USS Juneau

The USS Juneau, a navy transport ship, stopped off on its way from Tokyo to San Diego. Its going to be decommissioned when it hits its home port in San Diego and since we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of Statehood and Juneau is the ship's namesake, I guess a stop-over seemed like the right thing to do.

This is the third ship to be the USS Juneau - the second ship became famous in WW2 when it went down carrying 5 brothers - the Sullivan Brothers.

We watched her come up the channel on Sunday. I'm sure it was a coincidence but it seemed like all of a sudden all the boat and air traffic stopped while she maneuvered into place at the coast guard dock.



At one point to tug boats came along side to help her into place. You could see the sailor's getting ready to show themselves on the flight deck - making sure they were spaced an arm's length away from each other. And I saw several flashes going off as we watched them from the deck. I wonder if they saw Cappy?



I stopped by for a tour today just to see what it was like. I a managed to get in with the group of 13 4-year olds so the tour was a little slow going. Actually I'm sure the best part of the tour was getting to stomp in the rain puddles that had pooled up on all the decks. Plus going up and down all the step ladders with the chain's on them PLUS pushing the swivel chairs in the galley to see which one had the loudest squeak – that was really fun.

Here's the boat deck and one of their painted murals. Their mascot is the alligator since its an amphibious ship. One quick-minded granny on the tour said, "well last time I looked an alligator is a reptile, not an amphibian. What are they teaching you in school these days?"



Here's our (guide boson's mate) with the granny's great-grandson. He wasn't with the 4-year olds - comm'on he's at least 5.


We got to go to the area they call the "steel beach" because they can lower their ballast and flood this area so they can load and unload as needed. I didn't realize it when I was standing on it but this is part of the hovercraft - its was as wide as they ship (and deflated). They were taking back a few personal items from Japan. The Toyota jeep looked to be in pretty rough shape.


Here's another one of the misrepresented logos - Its painted on some sort of garage door - maybe that goes down to the transport area (or where they keep the ammo).



And finally, after a weekend of rain, we had out sights on some blue sky!

google earth/wrecks

I attended two lifelong learning lectures last Friday at UAS that gave me more of a chance to learn about the natural history of the area. It also gave me a chance to go to the campus but I didn't have time to visit with anyone. Car trouble, wouldn't you know.

The first session was hyped at using google earth to fly around SouthEast Alaska which we did a little of but it really was more about the environment and geology. Led by a retired high school teacher, the presenter was energetic and had great examples. I'm sure the kids at his school miss him. He was excited about his topic and very entertaining. I'd love to find out if he gives geology tours during the summer - that would be a blast. He demonstrated some of the ways that he uses google earth and some of the ways his student's used it for science fair projects. What a great tool. Here are a lot of layers and add-ons available that people have created to really take advantage of its features.

The second session was on shipwrecks of SE Alaska - namely the two most famous: Princess Sophia (1918) and the Princess Katherine (1952) and the presenter not only a gave a good background on the history of the incidents but she is also an underwater diver and photographer. She had some great slides of fish, creatures, and the actual wrecks seen from underwater. I asked if she had any on a website or in flickr and she said not yet but she's working on it. Since this was advertised as Lifelong Learning there were several people in the room who grew up in Juneau and remembered when the Princess Katherine wrecked on Lena Point very close to town. Apparently the first mate on the bridge forgot to tell the guy at the wheel to adjust a correction the mate had made earlier and ran aground. Due to the weather and the tides they couldn't get off and the ship sunk. Everyone was able to walk off so that was good. Apparently until a few years ago the wreck was in really good condition with a lot of the structure, furnishings, stained glass, etc. still in tact. I'm not sure of the legalities but the presenter referred to it being recently pillaged. (at least it wasn't burned and pillaged–that would be really bad–arrgh).

I recently finished reading a book about the Princess Sophia, Sinking of the Princess Sophia, Taking the North Down with Her - what a tremendous tragedy. Described as the worst wreck in the Pacific Northwest – all 285 passengers/crew perished – its place in history being trumped by the ending of WWI. Waiting for better weather to try to evaluate its passengers, after being stranded on the reef for about 14 hours the ship sank. Watch out for Vanderbilt Reef!

Twist your arm to go to Tracy Arm

We decide to take a day-trip on a boat. The weather was cloudy and a little foggy with maybe a little misty rain mixed in with it. The rumble of the engine and the enclosed cabin was conducive to napping.

But wait…there's more!


