russians built Fort St. Nicholas here in 1791.  A brick factory was set up in the 1840s.  The first school was started in 1864.  The Americans bought Alaska in 1867, but we didn't do a whole lot with Kenai.  An Alaska Agriculture Experimental Station set up in Kenai from 1898 to 1907 concluded that Kenai didn't have much promise for farming.  As recently as 1930, there were only 236 residents in town.  Today's population is close to 7,500.

A brochure-guided walking tour of the old city center takes visitors past a number of old cabins, the old agriculture station, the site of the old fort, the parish house and the Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Church.  Built in 1881, the parish house is the oldest building on the peninsula.  The church itself, recognized for its three blue onion domes, dates back to 1894.  I toured the small church and visited with our host, a retired priest who used to serve that church.  Nearby was the Chapel of St. Nicholas.  Built in 1906, it serves as a tribute to Igumen Nikolai, the first missionary to serve the Kenai area.

Old Kenai is located up on a bluff, which provides it with great views of the beach and the mouth of the Kenai River where it flows into Cook Inlet.  The river was lined with people net fishing for salmon.

In view across the Cook Inlet were Iliamna and Redoubt Volcanoes, part of the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve area.  Heading south towards Homer, I'd also see Mt. Spurr, Mt. Douglas, and Augustine volcanoes.

Heading south towards Homer, I made a couple stops along the way.  Ninilchik is an old Russian fishing village, home to a quaint Russian Orthodox Church built in 1900.  I checked out the church and cemetery grounds and then headed down into the village to check it out.  At Anchor Point I headed off the highway again to check out the waterfront views.  One of Anchor Point's claims to fame is that it is the westernmost point in the United States that can be reached by highway (even if part of that highway system crosses Canada).  There are of course roads in the U.S. that lie further to the west, but you'd have to travel by boat, plane or wormhole through the time-space continuum to reach them.

Homer, the self-proclaimed halibut capital of the world, is at the end the road, a bit to the southeast of Anchor Point.  With 4000 people, it is a full-service community.  A roadside turnout just before reaching Homer provides excellent views of the entrance to Cook Inlet, some of the nearby volcanoes, and the Homer Spit.  The spit is just that, a narrow string of land that stretches out into the bay for about five miles.  Lined with rocky beaches, near the end of the spit is the ferry dock, fish processing plants, and a tourist-oriented collection of shops, restaurants and tour/fishing expedition operators.  This was the area I headed for, checking out sites that included the Seafarers Memorial.  With a good viewpoint and 10x optical zoom, I also got a decent view of a crew at a fish processing plant gutting and icing down the day's catch.

I thought about getting an early dinner at one of the restaurants, but I really wasn't very hungry, so I hit the road for the long drive back to Anchorage.  I made a handful of stops for scenery shots and bathroom breaks, most noteworthy at Quartz Creek and finally Tern Lake at the Seward Highway.  From there it was directly back to Anchorage.

I picked up dinner at a Wendy's on my way into the city.  It had been a long day and a long drive, so no nightlife today.

Talkeetna-Glenn Highway Day Trip

Wednesday July 30 -

When I first started planning this trip, I was only going to have three sightseeing days in Anchorage.  But with the hotels in Ketchikan fully booked, I ended up dividing its two nights between Sitka and Anchorage, giving me an extra day to fill.  Unfortunately, I was so busy in the weeks leading up to the trip, I didn't have much time to think about what I wanted to do with the extra day.  The night before I headed for Alaska, I hit the web for tour information and found that there was a "Nome in a Day" tour that sounded interesting.  I had done a day tour to Barrow back during my 1992 visit, and I just showed up at the airport and bought a ticket for that one.  Although I wouldn't mind going back to Barrow now that I have a digital camera, these types of day trips are pretty expensive, and even I have my limits, especially when there are plenty of plane-accessible-only cities in Alaska that I haven't been to yet.  Like Nome.

By the time I got to Anchorage and went to the travel company, however, the tour had sold out.  A Nome visit would have been interesting, and it would have added another Alaska county to my list, but it wasn't going to happen on this trip.  So I picked a handful of sites in the region, and a couple museums in Anchorage itself to target, and figured I'd fill the day that way.  Yesterday's sun was gone - it would pop out for a few photos at my first stop of the day, but that would be it.

Talkeetna is a small town just off the Parks Highway, Highway 3, which connects the Anchorage area with Denali National Park and Fairbanks.  Talkeetna is about halfway to Denali.  Because "just off the Parks Highway" is actually about 15 miles off the highway, I skipped the town during my 1992 visit.  Information on the town talked about log cabins and a rustic roadhouse on Main Street, so I figured it was as good a place to start the day as any.

