A Walk in Totem Park

Totem Park, or the Sitka National Historical Park is a quarter of a mile from my apartment. I’ve mentioned it before. It’s the magical forest. Which is probably why the locals go there all the time to walk their dogs, walk themselves, and go for jogs. Totem Park was the first place that I decided to explore. It’s one of the few places where you can walk through the woods without bear mace. It’s also the only place in Sitka where you can see totem poles. 

From the apartment, I walk to Sawmill Creek Road. The trailhead is about a quarter mile toward town. The trails are wide and graveled. The first loop of the trail leads to a Russian Memorial for Russian soldiers who died in 1804, trying to take Sitka from the Tlingit (pronounced Klink- It). It's nothing special, just a sign and an orthodox cross. Then the trail turns to follow Indian River. Then you come upon a bridge, where you cross the river. In the summer, Pink Salmon (called Humpies because the males get an ugly hump on their backs) swim up Indian River to spawn. I've heard that occasionally, a brown bear will come all the way down to Totem Park during the salmon spawn. (or the yummy hikers?) Indian River:

I've mentioned the "octopus roots" before, but here's another picture of some interesting root growth:

Thick forest growth: 

 Deer Heart plant. I'm not sure if the name comes from the shape, or the fact that deer love to eat it.

 A frog totem:

 Devil's Club. This is nasty stuff. The tall stalks are covered with skinny thorns. If you brush up against this guy, your skin itches and burns all night. The interesting thing is, Devil's Club is used to make lots of botanicals: healing ointments and muscle rubs. Go figure.

I don't know if you can tell from this pictures, but there are tiny thorns all over this Devil's Club branch.

 One of the many totem poles in the park. The little guy on top is wearing what looks like a top hat. It's actually red and black bands that symbolize the number of slaves the family sacrificed. Or so I'm told. Apparently, people like to keep this detail hushed up.

 View of downtown and O'Connell Bridge from the park.

 And another.

 A raven. They are all over the place. And they are loud. They make over 60 distinct calls (kaws? haha). And they are great imitators. I've heard them imitate a bald eagle. And Allison says, one started imitating her one day saying, "Hello!"

 This is Cow Parsnip or Indian Celery. I believe that some part of this plant is edible but I don't remember which. It's not poisonous, but it can have an interesting effect on your skin. If you brush against the leaves, you could get welts on your skin. But only if it's sunny. The chemical is photosensitive.

 Huge drift logs on the shore.

Rockweed and ribbon kelp washed up by the tide.

 A dried out patch of acorn barnacles:

Totem figure:

 Something eating something? Something vomiting something?

 A red squirrel, smaller than our gray squirrels at home. And faster.

 I wonder if this one was influenced by the Russians. It reminds me of Santa.

 The sound. And a red can (navigation buoy.)

A tree on the shore and a huge piece of driftwood:

 Old Man's Beard lichen:

And last, but certainly not least:

This is my favorite totem so far. It looks like a monkey with his pet raven. Although I'm pretty sure there are no, and have never been, any monkey species here.

Well, that's all for this afternoon. This morning we had two tours, and we cleaned out some of the kayaks. I have the rest of the afternoon to myself! I will probably end up taking a walk in Totem Park. Again.

Peace!

On the Job

I thought I’d take some pictures while on the job, so I could show you where I work. The “office” is a big blue school bus, and that’s where I spend most of my time:


And here's the inside!




Like I said, John and Alison are very organized. You can tell that John used to be a boat captain. He’s very particular about how things are organized. You can also tell that he really knows the tourism business. Appearances are very important. We never have down time. If there are no tours, we have lots of chores: cleaning equipment, organizing, re-organizing, detailing kayaks, and most recently, painting the bus wheels. All the lifejackets and spray skirts are hung neatly in rows, according to size and color. The shelves are always neat, the floor always swept. It’s pretty funny. We’re like busy bees everyday, even when no one wants to go kayaking.
I’m the first one to arrive in the morning, around 7:30 or 8. This is usually what I see when I arrive:


