For MJT

Here is my favourite version of Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley:



Just shut your eyes and listen.

If you want to see him performing it, go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AratTMGrHaQ

I just can't embed that version.

City Workers

Here in the north we have heat tape wrapped around our pipes that bring the water from the main line in the street to our houses. I just discovered that my heat tape had no electricity travelling through it - a major problem. To find where the fault was, the city had to dig up the street and part of the front lawn. This is what I woke up to at 8:00 AM.
By lunch, the hole was dug, but they found a pool of water at the bottom of it. So, they had to call in a pump truck to pump out the water so they could reach the main and check the heat tape connection along (NOW) with where the water was leaking from.

I looked over at the backhoe operator and thought he was sleeping until I focussed the camera on him and he flashed me a peace sign. We all laughed. It turned out to be a happy story for me as the break in the current was found, the leak was just ground water, and the city is currently busy putting everything back together - at no charge to me (except in my taxes of course).

Loose Change

I watched a movie called Loose Change yesterday - the 9/11 conspiracy theory. Here's a trailer:



Funny because I have never questioned what I saw, just continued to be horrified by it. Now, after watching the movie, which is done Michael Moore style, I don't know what to think. If you get a chance, watch it, as you have lived through this terrible time, and I'll bet you'll want some answers to what this movie proposes.

You can watch more footage as well as the whole movie on-line. If you want to see more check out Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdoJASdLg_A

Lake Laberge

Drove out to spend a night at the cabin at Lake Laberge with my good friend Deb. It's always great to get out of the city and just relax at the lake. The weather, as can be expected, was on again, off again, with some rain in the late evening but the sun did shine through at times.

Two minutes after taking this picture, the sun came out and the coats came off. Layering is very important this year as the weather changes from overcast to blue sky and sunny in minutes.

A shot of the cabin nestled in the trees. It overlooks Lake Laberge.

And I can hardly believe they accepted this as a personalized licence plate but seeing is believing. This is the old Yukon licence plate which is hung above the sauna.

And thanks MJT for your email complimenting the photos on this site. It's always good to get positive feedback!

Bean Here??

Dropped into Bean North's lovely coffee house located near the Takhini Hot Springs on the Hot Springs Road just north of the city. It's a peaceful setting to sip their fair trade java and enjoy the company of a friend.

There is a variety of indoor and outdoor seating areas. They roast their coffee on site and you can taste the freshness.

And considering our lousy summer their flower garden is beautiful.

Home Again, home again ...

We picked up the catamaran and started home. Although still foggy and now raining again, we stopped the ship by this fisherman to watch whales. Below is the spout of water from the whale, what you look for when trying to spot them. There were three at this spot and we watched for a while before heading home again.


We stopped first at Haines Alaska to drop off passengers. The skies began to clear and a rainbow appeared. It was very pretty and hopeful that the weather was changing.

This is Haines, a sleepy little town nestled on the coast of Alaska. We made our way back to Skagway (a 35 minute journey from Haines) and it was still socked in and pouring with rain. It was now 8:30 at night and we began our 170 km drive home from there. The White Pass was totally shrouded with fog which made driving slow but by the time we reached Carcross, the rain had stopped and you could actually see some blue sky.

Mendenhall Glacier

You can't visit Juneau without a visit to the Mendenhall Glacier. Here is a link to a web cam of the glacier: click here to see the glacier real time . The face of the glacier, seen above, in Mendenhall Lake is 100 feet tall (about the height of a 10 story building) and 1.5 miles wide, it's length is over 6 miles. Large as it is, the Mendenhall is just a tiny part of the Juneau Icefield, an expanse of interconnected glaciers that sits just behind the mountains next to Juneau, covers over 1,800 square miles and runs from the Taku River east of town to Berners Bay at the extreme western end of town.

Juneau

We arrived in Juneau and the rain stopped (except for occasional sprinkle) although the clouds still hung very low. We had three hours to wander around the city (not enough time in my opinion). I have been to Juneau a number of times in the past but have never arrived so far out of the city as where this ship docked which was something like 40 miles outside of the city.

We took a bus ride in with a very talkative bus driver who gave a running commentary of living in the north in Alaska. He was sooo American (even the other Americans on the tour weren't enamoured with him). He told us that the salmon were now running and this was the first day of fishing. They had tagged one of the salmon and whoever catches it wins $100,000.00. The fishermen were on the water in droves, catching salmon and trying for the tagged one. Then he told us the Canadians are mad that they [Alaskans] are fishing salmon as the Canadians think they are Canadian salmon and don't want Alaskans catching them, then laughed aloud at this fact. The fact is that due to the dwindling Chinook Salmon population (less than 1/2 the amount from last year), the Yukon Salmon Committee, whose mandated to look after the salmon's welfare, proposed a total moratorium on Chinook salmon fishing on the Yukon River including a first nation voluntary moratorium to help save the salmon population (the salmon travel up the rivers in the Yukon to spawn). The Alaskans seem to have missed the point. That was sad to see. The Yukon news report here read:

While Yukon First Nations know that dramatic conservation measures are needed, fisheries managers upstream in Alaska don't seem to be ready to do what it takes to protect the fish, Sidney said.

