ALASKA CRUISE Part 1: Seward, Valdez and Glacier Bay, Guest Post by Susan Kean

Reid Glacier, Alaska.

My friend Susan Kean and her partner George recently went on a Viking cruise in Alaska. I thank her for sharing her thoughts and excellent photos from the trip.

Our Viking ship, Orion. Though it looks large, it’s much smaller than Princess etc.

Our Viking Alaska cruise began with our arrival at the Anchorage airport on a Sunday afternoon, where we were picked up by a bus and, with the help of an entertaining driver, arrived two-and-a-half hours later in Seward, where we boarded our cruise ship, the Viking Orion 

Trees that survived great earthquake, preserved by the salt water from the tsunami.

The drive was fascinating. We saw the remains of trees that were killed and fossilized by the great earthquake in 1964. Much of this area was wiped off the map both by the ground sinking eight feet and the 30-50 foot tsunami that wiped out the towns. The recovery and resilience of the people is commended.

View of Seward  from our cabin. We are at the back of the boat!

We spent the next day in Seward. Glorious weather! 

One of the many wonderful displays at the Alaska Sealife Center, Seward.

We visited their Aquarium, the Alaska Sealife Center, where the sealife of Alaska's west coast was beautifully presented. And I couldn’t resist visiting an extraordinary fabric shop…a quilters paradise in the old town of Seward.

Susan at the Whitney Museum, Valdez.

We sailed at 4:00 p.m. to our next stop, Valdez. We were thrilled to see a bald eagle, but I gather they are very common here! In some places there are more eagles than people! 

Bald eagle.

In Valdez we had the interesting treat of three museums. First, the Whitney Museum, made up of many amazing items collected by an antique shop owner who traveled the coast of Alaska. 

The transportation system.

Good Friday, late afternoon, the 9.2 earthquake struck.

The second museum, the Valdez Museum, covered the history of the area with records of the earthquake and the recovery from the huge oil spill (March 24, 1989.) It took extraordinary work to restore the sea and shore wildlife that was hit so hard by the oil. It has mostly recovered by now. The Old Valdez Exhibit also features the history and culture of the area.

Inside an early pioneer cabin.

The next part of the trip was cruising for two days in Glacier Bay. 

Close-up of Hubbard Glacier--six miles wide and 400 feet tall!

It’s hard to understand and appreciate the splendor of it all. Generally, the glaciers are retreating and opening up new places for exploration. There is concern that if this were to continue at is current pace it would raise the sea level significantly.

We were tickled to see a full rainbow briefly from our cabin on the back of the ship

The pot of gold is lost in the ocean.

To be continued. Look for Part 2 of Susan's Alaska trip next week.

BALD EAGLES, VOLCANOES, CAVES and more: A PACIFIC NORTHWEST WINTER ESCAPADE, Part 2, Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

Mount Thielsen, Oregon.

My friend Caroline Hatton, a children’s book writer and frequent contributor to this blog, took these photos in Northern California and Southern Oregon in February 2024.

At dawn, after spending the night at the Winema Historic Lodge in Tulelake, California, all we could see outside was the nose of our car poking out of impenetrable fog. We guessed that fog dissipates faster over dry land than lake water, so we drove a few miles south, entering LavaBeds National Monument,an area preserved because of its volcanic origin and Modoc native people history.

The lava flowed in the past half million years and until about a thousand years ago, from the Medicine Lake volcano on the Pacific Ring of Fire. This volcano is not pointy, tall and postcard-worthy like Mount Rainier near Seattle or Mount Hood near Portland. Instead, it is shaped like a shield, low (7921 feet or 2414 m) and broad (22 miles or 35 km from east to west and roughly 30 miles or 48 km from north to south). Yet, it is California’s largest volcano by volume and area, and its lava flows extend twice as far as it does.

A Fleener Chimney, more than 4 feet (or 1 meter) across.

We stopped at the Fleener Chimneys. Footpaths led up lava rock mounds to metal fences that kept us from falling into big, deep holes in the ground where lava once erupted up, splattered down and solidified as it cooled, gradually building up the “chimneys.”

Mount Shasta at right, as seen from the top of Schonchin Butte.

Next, we hiked to the top of Schonchin Butte (elevation 5302 feet or 1616 m). Deer tracks went all the way up the trail, so I kept looking all around, ready to jump out of the way of any startled animal. We didn’t see any wildlife (except for a Bald Eagle in flight, what a treat!), but we got a good view of the snowy cone of Mount Shasta, a 14,180-foot (4322-m) high volcano to the south, in sharp focus in the crisp, clear air.

Model of a Modoc winter lodge--partly underground, insulated by earth and tule layers.

This austere landscape of lava flows, buttes and caves was the homeland of the Modoc native people, until Europeans arrived and turned it into a battlefield during the Modoc War in 1872-3. Details are available at the Lava Beds National Monument Visitor Center, plus information about Modoc rock art and displays of craft items. As a fan of miniatures, my favorites were the models of traditional Modoc dwellings. I skipped the natural history information—for the next time I visit.

When we asked the ranger about visiting caves, he asked us to sanitize our boots, using the brushes and solutions set up outside the entrance door. This was in case we had visited caves elsewhere and encountered a deadly bat disease, white nose syndrome. Disinfecting boots before visiting caves protects local bats from infection. Caves where entire bat colonies hibernate are closed to visitors in the winter. The Ranger also made sure we had actual flashlights, because cell phone flashlights are not sufficient.

Valentine Cave pillar.

As advised, we visited Valentine Cave. After descending into the mouth of the cave, a gaping maw in lava rock, we faced a stone pillar in the underground darkness. Going around it on either side led deeper in the tube-shaped cave. The mouth of Skull Cave was the size of a road tunnel.

