As a finale to our series on Lisa’s trip to Alaska, here is a collection of images from the journey. Enjoy!

Click on an image to see it full size

As a final note, for those of you who waded through my “infinite slide show” . . .

My one sadness is that I never took the time or spent the money to have Dungeness Crab or Halibut while I was on shore. Mostly, I was daunted by sticker shock ($42 for a crab roll) and the huge lines of cruisers all doing exactly the same thing.

Cruising is not my preferred way to travel. I like having more control over my itinerary, both in terms of where to go and what to do each day. I also am not a consumer, and the constant sales pitch of the ship, and locations visited were overwhelming.

That said, My friend and I had a great time. We saw beautiful even magnificent scenery and learned interesting things about this small portion of Alaska. Vancouver, BC and Alaska were amazing and I am profoundly glad I went on this journey.

Early the next morning (as in 5 am, by dawn’s early light) the ship slowly cruised up the 30-mile long Endicott Arm Fjord paused at the Dawes Glacier, then turned and began its return journey.

Such dull language to express an outrageously spectacular experience. The Endicott Arm Fjord itself is a frozen wonderland full of granite cliffs, verdant valleys, and several gushing waterfalls. Then there is Dawes Glacier, a 600-foot-tall and mile-wide active icecap that “calves” all day long. (It’s a bit sad to see just how many pictures I took of bits of glacier floating alongside the ship!)

A professional naturalist narrated the journey for us, telling us about wildlife we might see (not much) and what the landscape revealed.

During the last ice age, over 16,000 years ago, most of Alaska was covered by two miles of ice. Glaciers slowly carved out spectacular valleys and fjords, one of which we were currently traveling down in a 112-year-old, beautifully converted wooden tugboat. Dawes Glacier, the one we were heading 30 nautical miles up Endicott Arm to see, once extended this far out. It pushed rocks, gravel, and silt, digging out a massive “gully” up to 1,000 feet deep in some places, leaving behind a picturesque terminal moraine called Wood Spit, where we had conveniently anchored the night before. You can’t look around at Alaska’s landscape and not see evidence of how glaciers sculpted this place—it’s everywhere.

As the ship steamed further up the fjord, it grew narrower, and the air got colder, as if we were entering a gigantic freezer. The mass of ice that makes up Dawes Glacier begins with the Stikine Icefield at an elevation of 5,200 feet (1,585 meters). From this source, the ice flows slowly—about 15 feet per day—along the path of least resistance. Multiple tributary glaciers feed into the main tongue, like streams into a river. This mass of ice cools the air around it, and the cold, dense air stays within the confines of the fjord, flowing outward.

The first visible sign that there’s a tidewater glacier ahead of us is the presence of small pieces of ice, looking like sculpted crystals, floating by the ship. These aren’t icebergs—these are mostly bergy bits (1-5 meters in size) or growlers (<1 meter in size). They’ve crumbled off the face of the glacier into the water and are flowing out with the wind and tide. And they are an eerie pale neon blue. It’s unearthly.

You see, glacier ice is blue. Ice traps long wavelengths of light, such as red and green, while allowing the shorter wavelengths, like blue, to pass through the ice and reach our eyes.

This is a long morning of slow movement, a 360* turn so everyone has a chance to see the magnificence from their balcony, or breakfast. Truly a highlight of the trip, and a “bucket list” event that I am very glad to have done.

A huge draw for me on this journey was a guided tour of Saxon Native Village, one of several “totem capitals of Alaska.”

Many of the totem poles on display at the park today were carved in the 1940s to preserve native culture, and they are replicas of the original poles left in abandoned villages by Native Alaskans. Each pole tells unique stories through intricate carvings and vibrant colors. In addition to the 11 on the Totem Way, there are 14 more near the clan house. Of the 25, the Eagle Beaver Pole is repeated three times, and there are four Totem Guards on either side of the steps. Outside of the carving center, where we caught a glimpse of the celebrated carver, Nathan Jackson, lies a “sleeping totem.” (I would love to tell you more, but the guide was clearly reluctant to say anything about it and I don’t want to be the revealer of private knowledge.)