"We are at the end of the line, and we're the ones that see this fish is in trouble … and they will not listen," he said. "They wouldn't listen, and they kept [their] commercial fishing and their subsistence fishery over there. That's totally out of hand."

Earlier this week, Alaskan officials cut the subsistence fishery in half. Nevertheless, Sidney said, people there are still fishing salmon, even though there are currently not enough fish to meet the minimum number required under a U.S.-Canadian treaty.

He gave us a lot of misinformation, like everyone in Whitehorse speaks French only and Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska gave birth to a Down Syndrome baby, a condition caused by drinking alcohol while pregnant. With all the misinformation he was spouting, I didn't put any weight behind anything he said. (You can see he was a thorn in my side during the trip). Now, that's all I am going to say about him.


Juneau is a government town built at the base of the steepest mountain I have ever seen. It is very picturesque and friendly.


The wharf holds a small mall with three excellent restaurants. Again, it is a stop for cruise ships, one having pulled in shortly after we arrived.

Lynn Canal

We boarded the Alaska Fjordland catamaran at 7:45 AM in the pouring rain with the whole valley socked in with fog (photo of the ship NOT taken the day we travelled). The ship was designed for Alaskan waters and built in San Francisco. The Captain Leslie kept her eyes opened for water life and would slow or stop the ship when she spotted them.

This is what it looked like pulling out of Skagway. The ship in the mist is a docked Princess Cruise Line. Made me wonder what we would see or more truthfully not see on this trip.

The first siting was some harbour seals resting on a rock in the canal.

She then pointed out the Eldred Rock Lighthouse. It was built in 1906 and other than paint sits in its original form.

Just past the lighthouse were the Steller Sea Lion pups warming themselves on the rock. This is the area that seal lions come to mate and in the early spring the rocks are swarming with these mammals. Now the pups are here. Leslie cut the engines so we could hear their barks which sounded more like burps. Also swimming around the ship were black and white Dall's porpoises, the fastest of all small cetaceans - they can swim at up to 55 km/h. We also spotted humpback whales and of course lots of eagles. Also pointed out to us were all the glaciers that were barely visible through the fog. The journey was very interesting and I could just imagine how spectacular it would have been had it been a sunny clear day.

Skagway

It was off to Skagway again this time to take the day trip to Juneau that so many Yukoners do. We chose our date then decided to overnight in Skwy as the trip to Juneau leaves at 8:00 AM. That was difficult. We found only one hotel with a room for us - the rest were full. We drove the Skagway road but didn't see any animals this time (perhaps we weren't looking too hard) but arrived into the town that had three cruise ships in port and thousands and thousands of cruise ship tourists. After a quick walk around town, we dropped into the Red Onion Saloon for a cool Alaskan Amber beer, then freshened up for dinner. The weather was overcast with light sprinkles of rain. Apparently there are three places to eat in Skagway that are good (last year we found the Bonanza Restaurant which wasn't good at all!). The two fish houses on the wharf and the one we selected which is called Poppies just on the edge of town when you drive in. We both had the halibut which was excellent. You sit in a large "greenhouse" restaurant and look out onto their beautifully manicured flower garden. They grow their own vegetables although they serve mostly various lettuces (where were their carrots, beans, tomatoes, ... ??? I don't know) but all in all it was very good - the cost about $25 for a salad, main meal, glass of wine and coffee. I recommend it. It poured while we were eating and that set the stage for the weather for the next day.

Carcross

Last year, when walking down to the beach, there was evidence of some construction that was going to happen. This year, it is almost finished, a lovely deck with stairs down to the beach. And this year, with the water levels down, there is an actual beach.

The main street to the beach is quaint, with lots of little cabins lining the street. Here is one of my favourite.

And while we were on the deck, in came the train. Yes folks from Ontario, it was the same train that you rode, only smaller - one engine and three passenger cars.

It pulled into the station just as we were leaving. The passengers all headed right over to the ice cream cone store.

Golfing at the Annie Lake Course

Although it looked like rain when we left, it turned out to be a beautiful day on the links - if you could call it that. We headed out to Annie Lake Golf Course to play nine holes. The cost is only $2, but there is a reason for that. On the 2nd hold, both of us lost a ball down gofer holes. And walking the fairway, which is just weeds, you have to watch every step as gofer holes abound.

The "greens" are sand oft times with many a weed growing in it. And the tee box is literally a box topped with rubber to stick your tee.

But, considering all of that, it is fun to play once a year. Luckily we didn't see any bears while golfing, something we both thought about but didn't want to say aloud until we left.
After a round of golf, it was off t0 Carcross for an ice cream cone.