Talkeetna is a little more than 100 miles from Anchorage, so it was a bit of a drive to get there.  And since I hadn't figured on sleeping until the alarm went off at 8:20AM, Talkeetna would be my only stop of the morning.  

Just before I entered the village, there was a parking area that - according to some local artist's work on a large boulder - provides a view of Mt. McKinley, at least on a clear day.  With the clouds only just beginning to clear a bit, I saw what I think was the base of the mountain, but anything above that was hidden by the cloud cover.

As I crossed the Alaska Railroad tracks, I saw that the train was at the station - and dumping a lot of people out.  Apparently Princess Cruise Lines features it as a stop/day trip destination of some sort.  By the time I parked the car, a horde of people began reaching the old city center.  Which indeed consisted of a number of log buildings, other old buildings and the rustic roadhouse.  Most of which housed cafes, gift shops and activities for tourists.

Okay, so Talkeetna is a tourist mecca for the cruise ship crowd - although it was never overwhelmed by the tourists like Skagway and Juneau have been during my visits to those cities.

I took a walk around the village and got a good breakfast-style lunch at the roadhouse.  I noticed that the waiters spoke Russian when they weren't speaking to customers.  International hired hands, I suppose.

Time to hit the road.  I headed back down the Parks Highway until I reached the Wasilla-Palmer area, where I got on to Highway 1 to head east.  This stretch is commonly referred to as the Glenn Highway.  When this highway was built, it created the first roadway creation between Anchorage and the Lower 48 states, by way of the Alaska Highway and other Canadian roads, of course.

I mostly was hoping to find a spot approximating my favorite photos of my 1992 trip, a view that featured a mass of fireweed in the foreground, snow-streaked Chugach mountains in the distance.  I never did find the view even though I traveled as far as the Matanuska Glacier State Recreation Site, about halfway to Glennallen.  I had no recollection from my 1992 trip of seeing the glacier (although once I got home I verified that I have old photos of it), so that was worth the drive.  It is clearly in retreat, though, as much of the land surrounding it is barren, and the leading edge looks more like something that melted into that shape rather than pushed itself into that shape.

Other than a lot of scenic overlook stops along the way, I made only one other stop along the Glenn Highway, the Alpine Historical Park at Sutton.  It is mostly a collection of old buildings, some of the oldest frame buildings in the region, in fact, tied to the early history of the community.  The site also includes the rusting remains of some equipment associated with a coal washing facility whose foundations are also at the site.  Built in the early 1920s, it had the misfortune of being completed just two weeks before the U.S. Navy decided that it did not need Alaska coal.  With no other orders, it shut down shortly after it opened for business.

Back to Anchorage for dinner and a few parting photos.  Then I gassed up the car for its return to the airport tomorrow, and then I headed back to the hotel to pack.  The Anchorage-based sightseeing of the trip was over with.  

No nightlife tonight.  Not with an 8AM flight tomorrow morning.

Sitka Sightseeing

Thursday July 31 -

The big shift in my vacation took place today.  I left Anchorage on an 8AM flight and landed in Sitka a few hours later (after a short stop in Juneau).  I chose Sitka in part because it would give me another county and another National Park Service site, but it is also a historically interesting town as it was where European Alaska began with the arrival of the Russians in 1799.  Alexander Baranov arrived at what was once the site of a Tlingit summer camp and claimed the Pacific Northwest for Russia and establishing Redoubt St. Michael to protect their claims.  The Tlingits got fed up with the Russians, and destroyed the fort in 1802, but the Russians eventually regrouped and built a new fort in what is now downtown Sitka.

The city would become the seat of government of Russian-America, and for over 60 years it was Russia's major Pacific port.  In 1867, Russia sold its Alaska holdings to the United States, an act marked by a ceremony in what is now downtown Sitka.  The city became the territorial capital, although it lost that role to Juneau in 1906.  For the last 100 years, it has been an isolated fishing community, although it was an important military outpost during WWII, and in recent years it has become a regular stop of the Inside Passage cruise industry.

In a lot of ways, Sitka reminds me of a miniature version of Juneau.  Each is on a flat stretch of land that hugs a west-facing coast, and roads follow the coast both north and south out of town for a short distance, but both are isolated and basically accessible only by sea or air.  But Sitka, which is about 100 miles WSW of Juneau, is less than a third of Juneau's size, and it could perhaps be considered to be even more isolated.

The city is small enough that it could be covered in one quite full, well-planned day.  I was scheduled to spend 2 1/2 days here, picking up a day from my failed Ketchikan plans.  So instead I figured I'd take it easy, spread out my sightseeing, and try to get caught up on my sleep.  