Some things I learned:

• Inanimate objects are forbidden on poles and all of the figures represent living beings.
• Among the Haida poles you will see many whale carvings as the Haida Indians have a spiritual connection with the whale. They believe the whale’s display of loyalty and obedience amongst themselves parallels the values of their clan system.
• The Tribal House was traditionally used as a communal house for several clans or families of a tribe. The Totems inside are family poles that tell the history of the clan or family living inside.
• The Tlingit of Saxman are the Saanya Kwaan, or “People of the Southeast Wind”.
• The “low man on the totem pole,” isn’t an insult; the bottom figure is often the most important one – and usually, isn’t a man.

Totem poles are often not meant to be clear in their meaning (a very non-Western attitude). The story of the pole is primarily shared between the person commissioning the carving of the pole and the carver. Upon completion, it is up to the owner whether to share the story. (To my mind, this “secrecy” is an example of intellectual property within a cultural perspective.) This explains why most of the poles have no informational signage. To my mind, this encourages visitors to buy materials at the (pretty nice) gift shop on the grounds. I think such materials are excellent souvenirs, much better than a mug or shot glass.

Totem poles serve a variety of purposes. They are not only artistic expressions but also symbols of family lineage, tribal heritage, and the natural world. The animals carved onto the poles often represent the clan’s totem or the spirit guides that are believed to protect or guide the people. The significance of each animal varies depending on the cultural context and the specific animal’s traits, behaviors, and role in the ecosystem. In this way, totem poles serve as a visual language, communicating the spiritual beliefs and connection to nature that is central to these cultures.

Note that you do not need to take a tour here. You can walk to Saxman Native Village 2-3 miles along an oceanfront path, take a public bus ($2 — cash only — at time of writing) near Berth 2 of the cruise terminal, or catch a quick taxi ride (approx. $15 one way). The village welcomes independent travelers with a self-guided tour option for just USD 5 per person.

The Totem Pole Art is magnificent. It boggles my mind how each is carved by hand and I enjoyed trying to figure out which animal was represented on the poles. Not being Native, the symbols aren’t easy to decipher. (A place where I really would have appreciated signage, even just the names of the totems). The street that the Totem Poles are on display is on an incline with a paved sidewalk that was easy to navigate. The Clan House features a magnificent carving of a Beaver on the outside and inside are four carved house posts as well as another large panel carving inside the building. Outside the Clan House are two short, gravel lined, walking paths through the rainforest that surrounds the park. Along these paths are the native trees, shrubs, flowers, plants, berries, & more that is found in the rainforest.

This wikipedia entry has a list of all of the poles on site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxman_Totem_Park

We also went through Ketchikan with its National Historic Landmark District. Alaska’s first city and the salmon capital of the world, we had a chance to stop and visit a small park where we watched salmon swimming upstream. The salmon run is a primal moment of deep connection to nature and her rhythms. Here is a video I took — no jumping, but you can get a sense of how many fish were doing their thing.

Otherwise, there is Creek Street, once the town’s red-light district. The area is distinct for its brothels built on stilts over a salmon-filled creek. Today, it’s a colorful stretch of shops and galleries with a few small museums that tell the story of Ketchikan’s salty past. Otherwise, the city (8,000 year-round residents makes this a very small city) is primarily a collection of jewelry stores (56, according to our guide) most of which are owned and operated by the cruise ships and tour companies.

We stopped at Skagway, Alaska, also known as the “Gateway to the Klondike,” and one of the most interesting places we visited.

While a few places told us the Tlingit origin of the town’s name, sha-ka-ԍéi, it wasn’t until after I returned home that I learned of its richer history. Sha-ka-ԍéi is a verbal noun which means pretty woman and is a Tlingit idiom which figuratively refers to rough seas in the Taiya Inlet, caused by strong north winds. The story behind the name is that Sha-ka-ԍéi [“Pretty Woman”] was the nickname of Kanagoo, a mythical woman who transformed herself into stone at Skagway Bay and who (according to the story) now causes the strong, channeled winds which blow toward Haines, Alaska.

