ConchyJoe

[ConchyJoe]

Conchy Joe note: Jack and Jean live in Central Florida. Jack holds a Masters License, and decided to head to Alaska with his bride Jean, and leave the driving to someone else. He submits this report:

Well, let’s start at Vancouver where we boarded a floating apartment building 962’ long and 106’ wide with 14 decks. I felt a little lost after sailing boats from 16 to 26 feet long.

But when this pleasant young man handed me a rum punch I began to feel at home. If you have ever seen a map of the inner passage you’ll notice it’s a bit tight. How tight is it you say? I’ll tell you. We got up about 1:00AM just to watch our passing through Seymour Narrows about 195 miles north of Vancouver it was about 50’ of clearance on each side and only navigable at slack water every 6 hours. That is so close that the ships lights reflected off the granite walls. Even the next day these walls were closer than I felt comfortable with but we made it to Ketchikan.

Where we went out to the Mendenhall glacier.

Man that’s a lot of ice or so I thought. We went on to Juneau & Skagway the next 2 days, spending just 1 day in each.


I found Juneau to be sort of dead. The only way in or out is by boat or plane. It’s the state capital of Alaska. It has no road out. Just a dead end road that goes 30 miles north and 4 miles south. And they just made it 4 lanes. So now they have a 34 mile, 4 lane dead end road. Tell a story about being in the record books as having the only fish, airplane collision in the world. It seems that a jet was taking off just as an eagle was raising up from the water with a big salmon in his talons. He was climbing as hard as he could when he looked over his shoulder and saw a jet overtaking him very quickly. See the difference in size he decided that the only way to save himself was to drop the fish and climb hard. Where upon he let go of his fish and fled, allowing the fish to be smashed into by the also climbing jet. When they hit it caused such a ruckus that they landed immediately. Upon inspection they found fish scales all over the nose of the plane and a very large dent. Leaving Juneau with a great fish tale.
I did like Skagway; it’s a cute little town. It to has it’s stories but you’ll have to go there to hear them. I will say I visited a brothel and bar while there. And took a town bus tour. Only about 80 people stay there during the winter. I was told that a resident Alaskan spends winters in Hawaii. All the way up the inner passage I seen lots of sailboats and a lot of trawlers. The aluminum trawlers seem to be the most popular in the glacier areas. There were lots of tour boats at the glaciers.
Our last stop on the water was Whittier where we boarded a train to cross Alaska. The main housing for 80% of the town is one apartment building. There’s really nothing there but the port and railway stop. As for Alaska all I can say is you’ve got to go once. Once you’ve seen Denali (MT. McKinley) you’ll never be the same. Also you get to eat reindeer and moose. They don’t raise cattle it to bland for their taste. I’ll add some pictures of Fairbanks on Chena River. That’s where the big river boat was. We went to an Indian village and to Susan Butcher’s dog camp. She’s the woman who won the Iditarod 4 times. They have a saying up there.” Alaska where men are men and women win the Iditarod”. We are going back up in March of 08 to the dogsled races and to an Indian camp to stay for four days above the Arctic Circle.

Now I understand the PNW groups enthusiasium for the area!
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