ALASKA MEMORIES
                                                                                               May 17-May 29, 2008

Here we go into the wild blue yonder!   I travelled with my cousin Barbara Foster.  Our first stop was in Houston, Texas.  We had enough time to grab a snack and make it to our gate.  When we arrived at the gate we discovered they had changed gates, so we had to catch one of the airport carts to take us to the right gate.  They were announcing  the final call when we were going down the hallway.  But we made it.  

We flew to Vancouver, Alaska where a bus  took us to the cruise ship.  We were at sea for two days watching the beautiful snow covered mountains pass by and the first port was Ketchican, the first city in Alaska.  Ketchican is known for their wonderful Salmon.  It's a pretty little seaport with colorful houses on a hillside overlooking the bay.   Timber was one of their industries and it is rich in Indian heritage  

We took a tour of a rain forest and went through a Totum Pole park.  The early Indians/settlers erected these poles and each one told a story of their tribe and family history.  It seemed that the raven, eagle, frog, wolf, etc. meant that they should marry within a specific animal category, and there are some who still practice this method.  Their lodge consisted of one big room with a fire pit in the center.  Fifty people lived in this one room.  They measured their space by letting the tallest member of the family lie across the boards on the floor and that marked how much room their family would have.  The boards could be raised up at one end to store their belongings.  There was only one small door to enter and also to let the smoke out.  

After we left the Totum Pole Park, we went to a  lumberjack show.  They showed how the trees were cut and transported and also climbed the poles.  They could really go fast.  

We boarded the ship again and sailed to Juneau, the capitol of Alaska.  You can only get to Juneau by boat or plane.  We rode a tram up the mountain for a view of the city.  Juneau is not a big town.  The capitol building does not have a dome but a plain looking square building that blended in with the other buildings.  We also took a whale watching tour which was very exciting.  We saw a lot of whales. They would come up to the surface and  would blow  water  through their blow-hole high in the air.  A lot would come up and dive down with their tales high in the air.  

We saw a mother and baby whale.  They migrate to Hawaii to have their babies and then come back to Alaska.  On the way back the mother teaches their babies how to swim.  We saw a group of seals fighting for space on a buoy.  Snow covered mountains surrounded this bay that we were in.  Some whales came up real close to a small fishing boat.  I guess they wanted to view the fisherman.  This was a nice tour.   

Took a land tour by bus to view the Mendenhall Glacier.  We had to walk through a rain forest about a quarter of a mile to view it and it was worth the walk.   Just beautiful!  

We boarded the cruise ship again and headed to Skagway.  It too is a very small village with colored houses overlooking the bay.  Skagway is the town where the gold rush of 1898 took place, where people crossed over the Klondike mountains in search for gold .  Six thousand men and women landed and unloaded their belongings.  Some didn't realize how fast the tide raised and some lost all their belongings.   

There was a man in Skagway named Soapy Smith.  He was quiet a gangster with a following of men.  He and his men had taken over the town.  Now Soapy would meet the new miners at the dock and tell them that if they were looking for a place to stay and wanted good food, he could recommend a place.  They would go to the boarding house that he suggested.  His men were waiting for them and would steal everything they had.  The victims would go back to the dock and tell Soapy what had happened and Soapy, who appeared to be so sympathic and would offer to buy their ticket back to their home.  Of course the miners didn't have a choice and they were put on the boat and Soapy collected all their belongings.  Well, the town people got tired of this and they formed a 101 group of men to take Soapy in.  Now Soapy was a big drinker and when he heard about these men he decided he could go down to the dock and take over the leader.  He had no intention of killing him, he was just going to push him into the water.  But the leader didn't know this and when Soapy pushed him into the water, they must have shot at the same time because a bullet hit Soapy in the heart and one hit the leader in the groin.  Soapy died instantly and the leader died 12 days later.  The end of Soapy Smith.  

The government told the miners they had to have 2,000 lbs of food, clothing and equipment in order to cross the mountain to mine for gold.  There were 6,000 miners that started out in search for gold.  The animals were getting tired and balking when climbing the mountain.  Some men would put fire to the animals to try and keep them going.   So many horses fell by the wayside and died that the the smell could be smelled back down in Skagway.   Only about 2,000 men made it and only about 200 really struck it rich.  Very few made it home with money in their pockets because when they came back they spent it on booze or in brothels.  The only ones who profited were the saloons and brothels.  We saw the trail that the miners had to take and it was very rough.  We rode a train  to British Columbia along the route and a bus drove us back down the mountain.  

