each day an adventure in alaska: to Sitka and back....

love Sitka!! I've been there a few times but always quick stops on the ferry run some place else. this time we stayed 3 full days really. beautiful place...would love to return and play more.

lots of great totem poles. there is a great park with trails and totems right in down town. worked great our first day as a route from our hotel to down town. we for sure got our steps in. loved the old growth forest that the totems were in.

we sort of pulled things off on the fly. MW had been wanting to go...it was talked about when we all went to Barrow. LM kept pushing us for dates that would work as she wanted to bring her niece. one night at work we all sat down at a computer for a few and figured out a place to stay. otherwise, we just had ideas of stuff we'd want to do. MW wanted to hit some hot springs. at lunch that first day there, we were waiting to meet up with MW and i started making calls. we ended up randomly calling a guy who could take us out that afternoon. the first time we saw her was when we picked up her with him.

we dug through her luggage for her suit, grabbed towels and hit the water taxi. the guy had a nice boat and we think maybe it's a neighborhood dock. he was ex-cop, i think ex-fbi as well...so we were either super safe or we'd get killed...haha. he was really nice. a bit ocd. he later called us to see if we wanted to rent one of his cars since he knew we were debating that as well. we went with a company, mostly because after some discussion we feared getting his car dirty. he'd hosed off the bottoms of our shoes before we got on boat and had not been happy with his assistant for re-boarding with dirty shoes after the hot springs.

Goddard hot springs were less than an hour boat trip away. there are two hot spring huts set up. my name was already written on the walls. haha. the upper spring was a bit less warm. we started there as there was another couple there. then we took over the lower spring which was nice and hot. i guess there is a muddy hot spring area above. we we not into that. his assistant came with us. she just had never been. we invited her to just join us. i think the plan was for her to keep to herself. if we were couples instead of friends i can see that...we were all chill and she was cool. LM niece is 20 i think...i had just met her as well. probably cool for her to have someone more her age on the outing.

it was a fun adventure. there are public use cabins all over the area..one near these hot springs, Tom something. I'll have to look it up. would be fun to return, rent that and hit the hot springs more.

it is a rain forest in southeast AK. i loved living down there, except for the expense of it being so remote. I'm always tempted to return one day. we had rain for our days there off and on. no real breaks in the clouds so we never really got any sort of look at the local volcano that is iconic for the area.

we did enjoy ourselves immensely i think. her niece was new to beaches and all that the intertidal zone has to offer so we tried to make the most of the low tides when they happened. sadly, we did not hit really low tides...maybe next trip. we did find a great tide pool at one beach we heard about from locals. i taught them to crack open muscles and feed them to the creatures in the tide pools. there were several anemones in there but the muscles brought out all the tiny crabs and fish...and even a little eel

Southeast is known for it's totem art. totems were identifiers and told stories to some degree i guess. Tlingit (kleenkit-is more how it's pronounced) and Haidi tribes are further divided into clans so the poles would give those identifiers. the booklet i got to remember my Southeast totem history said they are generally made as history, crest, legends or memorial poles.

the poles are often raised as part of a ceremony or potlatch as i recall it being called...some of the colors above, the green seems unusual to me. it's a craft though so individual totem carvers put their mark on things. in the past they would just let the poles turn back to the land...in a rain forest that wouldn't take all that long.

we made many trips through the totem park that first day...happy we actually didn't rent a car until the next day.

this is the lower hot spring. above is all of us on the boat.

we wandered around that first morning. hit the town Saturday market, shopped and looked for sea stars around town.

on the boat ride to the springs.

i suspect many of these are newer poles with more artistic flares. a whale may have been used to tell a story or on a memorial I'd think though. 18 original poles were moved and this park was created to display them. some of the older pieces were painted at one point with modern paints but as it turns out this was making them age faster, for those older ones they have tried to remove the old paint in order to better preserve the wood structure.

just reading the book i bought at the park building. the poles were all brought in, donated. the poles were from various areas of Southeast and have actually had a bit of a journey. they were shipped to an exposition in St Louis in 1904, a few in the worst shape were left behind there, then on to another exposition in Oregon in 1905, then in 1906 back to Sitka to be placed in this park.

a national monument by 1910 by Taft and later became part of the National Park system...the current administration and the GOP do seem hell bent on destroying our parks...why keep pretty places when you can destroy them for cash for the already so wealthy they can never spend it all. so far they haven't come after these places.

one of our walks around the trail system in Sitka. this one was to a small lake..

the folks in Southeast are not too keen on this Governor because of the cuts he was proposing to the ferry system. there is currently a strike happening with the ferries which left many stranded in various places. our hotel manager had fox on and was saying how displeased she was with our governor...though she was telling other hotel guests "he's a republican". she loves trump as did the other guests. gop members, voting against their own interest...seems pretty common.

we drove the main roads and hit this farmers market.

our second day there we hit the raptor rehab center and the bear sanctuary. it was built in old abandoned water tanks from pulp mill days. good job re purposing those old tanks. there is a third tank that currently holds recycling, but perhaps one day they will be able to add that to the fortress for bears and rescue more bears. it's a cool exhibit.

fireweed still making it's way to the top down there. up here they seem to be topping out.

love the trees up north. they tend to have more shallow roots or they just spread out above the ground i guess.

MW before waiting for the little zodiak like boat to get us back to the main boat after our day at the springs.

enjoying the lower spring.

us at the bear sanctuary

and back in the spring. the iphone loads as it desires. we shared photo's so i did not take all of these.

this is one of the enclosures...there are 4 bears living in here.

berries were great and we munched on them when we were walking. salmon berries and blueberries.

the afternoon was walking and beach combing on day two. we did the bears and birds in the morning.

that night we ate at the more elegant restaurant out of town a bit. good food and service. we tried various places while we were there.

more spring hut art. below is LM getting over a felled tree on our last days hike, which took us up, up, up Gavin Hill. LM wanted to do a trail with steps so this one fit the goal. it was a bit more challenging than expected i think, but it was beautiful and i think everyone enjoyed it. not sure they appreciated me waking them up early. we had a plane to catch later that day so i figured it would be great to get a real hike in that morning and still have time to shop and tide pool a bit.

on one of the beaches in town i think

this is the upper spring. we didn't stay long. it was more luke warm than hot at the time we were there.

flying back into Anchorage. i did take a xanax for flying to see if it would help with the flight anxiety. these were relatively short flights so i do think i tolerate those better anyway. it did help though with the general anxiety i think. mostly it just makes you feel drunk i guess.

the poles on display are re-created replicas and a few new ones. the lowest art depicts the most important part of the totem.

i turned back early from the last days hike. up and up and up...i knew i still would have to come down. it would take me longer to make my way down. with the rain there wasn't going to be much of a view anyway at the viewpoint.

nice walking down alone and enjoying the beauty. at noon the church bells began to peal. it was pretty amazing hearing the bells echo through the woods.

as I'm looking through this booklet I'm seeing that there was a totem hall inside that i totally missed..it has some of the pieces of originals...dang.