Skeeter, the shore rep, arrives next and the other guides trickle in throughout the morning. We usually have customers who have booked online before the cruise, but if not, we have to do some meeting and greeting. As passengers come on shore, we smile and say: Can I offer you a walking map? or Would anyone like a walking map? or Can I help you find anything? It’s interesting to observe the attitudes of tourists. Some of them are determined to walk by you and not make eye contact, because they assume that you are trying to heckle them into buying something. Some of them will say “no, no, no.” as soon as you start talking, even though we’re just offering them a free map. And others will walk up to me, and say, “How do I get to Fortress of the Bears?” or “I want to see a whale.” or  “Can you call me a taxi?” Ahhhhh the service industry…
We talk to so many people on ship days, and most of them have no interest in kayaking. Cruise ships are pretty weird. Most of the passengers seem to settle into this ‘herd’ mentality. I think they get so used to being herded and served that they can’t be self-sufficient when they get off the ship. They get off the ship, disoriented and lost. Then they see some people lining up. “Well that looks promising. Let’s go stand in line,” they think to themselves. Lots of people come up to me asking for a shuttle bus into town. “Well, the main street is right over there. You should walk; it’s a gorgeous day.” But they don’t believe me and they stand in line and take a bus 100 yards.
I observed a “line up” phenomenon just the other day. First let me give some background: There is a brown bear rescue just outside of town called The Fortress of the Bear. It was started a while back in an abandoned industrial complex. They recycled these huge circular tanks, by turning them into bear pens. They have 5 or so rescues living there. I’m not sure what my opinion of this place is yet. It looks really crappy and cramped. And I’ve heard that the bears beg for peanuts. (The road to hell is paved with good intentions.) But I don’t know. If these bears didn’t have this place, they would have been shot. Anyway, there was a cruise ship in the other day, and for some reason, everyone on that ship wanted to go to Fortress of the Bear. Now, there are several local tour companies that make trips out there, but of course, you pay for their tour. This year, there is a man who volunteers to drive a shuttle bus back and forth to the Fortress. It’s free, but it is also erratic. There is no set schedule; he just goes back and forth whenever he gets a few passengers.  And he usually only gets a few passengers, but this day was different. People wanted to go. And people were asking me about it. And I said: “Well, there is a free shuttle, but I don’t know when he’s going to get here. It might be half an hour.” So a line formed. Beside the big blue kayaking bus. And more people lined up. And the line was embarrassingly long. And 40 minutes later, the bear bus comes, and not everyone fit. So the bus headed out of the parking lot, with the back end sagging, and the line remained. It was hilarious. There was this line in the middle of the parking lot. And most of the people in line had no idea what they were waiting for, but they heard it was a bear bus, so they waited. And some people waited an hour. I tried to convince people to go take a walk in Totem Park instead, but they didn’t want the exercise or the magical forest atmosphere. So instead they waited in line, to ride a bus, to see some captive bears in an old industrial tank. BOOOOOOOOO!
A few days later, and it’s still funny! But even with the disinterested passengers, we still manage to get a good amount of business, and so far, our customers have been great. Hope all is well with you!
<3

I do work on my day off...

Some people say it's dangerous to have a "fun" job, because eventually, it won't be fun anymore. I work for a kayaking company. And I go kayaking on my day off. This might not last for long if "what they say" is true.

On my last day off, Stephanie and I paddled in Sitka Sound. Alison and John let us rent kayaks for free, as long as we don't use ones they need for tours. The above picture was taken on Abalone Island, one of the many small, uninhabited islands in Sitka Sound. It was a beautiful, sunny day, but it was also very windy. That usually happens in Sitka. The cloudy days are calm and the sunny days bring convection winds (the sun heats the land, warm air rises...the uneven warm/cool of the air causes wind. Am I right?)

We decided to paddle into the wind, so the wind would be at our backs on the return journey. It took 2 hours to get from Crescent Harbor to Abalone. It was pretty rough. The whole time I was thinking, "I better be burning A LOT of calories right now. And my arm and ab muscles BETTER be really toned after this." (I sound high maintenance, but that was the only thing that kept me sane as I paddled 2 hours in a headwind.)