So for the most part, today's sightseeing was limited to the area north of the town center.  I took the road north as far as it went, which was the site of Russia's Redoubt St. Michael.  Today it is a minor roadside park with a few informative signs and some decent views of Sitka Sound.  I checked out the waterfront and saw a fish jump out of the water just as I hit the coast.  Cool, I thought.  Then there was another one.  And another.  And lots more.  I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it, but some good sized fish - salmon, apparently - were regularly leaping out of the water.  I watched them for awhile and attempted several photos of them - I even got a few acceptable shots.

Then I thought I would take the nearby estuary trail.  However, much of it was blocked off with police tape because a brown bear with two cubs had recently been spotted on the trail.  "Brown bears" are how Alaskans refer to grizzly bears, and grizzlies are notoriously aggressive, especially when they've got cubs with them, so it is just as well that they closed the trail.

On the other side of the estuary I walked the segment of the trail that they didn't close.  No sign of any bears.

I slowly worked my way back to town, figuring that I might not be able to check into the hotel until 3PM.  But the end of the road was only about seven miles from the city center, so even though I checked out every waterfront turnout along the way, it wasn't like I had many options for filling time.  I reached the city center and the hotel at about 2:30.  And then I began driving in circles.  Turns out that the hotel didn't have much in the way of parking, but I didn't know that at first.  But after a couple laps I found a spot on the street.

No room at the inn, the Sitka Westmark hotel.  At least not until 3PM, when my room would be ready.  So I went out, got my luggage, and headed back into the hotel lobby to wait until 3PM.    While I'm standing there waiting, the apparent manager saw me and wondered if I had been helped.  I told him I was asked to wait until 3PM.  He asked the clerk to check, and sure enough, my room was actually ready for me.  I guess that she was going to have me stand there in front of her waiting until 3PM before checking again.

I settled into the room for a bit and then headed out for a bit of sightseeing in the city center.  I also grabbed dinner at a burger joint and then took a long walk, covering a stretch of waterfront buildings and picking up some pop and munchies at a grocery store I had seen earlier in the day.

A bit of TV and photo sorting and labeling.  Later in the evening I headed out to a neighborhood-type bar in the city center called Ernie's.  There are no gay bars in Sitka (although a flaming guy I passed a few times downtown convinced me that there are gays there), but it is still often interesting to check out the locals.  And I did notice a pair of women holding hands at one of the tables.

Friday August 1 -

Today was my primary sightseeing day in Sitka.  Although the sky was overcast for most of the day, the rain stayed away.

I began the day with a leisurely breakfast in a downtown restaurant.  From there I slowly made my way over to the main section of Sitka National Historical Park.  The park preserves some of the sites associated with the Russian occupation of Alaska.  The main grounds includes a visitor center that offers a movie on the Battle of Sitka and examples of the crafts and handiworks of the native Tlingits.  After watching the movie and touring the museum, I took a walk through the woods to the 1804 Battle of Sitka site.  This was the site of the last major battle between the Russians and the Tlingits, and took place a couple years after the Tlingits routed the Russians a few miles to the north at Redoubt St. Michael.  Along the trail are a number of totem poles that showcase the various styles and purposes that totems served among the Pacific Northwest tribes.  The path leads to a clearing in the woods that was the site of Kiks.ádi, the Tlingit fort.  A trail on the far side of the Indian River leads to the Russian Memorial, a Russian Orthodox Cross erected in honor of the Russians who fought and died at Sitka.

After I finished up at the site I checked out the museum at the Sheldon Jackson College, a recently closed Christian college.  The museum, housed in the oldest concrete structure in the state, features a collection of native artifacts that have been collected from all over Alaska.  Although the displayed collection is rather small, it is impressive for its size and well worth checking out.  Across the street on the water front is a salmon hatchery that the school operates.  I visited parts of it on my way both to and from the main part of the park.

Close to the center of town is another small unit of the national park site.  The Russian Bishop's House is one of only four buildings in Alaska that are left over from the Russian period.  Built in 1843, it housed the bishop's personal quarters and the Chapel of the Annunciation, both restored to their 1853 appearance.  Displays on the ground floor showcase the building's architecture and highlight its various uses.  Among the items on display is one of a number of iron plates that early Russian explorers had buried in the area to mark their claims to the land.

Downtown Sitka's shopping district is just a few blocks long, so there isn't a lot to check out there other than St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Cathedral (destroyed by fire in the 1960s, so this is a reconstruction) and Building 29, the oldest building in Sitka and another of the four buildings in Alaska left over from the Russian period.  