On the way back we stopped at Liarsville, a good size town in 1898.  All that is left  is woods.  We stopped there for lunch.  A group had grilled salmon; they had cole slaw, beans, potato salad and cake and drink.  They also put on a show in an outside building and the leader quoted a poem written by Robert Service (who also wrote "The Cemation of Sam McGee".  The poem told the story of Bill and his friend.  Bill was going to seek fortune and he made his friend promise that if he died that his friend would bury him in the casket that he had purchased.  Years went by and Bill had not died.  Then one day a stranger came to the friend and told him that a man had been found in a shack up over the mountain.  The friend packed up the coffin and food and booze and took his dog team up to the mountain.  He found the cabin and opened the door and there lay Bill.   There was ice in his hair, and ice in his eyes that stared up at him --- ice all over him --- and his arms were outstretched.  The friend saw he could not fit Bill in the coffin because of his outstretched arms so he built a fire to thaw him out.  Well the fire burned for two or three days and Bill never thawed out.  He had made a promise to Bill that he had to keep, so he took a saw and sawed his frozen arms off and stuffed him into the coffin and took him back and buried him.  Thus he had kept his promise to Bill.  

Liarsville got its name through newspaper reporters.  They had to write articles for their paper back home.  If they wrote exactly how things were, then miners would not come in search for gold.  So they wrote articles describing how great things were going over the mountain, that gold was running in the street and all you had to do was to gather it up, and that the trip up the mountain was great.  You could ride all the way in a nice coach.  And that is how Liarsville got its name. 

We got back in Skagway and stopped at the Red Onion Saloon which has a brothel upstairs.  They served a glass of wine to everyone and then took us upstairs.  In years past, the way the men would pick a girl was this: dolls that resembled the girls were placed at the bar and they would pick the one they wanted.  Then they would go up stairs to a room.  When they had finished, the girl would drop the money through a pipe from the floor to the bar and the bar tender would set the doll back up.  Our guide asked our group what do you think happened whenever the men got to the second floor.  One lady said, "They collected money."  The guide said, "You've been here before, haven't you?"  Everyone laughed.  There was a curling iron that the girls used much like the ones we have except that they had to unscrew the ceiling light and plug it in to heat it and then curl their hair in the dark.  We went down the stairs and through the bar/restaurant that is still operrating.  Now I can say I have been to a brothel.  

On the way down the street, our guide said, "This house was a bakery on the first floor and a brothel on the second.  They had hot buns 24 hours a day."

President Harding came to Skagway.  There was an exclusive club on the main street and the members told him that if he could climb the steps to the second floor they would make him a member.  President Harding was very heavy but he did make it to the top, and they made him a member.  He left town and in three days he died.  Needless to say there has not been another president to visit Skagway since.  Years later another guide was telling the story and after he finished, a man came up to him and told him that he was President Harding's great, great grandson.  The guide told him that if he had said anything to offend him that he was sorry.  The man said, "Oh, that's ok, we all believed grandma poisened him. "

Skagway was very interesting.  There were so many that died in search of gold.  I'm sure there has to be a moral to it all.  I'll let you decide.

We  boarded the ship again and were at sea for two days, during which we visited Glacier Bay.  The glaciers were named after universities such as Yale, Harvard, etc.  It was cool these days but sunny.  I went on deck to view the glaciers and too pictures.  When the glaciers would break off, the sound was as loud as a canon being fired.  Ice was floating in the water in the bay.

After visiting Glacier Bay we boarded again and docked at Whitier, which was the end of our cruise.  We then boarded a train to begin our land tour and would stop for the night at Mt. McKinley.  On the train, the guide (a lady) used to live in Indiana before moving to Alaska with her husband and small daughter.  Her husband was a music teacher.  His class was to go to a competion in another city.  He told her that if he won he wanted to change scenery and wanted to move to Alaska.  He told her they would stay for 1 to 2 years and if that didn't work out then he would let her pick where they would move.   They moved to Alaska into a cabin without electricity or running warer.  They both became mushers and had a dog lot.  

