Mon Jun 27 2022
Coming around the headland towards Hoonah we passed a cruise ship terminal with 2 enormous ships moored. That area is about 1 1/2 miles from the small town of Hoonah, and what’s nice about it is that when we’re down by the village the ships are out of sight. Not so the passengers, who are walking or riding various shuttles around the area, taking the “city tour” or one of the local excursions. We’ve got a friend here who has a sea kayaking business, operating from May through September and making enough of a haul to take the rest of the year off. That’s a good gig. Hoonah is a great spot to take a half day fishing charter or go looking for bears wandering the meadows by the water, and the local guides seem to do well. Down by the cruise ship terminal is the old cannery where one can see how salmon processing was done at the turn of the century. There’s also gift shops and a couple of dining venues likely owned by the cruise ship companies. There’s a free tram ride that links the two docks which are about 3/4 of a mile apart, then there’s a $50 round trip tram ride to the top of the mountain. One of the world’s longest zip line rides begins up there and terminates at the tourist facilities, and about every 5 minutes a group of riders comes blasting down the mountainside and slams to a stop at the bottom. You can hear them coming, each rider on a separate cable in a rather secure looking harness and trolley assembly. Apparently they get up to about 60 miles per hour during the descent, which lasts around 90 seconds. From what we could tell the cost is about $2/second, perhaps the same as what a tandem skydive might cost these days. I’ll stick to skydiving.
Aside from the various ways that the tourist center is designed to separate cruise ship passengers from their disposable income, it’s actually a pretty nice setup and there’s a nice walking trail through the woods between the two docks. There’s also a nice gravel beach area where we observed a cruise ship passenger going for a swim in the chilly water. Some folks are tougher than others. Isabel has been threatening to enjoy the health benefits of a cold plunge, but so far she’s all talk. I thought she was going to do it in an anchorage a couple of weeks ago, but when she saw those yellow jelly fish things cruising through the area she had a legitimate excuse to bail out.
Hoonah itself is home to a fair population of Tlingit people, indigenous to this area for quite some time. Apparently they used to live up in Glacier Bay but a few hundred years ago they moved over here due to the advancing glaciers overrunning the local environment. Now Glacier Bay is a National Park and the glaciers are receding due to climate change. We managed to score a last minute reservation to enter the park on Sunday morning - those are only available with 48 hour advance notice. Tuesday morning we’ll be reporting to the visitor’s center for a park briefing before plying our way North into the park waters and the opportunity to explore a stunningly beautiful environment. With luck we’ll be back there in a few weeks with our only scheduled visitors for this season, Ian, Nicola and Charlotte who are flying all the way from the UK to experience Alaska with us. We’re pretty darn stoked about that.
We’ve had a relaxing time here in Hoonah, taking long walks each day, and enjoying the beautiful sunny warm weather while we do a few outdoor boat projects. Maintaining a boat is a bit of work, and unlike a house many tasks simply can’t be deferred due to safety or impending damage concerns. Re-caulking one of the big saloon windows got done yesterday and we’ve spent a lot of time cleaning inside and out while we’ve had unlimited electrical power and water. Now we’ll go play for a while then do it all over again at Auke Bay in a couple of weeks. We’re topped with water and have plenty of fresh groceries, only thing to do is pay the bill when the harbor office opens at 0800 then taxi out to the fuel dock and melt our credit card buying diesel. Fuel prices continue to climb as the world gets nuttier, but we’re not going to stop traveling. We are thoughtful about our movements though, and try not to plan anything silly or backtrack. See it once, see it right, move on to something new. Even Southeast Alaska is big enough to provide years of exploration and scenic wonders, and if we ever find ourselves in the rest of Alaska, there’s a lifetime of poking about.
Today we’ll move just a few miles Northeast to an anchorage called Flynn Cove where we’ll be about 2 hours journey from the visitors center at Glacier National Park. Tomorrow morning we’ll get going at the crack of whatever so we can be at the dock there at 0700 for our entry briefing. Can’t really call it the “crack of dawn” as it doesn’t really seem to get dark here this time of year.
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