Here's Kelsie at South Sawyer Glacier in Tracy Arm.

A must-do when you're here visiting and haven't been to Glacier Bay or Exit Glacier outside of Whittier - a day-cruise to the Sawyer Glacier in Tracy Arm…magnificent! Our day started out a little cloudy with low hanging clouds but the weather forecast was for clearing skies and I know it's hard to believe, but it actually happened! Once we got to about 1/4 mile from the glacier the sun came out and lighted up the blue of the ice to a brilliance that was beautiful.


Logan's ice-magnified tongue with pure (cold) glacier ice!

We left Stephens Passage and entered Holkham Bay to access Tracy Arm (Go to googlemap and look for Tracy Arm link) . We motored through a narrow valley of sheer cliffs, numerous waterfalls, and ice bergs of various sizes. We saw humpback whales, harbor seals, pigeon gullimonts and their chicks, Arctic Tern, and mountain goat.

And Tim got a pictureof our retun from the deck – there's Jeanne waving her bloomers (just kidding)!

What's at the end of your Rainbow?

We're taking this as a sign that one day, ours can be found the Douglas Boat Harbor!

arrrgh - that's captain and matey to you!

So we did it and have the certificates to prove it! We took a 6 1/2 week Basic Boating and Safety course through the Coast Guard Auxiliary and took and PASSED the test. We had readings and homework for each of the 13 class sessions – some lessons more valuable than others. The beginning classes started out pretty rocky – I think the one who was going to conduct the first classes got called away so there was some shuffling going on. Tim has a good foundation and didn't really get too much out of the classes but he was kind enough to sit through it with me.

Probably the best classes were the safety classes where we got to try on a bunch of different life jackets and mustang suits, blow whistles, and use the air horn. I also enjoyed the knot tying class where we got to play with rope. (note: once the rope gets put on a boat it becomes LINE) Another favorite was the navigation classes where we got to play with charts (maps to you landlubbers) and compasses. Unfortunately, the charts and exercises we used were for the Martha's Vinyard area. If anyone needs to go to Cuttyhunk Harbor I know how to set the course from anywhere in Rhode Island Sound.

So now all we need is a boat and we should be all set!

Berner's Bay with Juneau Audubon

We went with the Juneau Audubon aboard an Allen Marine catamaran, the St. Aquilina, for a little cruise from Auke Bay to Berner's Bay. I'm always leery of boat cruises that advertise themselves as "A 4 hour cruise." Anyone who grew up watching Gilligan's Island or the reruns of Gilligan's Island will know what I'm talking about.



We had a nice calm day - overcast but no precipitation. Its in the high 40s so it was cool on the outside deck when the boat was running but it was very pleasant when we were running slow to look at birds or other sea mammals. We heard the cruise was sold out so we were pretty sure it was going to be crowded but it really didn't feel that way. We had nice comfy seats on the top deck and could walk outside when we wanted to.

We saw a lot of the same birds that we've been seeing from the house deck but it was really nice getting out on the water and getting a better picture of what the area is like. On the way up we cruised by several rocky islands and saw a bunch of eagles. We also went by a rookery where we saw maybe 300 Stellar's Sea Lions. I completely forgot to get any pictures – sry – there were all sizes of sea lions from very large 1000-lbers to last year's pup weighing in at 100 (?) lbs.

We made it up to Berner's Bay in a couple of hours. I think they were hoping the hooligan would be starting to run which will draw the sea birds into the bay. I've heard that all the runs are a couple weeks behind schedule and it was obviously too early. We saw a couple in their kayak - they must have camped overnight somewhere. The guy in the back of the 2-person kayak wasn't wearing any gloves – I can't image how cold his hands were.

This is us leaving Berner's Bay





Birds we saw: Belted Kingfisher, Bald Eagle, Cormorant, White-Winged Scoter, Bonapartes Gull, Great Blue Heron, Herring Gull, Surf Scoter, American Oystercatcher, Harlequin Duck, Pigeon Guillemot, Barrows Goldeneye, Scaup, Marbled Murrelets, Common Merganser, Glaucious-Winged Gull, Mew Gull. The birds listed above that don't have links tied to them can be found under our birds from the deck links over on the right-hand sidebar.

We also saw a lot of this:



The Humpback whales are migrating back from their winter of frolicking in the warmer Maui waters and we saw a couple different groups. Most of my pictures came out like this one:



I was lucky for this final shot as the whale sounded for deeper water.