Gold was discovered in 1896 in the klondike region of Canada, 500 miles away, and Skagway was the closest city from which prospectors could travel to (hopefully) find their fortune. The journey, as you can imagine, was brutal. Within one year of the discovery of gold in the Klondike thousands of people were attempting the journey. Animals brought to Skagway were often not cared for by anyone knowledgeable. Some animals were forced to stand for two weeks straight and did not get the luxury of food and water. If they didn’t die on their way to Skagway they were threatened by accidents, shipwrecks, or on the trails. Horses, mules, oxen, sheep, and dogs were loaded down, forced to wait in long lines, and exhausted by the trail leading over the pass. Horses were not trained or equipped to deal with the constant physical demands, boggy mud holes, and slippery rocks. It’s estimated that 3,000 horses died in a one year period on the White Pass Trail, earning it the nickname “Dead Horse Trail.”

In an attempt to find a better way to get goods to the Yukon, construction of the narrow gauge White Pass & Yukon Route railroad began in 1898. Thousands of people worked together to finish the 110 mile track from Skagway to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory Canada. There were many challenges to completion, including harsh weather and phenomenally high labor turnover. Nonetheless, the track was completed in 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days.

The main part of town is a gorgeous collection of “Old West” storefronts, often used in movies and television sets. There is a ton of locally made art and goods available, and we had a lot of fun shopping and admiring the high quality offered.

A highlight was the White Pass Railroad tour, a 20 mile journey to the Summit (a 2,865-foot elevation) Narrated by interesting and informed guides, we learned a ton about the history of Skagway and the gold rush. The rail cars are vintage coaches, with lovely wooden benches and wide/ tall windows. The train follows the original route to White Pass summit, passing Bridal Veil Falls, Inspiration Point, and Dead Horse Gulch.

Despite deep fog, we were treated to a breathtaking panorama of mountains, glaciers, gorges, waterfalls, tunnels, trestles, and historic sites.

I say “peculiarly”, but the answer to almost any question about a city that begins with “why” is answered with “money.” Why is there a Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, a city that the artist has no particular affiliation with? Because a dude with money bought his stuff and built a building, of course! That said, something commonly said within our household on topics like this goes “if we’re going to have rich people spending a lot of money it might as well be spent on public improvement and culture!” So, thanks to the otherwise-forgotten Jules E. Mastbaum for collecting the work of Rodin and commissioning the architects before he died, and shout out to his widowed wife, Etta, for seeing it through to the end. So ok, rich dude buys fancy art and shows it off, how is it from a wildly less privileges perspective?

It’s actually really nice. It’s certainly smaller than the Musée Rodin in Paris but they manage to pull the same vibe, at least in the outdoor space. There’s a sunken garden area with dirt-and-gravel paths (sensible, not trying to keep grass on the well-trod paths) and the beginnings of some beautiful plantings. We’re here in April, after all, and the weather was in the 50s until just last week. You can tell from looking around that their gardeners know what they’re doing and it will be just gorgeous iiiiiin about six to eight weeks. Alas. There are several of his larger works (such as the Burghers of Calais at the top of this post). Are they “originals”? Tricky question, since Rodin created casts and then (sometimes) made numerous castings. Is “the Thinker” in Philadelphia older than the one in Paris? No, we don’t think so. But neither of them is the original thing he created; that’s the models and then the final cast. We try not to get too worked up about this when it comes to his bronzes. His marble on the other hand…

We particularly love “Call to Arms” on the left; normally a spirit coming to the side of a dying soldier comes across as comforting or consoling; sometimes you get a Valkyrie type vibe where the soul of the fallen warrior is being led to their reward. Here, the spirit has full on “Let’s F#*@ing Go!” energy that is, if nothing else, novel. And of course there’s the “Gates of Hell” on the right, an uncompleted work designed for an uncompleted museum that is nevertheless on the short list of his possible masterpieces. The museum has a suggested entrance fee but is free to all comers if you can’t afford or be bothered to pay the ticket. As a smaller facility you can probably consume it all at a leisurely pace in about an hour, and it’s well worth it if the weather is nice and you’re anywhere near it.

