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Leaving Glacier Bay we are out in the Pacific Ocean heading south with Baranof Island on our left. The seas are calm, but there is some rolling as there is nothing between us and Asia. Baranof Island, named for Russian explorer and entrepreneur Alexander Baranof, is a huge island guarded by the dormant volcano, Mt. Edgecombe. It’s only 118 nautical miles (a nautical mile is 1.15 statute miles, and a knot is 1.15 miles per hour) allowing the captain to take a leisurely cruise from Glacier Bay while still arriving in time to get us off the boat shortly after 8:00 AM. As we sail up the approach to Baranof Island we encounter dozens of small islands and sight trawlers and sport fishing boats heading out after salmon. Two cruise boats have arrived before us, so it appears the sport salmon fishing boats are rushing to the fishing grounds to make sure cruise passengers get a fish and back on board before their ships sail.

Sitka is a small port without a deep water dock, so we must anchor in the bay. We glide past a number of small islands, each having a house with a dock. Sport and commercial boats are everywhere. The rocky islands, covered with tall spruce trees create a suburb only visited by boat. The overcast is lifting and we see the snow-capped cone of Mt. Edgecombe behind us. Ahead lie two cruise boats, which we pass before dropping anchor. As directed, we go to the movie theater to get our boarding passes for the tenders we’ll be riding from the ship to the dock. We are given numbered stickers to put on our clothing somewhere and directed to head for Deck A, lower than we have been in the ship to date. The central parts of Decks 7 and 8 are crowded with other passengers waiting, not so patiently, to get their boarding passes. As we walk past them we hear comments about our butting into line and questions about how we are already leaving. After all, they've been waiting in line. Since we were all assigned a time to show up at the theater based on the time our tours were supposed to depart, this crowding and anxiety is surely unnecessary.

We see a crowd at the elevator, so we take the stairs down to the exit on Deck A. We pass through an electronic tur

nstile, presenting our UPC cards for identification and are electronically mustered off the ship. We walk down a ramp to a floating dock to which one of the ship’s lifeboats is attached. These lifeboats are not quite what I expected. Lifeboats, in my mind, are the things Fletcher Christian cast Captain Bligh adrift in when he took over the HMS Bounty. These are diesel powered, enclosed and heavy boats whose label suggests they can carry 150 passengers in an emergency and 90 when used as a tender. I like being a sardine, too.

We are whis

ked to shore where we climb another gangplank and are snapped by the ubiquitous photographer before we can stop him. Along the shore are local people trying to figure out how to raise money from the tourists coming ashore. A group of middle school kids are jumping rope with boundless enthusiasm. A billboard announces they are raising money to attend the national rope jumping championships. A jar slowly fills with dollar bills. Other kids are offering baked goodies for cruisers who are just leaving an ever offered cornucopia of delicious meals and snacks. A home baked chocolate chip cookie offers little temptation. The buses wait alongside the pier, and we are herded to ours where our driver, Mary, waits wearing a bright blue Russian tunic half covered with colorful pins from all over Alaska and the world. The guides of Sitka all wear these pins on red or blue tunics. The guides tell us people send the pins from everywhere for them to add to their display.

At each stop, HAL offers a series of excursions for people who choose to take them. These excursions can be simple tours of the town where we are stopping or elaborate flight-seeing trips to remote glaciers or fishing camps. Wildlife tours in enclosed jet boats or open inflatable promise whale, bear, or sea otter sightings. Bike tours, hikes, kayak adventures, and snorkeling are available for the more adventurous. These tours range in price from around $40.00 to well over $300.00 for people who want to fish on a remote inland lake accessible only by floatplane. Seeking to save money and Mom's energy reserves, we have foolishly booked only local bus tours during our three stops. People returning from the wildlife tours and flight seeing trips will report wonders we can only imagine.

We climb on Mary's bus for the Sitka tour, which includes a visit to the Sitka National Historical Park as well as a performance by the New Archangel Russian Dancers. Since Sitka only has fourteen miles of paved road, we will be getting a chance to see most of this town of 8,000 inhabitants where the rainfall averages 135 inches per year. Today, the sky is blue and it is warm and sunny. After our last three days, we are happy, and the people who live in Sitka are ecstatic. We drive through the town and north past the cannery. Mary points out the one sandy beach in town where people are walking along at low tide. Soon kids will be swimming in the 52 degree water. She answers questions about costs and prices and how people live in a town where no roads come from the outside and in winter there are two to three hours of sunshine.