But the island was nice. We settled down on the beach, sheltered from the wind by some volcanic rocks. We ate our picnic lunch and did some beach-combing. Abalone is a great beach for this. It's very rocky and since the tides change so dramatically, lots a cool shells get washed up and dried out. Abalone, clam, periwinkles, dogwinkles, anemone skeletons, sea glass, limpets, etc. Some beach booty:

Also while we were at Abalone, we saw an eagle snacking on a rock:

There are soooo many eagles here, and we've seen a few nests on some of the islands in the sound. They often make nests in dead trees, because there's no foliage to get in the way of their view. They like to see what's going on around them. Something I didn't know before I got here: Eagles mate for life. And the same couple will come back to the same nest every year. They continue to add sticks and such to the nest year after year. Those nests get really heavy. There was an eagle nest in Florida that was built on a rock ledge. The nest became so heavy that the rock ledge broke. Supposedly, it weighed 2000 lb.
I'm looking forward to more paddling this week, as I have 3 days off in a row! May is a slow month for cruise ships...

Picture(s) of the Day (PotD)

This is a picture of Skeeter hugging a tree. We've seen a lot of trees here in Southeast Alaska, and quite a few of them are this big around (if not bigger.) This picture was taken while we we hiking the Herring Cove trail in Sitka. The woods here amaze me. There are so many plants crammed into one space- there are plants growing over, under, and on each other. And their growth and life cycles are intricately intertwined.  This is the rain forest. The Tongass National Forest to be exact.
This forest is the largest National Forest in the US and it covers nearly ALL of Southeast Alaska (about 17 million acres- this is a chance for me to practice my natural history facts for tourists.) This forest is classified as a rainforest, because of the amount of yearly rainfall it receives and the fact that there are never forest fires here. It's big and wet. AND it's unique. And I'll tell you why. According to a local naturalist, it's all about location.
Southeast Alaska is part of the marine west coast climate that occurs in Pacific Northwest. Southeast receives lots of rainfall and experiences mild winters and cool summers. There is a lot of moisture building up in the Pacific that gets dumped here. But go inland a little further and the temperatures drop 10+ degrees and it's dry. Why? Mountains. There are mountains very close to the coast. Why? Because Southeast is located at the meeting point for the Pacific and Northwest plates. Therefore, there are mountains being built up as I type (and as you read.) There is also volcanic activity going on here. In fact, there is a volcano here in Sitka: Mt. Edgecombe.

The volcano is on the left. To the right is a huge crater. I'm told there is a lake in the middle. Mt. Edgecombe is located on Kruzof Island in Sitka Sound. It takes several hours to kayak there. The adventurous types like to paddle out there, rent a small Forest Service cabin, and hike the volcano. This sounds like fun, and it gets better. Kruzof has a dense population of brown bears, even more dense than Baranof Island (where Sitka is located.) Anyway, enough of this bear distraction business. Back to the geology lesson.
Climate, plate tectonics...what about glaciers? The forest here is much older than anything you'd see in your town, yet it's relatively young, less than 400 years old. Why? Because the area is still recovering from the ice age.
Snow and ice covered this place for thousands of years. Glaciers formed after layer upon layer upon thousands of layers of snow became compacted. The pressure from all this snow/ice is so great, that the ice on the bottom on glacier becomes an a new form of water: a malleable form of ice. Voila! A glacier! A river of ice-stuff. Glaciers carved away at the landscape underneath. When the ice fields melted and glaciers disappeared, they left a barren eroded earth. But nature is amazing. Bacteria and molds migrate here. Lichens and mosses grow. Birds poop on it. Seeds in the poop grow (a seed and fertilizer in one!) Small mammals migrate to feed on the plants. Bigger mammals follow these guys and eat them. And 200 years later, you have a forest. In the case of Southeast Alaska, it's a Spruce-Hemlock forest (with the occasional alder and cedar tree.)
When you walk into the woods here, you feel like you've entered some fairy tale forest. You're surrounded by huge tree trunks, mossy forest floors, wild berry bushes, curtains of "old man's beard" and "witch's hair" lichens... Moss grows up the trunks and roots of live trees. And then small plants sprout up in the moss. Hey little guy, that's not the ground. That's a stinkin' tree you're growing on!
It's a feeding frenzy in there. A combination of nutritious soil and lots of rain lead to a steady, rapid growth of plants. If you look at tree rings in one of these trees, you'll find that all the rings are roughly the same width. You can't slow these guys down. And check out these roots:

I'm not entirely sure what happened here, but I think its a tree growing on top of a stump. The tree started out by feeding on the stump, until it's roots were long enough to reach the ground. I mean, those roots look like octopus arms engulfing a massive stump. Is that what you get from this picture? I wonder how long it took the roots to reach the ground? 

Anyway, like I said, it's a growing/feeding frenzy in there. I bet if you laid down in the woods and took an hour nap, you'd wake you to find tree roots creeping over your body. Yikes!

So there you go. PotD and natural history lesson in one. Peace!

I get all the news I need on the weather report...

When I was living in Baltimore, I listened to NPR everyday. I took a lot of pride in knowing current events, and I felt like I was staying informed and continuing to educate myself. There is an NPR station here in Sitka, but I hardly ever listen. I spend very little time in the car, since I ride my bike everywhere. And I can't listen through the internet, because I have none. I feel a little out of the loop. I'm very focused on myself and "being" here in Sitka, which is a good thing. So, just like Simon and Garfunkel's "Only Living Boy in New York," I get all the news I need on the weather report.
When we arrived, it was pretty cold and rainy (of course.) We were expecting this, but Alison said that it's been a cold May so far. The warm weather is coming...
Skeeter and I are living in an apartment right outside of town. It's about a mile and a half from Crescent Harbor, where we work everyday. An easy bike ride. Our housemate Stephanie is also working for Sitka Sound Ocean Adventures (SSOA). She is from Olympia, Washington. We all had a hard time finding sumer housing, so we joined forces. I'm glad we did, because our apartment is very nice: spacious and already furnished. The former tenants even left behind cleaning supplies and some baking ingredients.
We started training on May 5th. The next 5 days were FULL 8 hour days. We reviewed company policies, unpacked gear, and  cleaned out the office (a big blue school bus.) We also spent time in the pool, working on kayak rescuing and self-rescuing skills. I feel very prepared. Even though SSOA is a small company, Alison and John are incredible organized. John has been a boat captain for years here in Alaska, and he likes to keep everything ship-shape.
Last Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, we were on the water. We have to learn the islands and channels so that we can plan kayaking routes. We don't take the same route every time. We adjust according to the wind, the currents, and the abilities of the group. We also had to learn which beaches are good for picnics and ditching (if the weather gets really bad while we're out.) A lot of the islands in the sound have complicated names (Russian and Tlinglit names), like Japonski, Galankin, Chai chei, Casiana, and Bam Vorishni. I don't have to worry too much about remembering this stuff, because I'm the tour manager. I will be spending most of the time at the bus, talking to tourists and taking their money. But I do help the guides out a lot: I outfit their clients, clean and launch their boats, and pull them in when they return. I also check up on them and make sure they have all of their supplies for the trip. In return, I get 20% if their tips.
The first cruise ship came in last Wednesday and it was great. Beautiful, sunny weather. And we sent out 4 tours. That's a full day! The days since then have not been as full, but the weather has been great. No rain. I didn't think that was possible in Southeast. Despite the beautiful weather, the cruise ship passengers just haven't been interested in paddling. But hopefully we'll be more busy in June, when schools are out and families are traveling together. 

That's all for now... Peace!

Road Trip Pictures

YAY! I've got pictures from the Road Trip! We really loaded down the car. We took out part of the back seat. It was completely full except for a little valley through the middle (so we could see out the rearview.)

Early in the morning: We're full with pancakes, thanks to Skeeter's mom, and we're ready to hit the road.  The first day was a long one. We drove all the way to Indiana, about 11 hours. We took minor roads through the mountains in Virginia until we hit 64 West. It was beautiful. We had a picnic lunch by the road. 