One morning she started cooking a stew with moose meat.  Their dogs begin to bark loudly and then they stopped.  Dogs would do this if they were in danger.  She went to the kitchen window and saw a large bear coming to the house, evidently smelling the stew.  She yelled for her husband who had a gun and just as the bear raised his paw to smash the window  her husband shot the bear in the heart and it died.  They had bear meat the rest of the winter.  

Another incident came one day as her husband decided to take a walk.  He'd been gone several hours and she got her gun and went out to the dog lot.  She then heard her husband a short distance down the hill.  She was a good shot but if she shot it would have hit her husband.  She saw her husband motioning for her to go around in the woods to him.  His gun had failed to shoot and he wanted her gun to shoot the bear.   If he shot it in the head it would only have made the bear mad, and then it would really harm them.  So, he took aim and shot it in the shoulder.  The bear started rolling around on the ground and finally died.  

She told anotehr story of her community.  Each year it would hold a festival which they would take moose dropping, paint them and paint numbers on them for people to buy.  At the end of the day, they would take the moose dropping and put them on a crane and lift them in the air and drop them onto a bulls eye drawn on the ground.  The numbers that landed in the bulls eye would receive a gift.  She said she wanted to give each of us that was on the train a gift -- you guessed it -- moose droppings.

The train we were on had a glass dome and that's where the passengers sat.  The dining car was below.  We traveled through beautiful snow covered mountains.  I wanted to take pictures of all of them and I think I did.  We saw several animals such as bear, moose and fox.

We stopped at Talkeetna, Alaska and boarded a bus to Mt. McKinley.  The sun was out but the big mountain was not.  They say it is visible for only about 57 days a year because of the fog that covers it.  The senery from the lodge was pretty.  The next morning it was raining but stopped for just a moment.  I did see the mountain and got a picture through the haze.

We boarded the train again and went to Danili and stayed in their lodge for two nights.  Danali is the place where the mountain climbers fly out of to climb the great mountain.  The first day we went on a wilderness tour high in the mountains.  Saw a lot of Carabeu, moose, red fox, Dahl Sheep, grizzlie bears, a lot of snow rabbits, and a great horned owl with her baby.  We also saw the Alaska state bird which I can't pronounce nor spell.  It looks just like a chicken with a red head.  In winter it turns solid white and in summer it turns brown.  It is very agressive and if you go outside, they say you should wear a hat to keep it from attacking you.  There is a town in Alaska that was named after this bird but the visitors couldn't pronounce it, so they changed the name of their town to Chicken Alaska.  The tour was 6-7 hours long.  They stopped along the way to rest.

That night we went to a dinner show.  The show was touristy and the food was cold.

The next morning was free and in the afternoon we boarded the train to Fairbanks; we ate dinner on the train and was surprised the food was so good.  We were transported to our lodge (Bear Lodge) by bus.  Fairbanks is not a big city.  They have just recently gotten a Walmart which they are very proud of.  

We took a tour by a small plane that held eight people to the Arctic Circle.  We flew across the Yukon River, the Yukon Mountain Range and the Brooks Mountain Range.  We landed at Coldfoot, Alaska consisting of a visitor center, snack bar and the last flushing toilet within 240 miles.  A bus took us to another little town 13 miles away on a gravel road named Wiseman.  There were no electricity or running water.  The shacks were very primative.  A lady who lived there said that when she died she wanted her house to become a church.  Her neighbor saw that her wishes were kept and the little church shack still stands and they have services every Sunday.  It has two wooden crosses made from sticks on the outside.  I had visulized the Arctic Circle to have snow clear up to my eye balls, but guess what---no snow.  They only get about 18 inches of snow a year.  They are very proud of the Alaska Pipe line which they showed to us several times.  We boarded the plane and flew back to Fairbanks. 

That night we went to a lecture on the Idederod Sled Race that starts in Anchorage and ends up at Nome, over a thousand miles away.  It was very interesting.  When we want outside the sun was still shining at 10:30 at night.   Sunrise was at 3:45 a.m.  The two shortest days are April 21 and Aug. 21 and at that time you can view the Northern Lights.  

The next day they took us to the airport at 6 a.m. to catch the plane home.  We changed in Minneapolis, MN and they were announcing to stay away from the outside windows because of a storm  issue.  We did catch our plane on time and arrived in Nashvillle at 9 p.m.  Sure was good to be in my own bed with dark nights. 

Wanda McMullin