We drive south through town, past the docks, and an old section of town where the Indians were once kept separated from the Russian owners of Alaska. Along the shore we get wonderful views of the busy yacht harbor and along the shore where we see the three cruise boats floating majestic in the harbor. We pull into the parking lot at the Sitka National Historical Park. The park is located on the site of a battle between the indigenous Tlingit Indians and Baranof’s Russian traders, won by the Russians. The Tlingits moved to the other side of the island, where they were safe to live their lives without interference from the Russians, who were content to hunt for the valuable sea otter pelts and to use Sitka as a whaling station. After the U.S. purchase of Alaska in 1867, Sitka languished while communities to the north and south, possessed of gold and oil, prospered. The tourist town of today contains reminders of the Russian heritage as well as lovely vistas in every direction. The park contains some old growth Sitka spruce and hemlock, soaring into the skies. This sub arctic rainforest is wet, steamy, and lovely. A walk along the path through the woods is cool and a salmon stream, soon to come alive with spawning fish gurgles through the park.

The visitor center has a museum containing Tlingit artifacts and work stations where Tlingit artisans ply their crafts. A carver is working on an elaborate bow. I ask him if I can take his picture. He is pleased I asked, and we chat for several minutes as he works. Across the hall is an older Indian man working in silver. He tells me a little about what he is doing, but doesn’t’ seem so communicative as the carver. Next door a young woman splits spruce into long strands for weaving into baskets. As she talks, her hands split and pull out long strands of spruce. Baskets in local shops sell for between $250 and $1500. After 45 minutes we pile into the bus and head back into town, passing the Orthodox bishop’s house and pull into a parking lot of a modern theater building next to one of the yacht harbors.

Inside we find an auditorium with collapsible chairs lined up in rows. Saving our seats we go out to the small museum/gift s

hop where a model

of Sitka in the early 19th century is displayed as well as displays of life there in the early twentieth century. Human history in Alaska is so short and sparse that people who arrived before the 1950s are viewed as pioneers. In town a pioneer home serves as a residence for over 100 old-timers. The New Archangel Russian Dancers are a group of women who have been performing traditional Russian dance in Sitka for about thirty years. Early on, when they began meeting for exercise and cultural renewal, their husbands were not interested in joining them. Now that they are invited to perform in the lower forty-eight and around the world, their husbands are interested in joining, but they aren't interested in having them. The very pleasant narrator gives the spouses credit for child rearing and housekeeping, though. The dancing itself is pleasant, but somehow bland and without great spirit. Perhaps the absence of vodka is at fault. The dancers receive a pleasant round of applause as two young men holding up the Alaskan flag step forward. One of the guides, tunic spangled with pins, sings the state song, a quite rousing anthem, and we troop out to the bus.

The bus drops us in the middle of town, about a block from St. Michael's Orthodox Church, a recreation of the original, which burned about

40 years ago. We walk in, see all the icons on the wall, and walk back out again. We visit a few shops, buy Mom a strap for her binoculars, and head back to the ship for lunch. Finding the tender an easy way to commute to the ship, Irene and I decide to return to town after lunch while leaving Mom in our cabin to rest and enjoy the scene from the Veranda. With three ships in town, crowds fill the streets. Shoppers wander about looking for bargains. The shops range from T-shirt and fudge shops to places selling Russian Christmas ornaments and nested dolls, baleen and ivory sculpture, and needle work. Irene buys three of four patterns to make cross stitch and needle point of Tlingit designs. We stop in a fun bookshop offering lots of Alaska literature. I buy a reader on Alaska and we head back to the ship.

We need not rejoin the ship until 5:30 PM for our six o’clock sailing, be we are all three aboard by three. Mom is rested, and we go up to the Crows Nest on deck twelve where we sit in the window and watch the passing scene. Boats rush back and forth between the islands and the shore. We notice one cottage whose deck has a round

extension on which a small helicopter sits. The tenders ply back and forth between ships and the shore. Sport fishermen return from a few miles out and the trawlers, their booms standing vertical and nets no longer trailing behind, return to port with their loads of salmon and halibut. Eagles, perched in trees on the islands, soar thorugh the air and dive to try to grab fish out of the water. They whirl and soar above us, sometimes chasing each other, at times diving toward the shallow-running fish. The eagles are easy to spot. They perch high in the spruce trees, their white heads looking like large golf balls…waiting…hunting.

Dress on evenings in port is casual, so we change in nice, but not fancy clothes, and head for another delicious dinner. Afterwards we head to the Rubens Lounge for the evening's entertainment. Paul Pappas is one of thousands of quality pianists the world spawns. He seems a pleasant man and plays a pleasant piano. I can't stay awake in the Rubens Lounge, so I head for the Crows Nest to watch the landscape slide by and look for whales. We see some spouts and a few backs. Sunset tonight is 10:04 PM and dark comes much, much later. It has been a good and tiring day. At eleven this evening the Indonesian crew will offer a program of their music and dance. I'd rather see this than Paul Pappas, but I can't stay up that late and still arise as early as I have been doing. Next time we come to Sitka, it will be on the Alaska Marine Highway.