After the sun had vaporized all the fog, we drove to Petroglyph Point to see historic Modoc rock carvings. I found them surprisingly large and coarse, perhaps because the rock is too soft to allow finer details. Then we drove to a warm hotel in Klamath Falls, Oregon, for the second night of our winter getaway.

On the third day, driving back to Eugene was only going to take three and a half hours, so we detoured off US-97 North, heading west on OR-138, then south on OR-230 to glimpse photogenic Mount Thielsen in its snowy splendor. (See first photo.)  After we spotted the Mount Thielsen Viewpoint sign on the opposite side of the road, we took advantage of a Sno-Park to turn around, and drove back slowly, facing the mountain to take photos from the car. The viewpoint and its parking area were inaccessible, smothered by snow. Next we stopped at a nearby Sno-Park (parking requires displaying a Sno-Park Permit) to snowshoe up an unplowed road, an easy walk under a bright blue sky. We were the only ones there.

When we arrived back home from our bald eagle expedition, we were thrilled to count three adult eagle sightings on our first day out, three on the second day (an adult and juvenile on the ground in morning fog and the adult flying over the lava beds), and one on the third day (upon leaving Klamath Falls.) A week later, in two hours in Eugene, we saw five adult bald eagles, and I’m pretty sure I heard the birds laughing at us for going on a car trip just to see their countryside relatives.

Yet, repeating this escapade in other seasons sounds easy and fun. When winter is over, the bats wake up from hibernation and more lava caves open to human visitors. In spring (and fall), a bazillion birds stop over on their migrations north (and south). And in summer, birds make more birds!

Part 1 of this post appeared on April 22, 2024 at The Intrepid Tourist. 

All text and photos, copyright Caroline Arnold. www.theintrepidtourist.blogspot.com

BALD EAGLES, VOLCANOES, CAVES and more: A PACIFIC NORTHWEST WINTER ESCAPADE, Part 1, Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

Bald Eagle, Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, California

My friend Caroline Hatton, a children’s writer and frequent contributor to this blog, took these photos in Northern California and Southern Oregon in February 2024.

Tule Lake (T), Lava Beds National Monument (L), CA; Mount Thielsen (M), OR

Ever since I read that the Tule Lake area in Northern California is where to look for “the largest number of wintering Bald eagles in the contiguous U.S.,” it’s been on my Pacific Northwest bucket list. Bald eagle numbers peak in mid-February, some years reaching above one thousand. By late March, the eagles have left on their journey north.

In February 2023, temperatures below freezing, ice, and snow made driving conditions potentially treacherous. I chose to stay safe at home in Eugene. A year later, nighttime temperatures barely dipped below freezing. It was time to go!

The Tule LakeNational Wildlife Refuge is one of six Klamath Basin Refuges which are the last remnants of once-immense wetlands, shrunken by agricultural development. The refuges are a rest and feed stop for waterfowl migrating along the Pacific Flyway. Winter waterfowl are bald eagle food.

At the website for this wildlife refuge, a term that makes it sound like a safe haven for animals, I was surprised to see “Hunting” under “Visitor Activities.” When I looked up the 2024 hunting seasons, on different dates for ducks, scaups (diving duck species), or Canada geese, I found that all hunting had ended in January. I felt reassured that visiting in February should be safe from stray bullets.

Upon arrival, we stopped at the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center at Tule Lake. The building contains excellent displays of taxidermy ducks, geese, eagles, and other birds commonly seen at the refuge, a library of relevant nature books, and a children’s play area with toys. The Ranger said, “There must be a hundred Bald Eagles out there right now,” sparking bright hope that we would see some. During the day, they look for water birds to eat. At night, they roost in treesy areas (such as the nearby Bear Valley National Wildlife Refuge, closed to the public). At dawn and dusk, they fly out and fly back, commuting to their day job.

The Tule Lake Refuge includes wetlands, some of which are farmlands seasonally flooded by irrigation. A network of dirt roads includes a 9-mile Auto Tour Route that begins four miles south of the Visitor Center and an array of straight roads on top of dikes, some with a power line running alongside. 

Bald Eagle.

We drove off, scanning sky and land and tops of power poles for photogenic birds. One bald eagle stared us down.

Bald eagle in tree.

To increase our chances of sightings, we chose to move around the vast area rather than sit still for hours at roadside spots or Wildlife Overlooks. Nature gifted us with dazzling visions: two more bald eagles, moody skies in turmoil, rain drawing dark curtains on the horizon one minute and washing over us the next, brilliant rainbows flashing in and out of existence…

White pelicans in front of the Peninsula rock formation.

We saw lots of duck species, coots, white pelicans, tundra swans, and sandhill cranes. A distant, gigantic, solid-looking white area contrasting with pale blue lake water turned out to be a clumped flock of perhaps a thousand birds!

For dinner at Señor Tequila in the town of Tulelake (one word), we tasted chicken specialties with decadent, Land O’Lakes secret cheese sauce (imagine chicken Stroganoff, especially since my selection contained added sour cream)… I ate a little of it and carried away the rest to eat for another meal.

When we checked in at the Winema Historic Lodge on the edge of the refuge, the owner, Loyal Taylor, whose awesome first name I had never encountered before, generously shared stories about the bald eagles and barn owls who are his neighbors. Breathtaking photos of some of them hang in the lodge dining room.

Everywhere we went on that February Wednesday, we were the only visitors there. That night, the temperature dropped around freezing. The wall heater in our room rumbled loudly on and off, so we turned it off and piled extra blankets on the bed. Even though I put on thermal clothing, I dreamed that I was back in the frigid Himalayas, in an unheated tea house room! 

To be continued in next week's post.

All text and photos, copyright Caroline Arnold. www.theintrepidtourist.blogspot.com