To properly hear this story, you need to know that I don’t talk a lot with my sibs. No slight on them, if anything it’s a slight on me. I’m just not one of life’s chatters. (Yeah yeah, but typing is different.) For all I know the rest of the family is thick as thieves (although that’s not really the impression I get) but I can go years not hearing the sound of their voices. So, when I answer my phone and it’s my sister Linda, I immediately perk up. And honestly I give her tre-MEN-dous props for calling me like this, exactly because it’s not in our natures. She lives much closer to our folks and sees them on a pretty regular basis, and she was calling to let me know that she was of the opinion that I ought to visit more frequently if I didn’t want to risk having a list of conversation topics and nobody to share them with. And that’s about as delicate as I can put that. Precisely because we don’t talk a whole lot it really resonated with me that I should heed her warning. Since it wasn’t a capital-C “Crisis” I didn’t automatically drop everything and jump on the first flight out, but in pretty short order arrangements had been made. And so, immediately upon celebrating my bride’s birthday in Lisbon, I made for the airport and flapped my way to the middle of South Carolina.

Sidebar: when an immigrant in our little community in Braga heads back to the States, it’s polite to ask around with your friends to see if there’s anything that they need. Heck, it’s not really considered rude (at least, with people I know well) to just up and ask for something to be brought back if you know somebody is making the trip. It’s not like Portugal is some deprived wasteland where basic necessities are rare commodities, but sometimes you just prefer something from the U.S. that doesn’t make it across the Atlantic for whatever reason. (Stories of foods from the States not being allowed in Europe because they’re full of evil chems that the E.U. could never countenance are wildly overblown. It happens but not nearly as much as people like to say.) For example, I have a preference for deodorant that isn’t available over here. I also prefer classic French’s mustard on my sandwiches compared to the typical mustard available here. So, when Lisa or I make it back, we snag a six-pack of sticks and a bottle of mustard to tide me over until the next time. Another example is ibuprofen. People get attached to the pain relievers that they know have worked for them, and ibuprofen can actually be hard to find here; plus, like most medication in Europe it tends to come in a 10 or 20 qty box in individual blisters; a cheap bottle of 500 units is essentially non-existent. Certainly there are effective medicines over here, but people just like what they like sometimes, ya know? Coming home from the States this time the highlights included a restock of some favorite t-shirts of mine, a couple of board games that friends had been holding on to for us, and some Chukar cherries for those special occasions when nothing else will do.

This trip to South Carolina was pretty quiet. Like I said before, this wasn’t a “crisis”, it was simply important in different ways. I stayed at my folk’s place (not my “childhood home” in the way non-military families mean it, but I spent grades 3-6 there, it was where I returned for holidays during college, and I also lived there for a little more than a year during… oh let’s call it my ‘wandering’ days after college *ahem* so it has its share of memories) and went over every day to spend time with them, talking and watching whatever was on the tube. The biggest news, honestly, was that my dad had after many years finally gotten comfortable with a hearing aid solution, meaning the tv (or music) wouldn’t be running constantly at near-max volume, and he could participate normally in most conversations. That was a tremendous positive change that actually got me quite emotional because he’d been tuning out more and more because of his hearing challenges. I did make one detour, also a common occurence when an immigrant goes back: diverting to see a friend that lives within a few hours. After all, we don’t get back that often. So, I scooted up to North Carolina for a day to see my good friend Liz for a night of relaxed chill and board games.

Almost coincidentally the trip lined up with my mom’s 88th birthday, so the sibs all converged for a little get-together at a local restaurant everybody can agree on. Getting all five Caskers (give or take a married name) at a table is a vanishingly-rare occurrence but (in my opinion at least) everybody has aged out of whatever sibling roles we might have had so it’s “just people”, which is actually pretty nice. And as for my list of conversation topics? Pretty much covered. I mean, no transition in life is ever completely clean, but I feel pretty good about the fact that nobody involved should ever feel “I just never got the chance to say…” whatever those things may be. So, again, thanks Linda. I was there for about a week and was definitely ready to be home by the end; not sick of my parents and family, just missing Lisa and my life as it is now.