Is your guitar an endangered Alaskan species?

I was half listening to Re:Sound on WBEZ today, when my ear was caught by the mention of Sitka spruce trees and guitars in the same sentence. Sitka spruce is the state tree of Alaska–the largest variety of spruce and the most ubiquitous tree in southeast Alaska.  Logging Sitka spruce is lucrative. A great many guitar makers use Sitka spruce [...]

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Alice in Glacierland

So, sure—it was possible to get pristine shots of Hubbard Glacier and the surrounding mountains—such as the ones in my previous post—by standing at the edge of the deck, leaning against the bannister, and carefully framing the shot to exclude the people around me.  But that wasn’t the actual experience. Most of the time I was [...]

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The top ten percent: Our view of Hubbard Glacier

Between 6 and 10 a.m. on the last full day of our cruise, our ship pulled up to Hubbard Glacier, the longest tidewater glacier in Alaska, and one of the few in the world that is currently advancing (i.e. growing).  Stretching 76 miles to the sea at Yakutat and Disenchantment bays, it has an open [...]

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Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve Photo Gallery

      Sylvia checks conditions   Mountains!

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“They look like golf balls”: Rafting in the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve

  When we arrived at the bank of the Tsirku River, I was loaned standard-issue rubber boots and a wool hat (since my Tilley hat blew off on the catamaran ride over), and our busload of travelers was divided into four or five rafts.  Mom and I chose to join Sylvia, a thin but strong young woman who [...]

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C.P.’s Alaska 2: Waste Not, Want Not

I just did a quick Google search on “Haines Alaska CP” and found an article in the Chilkat Valley News  about a brown bear that was shot, declawed, and abandoned in the Chilkat River. It’s a good illustration of local attitudes about subsistence living. Incidentally, I love the fact that the other people in the story are identified by first and last [...]

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C.P.’s Alaska: “Salmon are everything”

  When we got off the catamaran at Haines we were met by our guide, C.P.—a hunky, boisterous, bearded guy with great comic timing.  We had just traveled down the deepest fiord in North America, and were on our way to see the largest collection of bald eagles in North America, but what C.P. talked [...]

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Skagway to Haines – finally!

When we docked at Skagway, I thought the scenery was beginning to live up to my expectations of Alaska.  The excursion to the Alaska Chilkat Eagle Preserve began with a very short bus ride to another dock.  There we boarded a catamaran (I think that’s what it was) that took us from Skagway to Haines via the [...]

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Can you get there from here?

Our excursion from Skagway to Haines and the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve was definitely the single best day of our trip.  But we almost didn’t get there, and the story about my numerous foiled attempts to make arrangements tells you something about the difficulties of traveling in Alaska – especially if you’re on a [...]

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“The Real Alaska”: Rain over Mendenhall

As we docked in Juneau, we were greeted by rain, clouds over the mountains, and the same types of tourist shops we had seen surrounding the docks in Ketchikan.  (“That’s the real Alaska,” I heard over and over again, every time it rained, from everyone who worked in the tourist industry.)  In general, people don’t [...]

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