By John Olesky (BJ 1969-96)
Paula and I saw Metro bus-sized humpback whales cavorting off Juneau.
We took off from Skagway and flew in a bush pilot’s 4-seater Piper Cub a few hundred feet above moose on a glacier floor, and a thousand feet below the peaks of this frozen box canyon.
We saw Steller sea lions lazily piled on shore, a bear foraging near the water’s edge and bald eagles soaring overhead in Mystic Fjords off Ketchikan.
We saw glaciers calving – when a large chunk of the glacier breaks off into the sea – particularly in Glacier Bay National Park.
We saw spectacular rainbows splashed from sky to sea during our whale-watching trip from Juneau.
And waterfalls thrashing their way into Mystic Glacier’s waters.
Paula and I were fascinated by totem poles in Ketchikan created by the First People, Alaska’s Indians.
And we spent four days in the most polite and helpful city we’ve come across in our travels – Vancouver, British Columbia – during our May 8-19 Alaska cruise and Vancouver stayover.
The Piper Cub flight, despite some wiggling in the wind, was exhilarating. The bush pilot would spot moose or sea lions or nature scenery and fly by so that Paula could video from her side, then the pilot would make a U-turn and fly by again so that I could take photos from my side. For me, this was the highlight of the 7-day Alaska cruise and the 4-day stayover in Vancouver.
After we spotted the moose, which were resting on the floor of Mead Glacier, the pilot made another U-turn and flew over the moose. A male moose came out of a bushy area, gathered up his four female friends, and they went running across the glacier floor. I felt like I was living in a National Geographic documentary.
When we looked down from the Piper Cub, it looked like ponds and lakes dotted the glacier floor. But it wasn’t. It was glacier ice that had been compacted from up to 1,000 feet deep to 10 or 20 feet. It was so compressed that it trapped only the blue from nature’s colors, and wouldn’t let it escape. Awesome!
Paula and I saw humpback whales when Holland America cruise line’s MS Zaandam sailed from Ketchikan to Vancouver through the Inside Passage Straits. Mostly, we saw fins and the tail as the whales dived to scoop up enough water to half-fill the swimming pool at my previous Cuyahoga Falls home.
While Orcas chomp on about anything they can catch or subdue, humpback whales’ teeth look like vertical Venetian blinds (called baleen) that then let the water pour back out but keep the seafood in. Their throats can’t handle anything larger than a grapefruit, though.
The weather was a pleasant surprise. The temperatures were in the high 40s to low 60s but the rain, almost a given in May along Alaska’s Inside Passage, mostly stayed away except when we were on the MS Zaandam or inside an onshore accommodation. We had been told to expect rain every day. Didn’t happen. Thankfully.
We did the usual things aboard the MS Zaandam, but that paled to being immersed in the Alaskan scenery.
Our December-January trip to China – Beijing and Shanghai – was interesting, particularly for me, because it was not what I expected to see. Our Alaska cruise was spectacular, simply because Mother Nature out-did even my expectations.
We rode the public bus in Vancouver, as we usually do on our trips, because we think it gives us a better flavor of a place and its people than the touristy arrangements. We had six pieces of luggage and only four hands between us, so a gentleman asked, “May I help carry your luggage on board?” We assented, and he carried two pieces of our luggage onto the public bus, then got off and continued with his day. As passengers got off the bus, they said “Thank you!” to the driver.
Exact change in coins ($2.25) is required to board the bus. If someone came aboard and said they only had paper currency, the driver would tell them to get on anyway because “you can pay for this the next time you get on.” Imagine trusting Akron bus riders to do that!
All over Vancouver we ran into this politeness. Keep in mind that we found this courtesy in areas that were not accustomed to catering to tourists because of the money they bring in. This is just the way that the people of Vancouver behave. It’s their nature.
We walked for hours in Vancouver’s 1,000-acre Stanley Park, and enjoyed the beauty of hundreds of thousands of blooms, a half-million trees, a plethora of totem poles, a magnificent view of downtown Vancouver and a Lion’s Gate Bridge that connects the park to North Vancouver. But even Stanley Park is overshadowed by the beauty of Vancouver’s people.
The biggest surprise of our trip: Our return flight went from Vancouver to Dallas to Chicago to Cleveland and, when we went to the Hopkins Airport luggage carousel, ALL of our luggage was there!
Click on the headline to view an album of photos.
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