Also downtown is a reconstruction of a Russian blockhouse, the Sitka Pioneer Home, Totem Square, the Mariners Wall memorial to those lost at sea, and various waterfront buildings.  Most significant of the sites from an American history perspective is Castle Hill.  Useful for its views of the nearby areas, it had long been used as a site for forts and observation towers.  On October 18, 1876, it was the site of the ceremony that transferred Alaska from the Russians to the U.S.  A plaza on top of the hill provides a number of historical markers that describe the events leading up to and including the transfer ceremony.

After dinner in a downtown restaurant, I hit the road, this time heading south to Whale Park at Silver Bay.  Steps there led to a viewing deck on the edge of the bay from which whales can often be seen.  I didn't see any during my visit, but I did get some pictures of the water with late daylight beginning to break through the clouds.  Enough of the clouds had broken up by now that I also got my first look at Mt. Edgecumbe, an extinct volcano that's dominates the view from Sitka on sunny days.  

I continued to follow the road to the end of the pavement, stopping for a few photos along the way.  A power plant, recycling station and fish processing plant provided the motive for the road.  

Back to the city center.  Late day sun had come out, so I wanted to get a few more photos of the downtown area and Mt. Edgecumbe.  Then it was back to the hotel to check out my pictures.  For my nightlife tonight I headed back to Ernie's.

Saturday August 2 -

I ended the trip with a rather mundane day in Sitka.  It was nice and sunny when I first woke up, but by late morning the familiar overcast had reasserted itself.  No rain, but it looked like it could have rained heavily at any moment most of the rest of the day.

I had saved a couple downtown sightseeing stops for today - the interior of St. Michael's Cathedral, the Isabel Miller Museum and a Native American cooperative's gift shop, but with no cruise ships scheduled to hit town today, they all decided to take the day off, too.  This left visitors like me with little left to do.  I spoke with another couple who was working their way through southeast Alaska separate from the cruise ships whose only full day in Sitka was today.  Even some of the downtown shops were closed, which I heard others on the street comment on, although enough were open that there was no problem spending some time shopping for those who were so inclined.  As for me, I filled about four hours with sightseeing and then headed back to my hotel to nap and to sort through my trip photos.  

After breakfast I got some sunny day photos downtown and finished that up at about the same time that the sun gave out.  I then figured I'd check out the old pioneer cemetery.  The Gavan Hill hiking trailhead is located next to the cemetery, so I distracted myself with that for about an hour.  The part that I covered was all boardwalk of sorts - planks, actually - often crossing what appeared to be soft peat.  I slipped on one of the boards and took a spill, but fortunately it was at one of the drier areas of the trail.  I could have ended up soaked and muddy with a soggy camera had it happened a few dozen feet earlier or later.  Having to focus so much on the planks I was walking on got to be dull after awhile, which was when I gave up on the hike.  Not that I was really prepared for such a hike, but it was nice to get out into the woods for awhile.

I checked out the cemetery and Swan Lake before heading downtown, hoping to find that the cathedral had opened up - it hadn't.  That's when I capped off my sightseeing with a bit of souvenir shopping.  Given the Russian heritage theme of much of this trip, I decided to get something decidedly Russian, some Russian-made example of some Siberian painted woodwork that is actually fired like ceramics.

And that was when I headed back to my hotel room.  There were a couple places where I could have gone to see some animals - the Alaska Raptor Center and the Fortress of the Bear habitat for orphaned bear cubs, but the prices were high for all they were, especially when I considered that I had seen most of the animals listed in more natural habitats already in my life.

Dinner.  A last bit of after dinner sightseeing.  I headed south to the end of the road, took a short walk, checked out the Sitka National Cemetery (the oldest west of the Mississippi), and gassed up the car for tomorrow's return (not exactly sure how I used almost three gallons of gas).  

More time working on the journal and photos.  And finally back to Ernie's to cap off the evening.

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Sunday August 3 -

It was a really easy start to the day.  I didn't have to check out of the hotel until 11AM, and my flight back to Seattle left in the mid-afternoon.  It is a tiny airport with only a few regular flights, but I got there plenty early.  No point in paying an extra $100 (!!!) for the rental car by keeping it an extra hour or so.

I got a late breakfast at the airport and then went outside to watch a jet take off.

An uneventful flight home, but I had an east-facing window seat and mostly clear skies, so I was treated to some great views of the west coast of Canada, distant views of Vancouver and outstanding views of downtown Seattle.

It was an odd trip.  Not quite what I had hoped for when I first tried to plan it, and the time I had hoped to fill in Ketchikan was probably wasted in Anchorage and Sitka, especially with my Saturday Sitka plans messed up with key sites closed to sightseeing for the day.  Still, I met my goals of covering the Kenai Peninsula with my sightseeing and getting a dose of southeastern Alaska that wasn't inundated with cruise ship tourists.

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