The summer of 2018 dawned bright with the beginning of a beautiful summer. I had just turned 50. My eldest daughter graduated salutatorian from high school in May and was about to turn 18. As a gift for these momentous occasions, my mother offered to take my family on the trip of a life time. Four years ago, in late June, off we went: a trip that seemed like the beginning of an idyllic summer. Travel with me to the great Northwest, as I traveled 4 summers ago:
Vancouver, British Columbia
In late June my family joined my mother and her partner in Vancouver; there were seven of us in all. We spent a few days seeing some of the city, before embarking on a cruise to Alaska.
Gastown: Vancouver’s oldest neighborhood and original settlement
Stanley Park
On Board The Star Princess: the beginning of our Alaska cruise and land tour
Traveling to The Land of the Midnight Sun
Ketchikan, our first stop, was founded as a salmon cannery site. Of the three ports of call, the time in this city was the shortest. Our time ashore was spent walking around the city, visiting the Totem Heritage Center and seeing the Ketchikan Salmon Ladder and waterfall.
Juneau was the second port of call. We passed the morning hours walking around the capital city of Alaska….Someone, perhaps in the visitors center, told us to go to a waterfront park where there was a sculpture of a whale in an infinity pool; for me that was the pinnacle of our morning.
The afternoon was spent on a Whale Watching and Mendenhall Glacier tour:
Skagway, our third and final port of call, is known as a town of the gold rush era because it is a gateway to the Klondike gold fields.
An amazing tour was taken from Skagway, by bus and railway. We had a fabulous tour guide named Bruce Schindler; he came to Skagway one summer, from Washington State, to be a guide on a tour bus and basically stayed. I mention Bruce, not only because he was such a great tour guide, but also because guiding tours was rare for him at the time. We were lucky to have him give us our tour. He had become an artist, creating sculptures and carvings out of mammoth tusks, as well as using the ivory and Yukon gold to make jewelry. Look him up.
Rail and Bus Tour
The bus took us to salmon bake buffet for lunch at Liarsville Gold Rush Trail Camp and ended at The Red Onion Saloon. I have no pictures of these.
The City of Skagway
After Skagway, we had one last big adventure aboard the ship:
Cruising Glacier Bay National Park and Glacier Fjord
The Cruise ended in Whittier, where we disembarked. The fascinating thing about Whittier is that it was built as a secret facility during World War II to support the war effort and provide a reliable trade route to the Alaskan Rail Road; the water here is ice-free all year making it an ideal area for a military base.
The Alaskan Land Tour Begins
On The Train
From Whittier, we boarded a train to Denali National Park. The trip on the train took about 10 hours, but we saw beautiful scenery along the way:
Denali National Park and Preserve
Moss and lichen grow in abundance in Denali National Forest. Among other things, lichens provide a good food source for many animals and moss helps control soil erosion.
Some Of The Flora and Fauna in Denali National Forest
The official land tour ended in Anchorage, where an unofficial tour began
We spent a few days in Anchorage after our excursion with Princess Tours. Like most tourists in a city, we went to a museum, walked around, and ate at extremely good restaurants.
Unlike many visitors, we scattered my father’s ashes in an area south of the city called Girdwood. My father had been an anthropologist, whose work focused on the people and the land above Arctic circle. We couldn’t make it up as far as the town called Kivalina that was so close to his heart. A former colleague of my dad’s suggested scattering the ashes in Glacier Creek: we wouldn’t have to walk on mudflats that could be dangerous, but the water would eventually be taken out to the Pacific Ocean by way of the Gulf of Alaska. I had arranged for the remaining half of my fathers ashes to be sent to one of two Anchorage hotels where we stayed. The other portion of my father’s ashes had been scattered seven summers before on a lake in Ontario; the thought was to spread what remained of my father in the water of the two areas he loved most: Muskoka, Ontario and Alaska.
At 10:00 in the morning, on July 4, 2108 we toasted to my dad. My three children, husband, mother and I sipped bourbon (his favorite drink) out of tiny bottles, while my mother’s partner looked on.
After the ashes were scattered, and we said our goodbyes, there were two more stops on that little road trip: Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center and Alyeska Resort.
Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center
The Views from above Alyeska Resort
Our Final Day In Alaska
On our last day in Anchorage we had one final destination: Potter Marsh Bird Sanctuary.
My mother took us on the trip of a life time! Truly this was the beginning of an ideal and beautiful summer. Unfortunately beauty can be fleeting. When we arrived in our summer home in Muskoka, about a week after our trip, our lives took us on a different kind of journey; one nobody could have expected…
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