We stayed with the parents of one of Skeeter's track teammates in Indiana. We were thankful that we could sleep under a roof that first night, because Indiana was getting pounded by rain and thunderstorms. There was a tornado near Indianapolis that night. Iowa was clear and sunny. We camped out at Lake Ahquabi:

Driving through South Dakota was great. I've never been out west, so I was really fascinated by the landscape. I've never seen such huge corn fields, no houses in sight. As you drive further west on route 90, you hit rolling hills. There's no forest, so you can see for miles on a clear day. Then the lanscape changes really suddenly. You're in the Badlands:

I didn't have a chance to really research the geology of this place. It's really unique. The wind and rain have been eroding this place for thousands of years, creating these unusual land forms. Inside the "wall" of rock, there is prairie. 

We camped out in the prairie, in a primitive campground (no running water.) There were prairie dogs and buffalo in the area. As the sun was going down, the wind picked up and we could see and hear a thunderstorm in the distance. The thunderstorm missed us, but the wind was brutal. I was worried that our little tent wouldn't make it. There was nothing to block the wind. The next morning, there were fresh buffalo hoof-prints outside the tent.  Ghhlllllll!

The next morning was still stormy and windy. But the views were incredible. We could see the storms moving in.

As we were driving back from the camping spot, our car got a little muddy.

The weather was pretty bad. Our next stop, Black Hills, SD, was only a few hours away, so we took our time driving there. We stopped at Wall Drug, a tacky tourist destination. It's like South of the Border. We saw signs for Wall Drug all along route 90 for about 500 miles. We HAD to stop.

In the Black Hills, we ran in a small 5k. There were only 50 people in it. Skeeter won, of course. Although he claims that his time was terrible. We were at 6,000 ft above sea level. It was a hard run. I have to brag here: I was first place in my age group. (And NO, I was not the only one in my age group.) But it's really not that impressive. I had to stop and walk a couple times. That elevation thing is no joke.

South Dakota:

 We edited our plans a little. We decided to just drive as far as we could and play it by ear. Montana was beautiful:

We had fun driving through Montana. It's a huge state, but it's all rural. We may be country kids, but we did not fit in. We stopped in one town for gas and a picnic lunch. Everyone just stared at us. We were the only ones not wearing Stetson hats and cowboy boots. There were only a few other cars on the road. They were all big pick-up trucks, and they were all driving REALLY fast. One guy passed us and as he came to a left curve in the road, he drove into the left lane. I guess he didn't want to slow down. 

We crossed into Canada and made a quick stop in Calgary. We were camping out, but everything was going wrong: Skeeter could not find a place to buy beer and we ran out of camp fuel for our stove. We went out to eat.

The next day was gorgeous. We drove through the Canadian Rockies to our next destination: Jasper National Park. A Glacier: It's a little hard to see because it's covered in snow, but you can see just a little blue ice peaking through:

There's a lake to the left, but it's frozen and covered with several feet of snow:

We spent 2 nights in Jasper. They were COLD, but with my expert fire-starter skills (acquired in Ireland), we were able to stay warm. (Skeeter was impressed that I could start a fire without lighter fluid. And I thought he was a country boy.)

We went on a long hike in Jasper. From the top of a hill:

We were hiking up a steep hill and I almost peed my pants when I saw these Bighorn Sheep. I was so excited to see new wildlife.

The trails were beautiful, but I was a little nervous about bears. We saw bear poop, but no bear.

 Skeeter takes a pee break. He doesn't have any sympathy for me when I have to pee in the woods.

 Frozen lake in Jasper.

 Caribou on the side of the road. Driving through British Columbia was unimpressive. It was actually pretty ugly. Most of the towns there only exist because of logging operations and the logging makes the place look like hell.

 I didn't get any pictures in Prince Rupert, but it was definitely one of my favorite places. I really love the coast.
Here is our camping spot on the ferry. We spent two nights here:

And then we arrived in Sitka!

The weather has been really sunny for the past few days, a big change from when we first got here. I hope it's a sign that we're in for a sunny summer!

More tomorrow...