Sitka Soundings

The first official port call of our cruise was Sitka, the capital of old Russian America. Unlike the larger ports in Southeast Alaska (Ketchikan, Skagway, Juneau), Sitka's docks were not built to accommodate cruise ships of the 700-passenger variety, so we dropped anchor off the coast and tendered to shore. We had a great view of the town and surrounding islands from this moored position, though, and enjoyed watching early morning port life emerge from the gloom of daybreak.

One thing we noticed on the tender into shore was the vast number of bald eagles dotting every channel marker, every old piling at the dock, every bit of shoreline ... whoever told me before we left that bald eagles are the pigeons of Alaska was certainly proved right that morning. Enclosed in the tender, rolling on waves and with views only through salt-sprayed windows, I didn't bother to try to pull out the camera and try to catch any of these phenomenal birds. I mean, I guess I sort of figured that hey, there'd be plenty to see from shore, or at worst, on our way back to the ship in the afternoon .... right? Two guesses as to how that worked out. But anyway.

We had chosen a dry suit snorkeling excursion for the morning, and once on shore we met up with the seven other brave souls for whom donning a dry suit (sort of like a wet suit, but, uh, DRY) and plunging ourselves into 50-degree water seemed like a good way to spend a chilly, overcast morning. And we wondered why there were only nine of us. Our guide gave us a very quick tour of the town as she transported us to the dive shop ... a VERY QUICK tour. Sitka is not a big town. I believe she said that there are approximately 9,000 year-round residents with surprisingly few sunbirds during the summer months. I say surprisingly because, given the large number of huge amazing stunning homes situated on the various little islands dotting Sitka Sound, I would have believed Sitka to be a vacation home paradise. Let's just say that, with the possible exclusion of Tahoe/Truckee, Sitka is number one on my list of vacation home destinations. It's ridiculously beautiful.

In the dive shop, we changed into the uber-fashionable fleece onesies that go beneath the dry suit, and then we squirmed our way into the dry suits themselves, fitting the rubber gaskets around our necks and wrists.

If you've never had the pleasure of donning a dry suit, then you have not had the opportunity to feel what it would be like to be slowly choked to death. I get it, truly - tight seals around the neck and wrists mean that no water can penetrate into the suit, hence the DRY part of the dry suit equation. And if you're out diving regularly with dry suits, you probably have one that is more of a custom fit than those we wore that day. I just couldn't help looking at Nick and thinking "Good lord, let me remember my CPR." Thankfully (for me) the band around my neck was not nearly as tight as his (although it also wasn't 100% watertight, either ... but I think I'll take 99.85% dry AND the ability to breathe freely over vein-poppingly total dryness).

Oh yes, we make neoprene hoods look GOOD.

We walked (er, waddled) down a short path to the beach. The dive site was a place called Magic Island, though at the extremely low tide we experienced, it was more of a peninsula.

Looking toward the "island," I noticed that there was a bald eagle or two in the tree, and I took a picture. Only later did I notice that there was not one, not two, but FOUR eagles in that tree. Pigeons, I say!!!!!

We waded into the kelp forest and slowly acclimated to our climate. When learning to SCUBA, there was much emphasis put on the importance of not touching your fragile surroundings, leaving no trace of your presence, using your feet and body movements rather than your arms to steer so you don't brush against the coral, etc. So in this situation, confronted by a huge kelp forest at low tide, I was having a bit of trouble navigating my way through ... until I saw one of our guides pushing the kelp out of the way or even using it to pull herself through. Eureka! We could actually TOUCH this stuff!! And as I pushed and pulled my way through, I started looking at the environment on a different scale: the undersides of these giant kelp leaves were inhabited by hermit crabs and visited by small fish. Giant sea stars covered the ocean floor: bat stars that have a mottled purple hue, 12-legged stars that were many feet in diameter, tiny painted stars with a defensive bright orange color, leatherback stars that felt like wet leather. There were big fish that looked like grumpy old men, watching us carefully from the ocean floor as if to say "I've got my eyes on you, you whippersnappers!" and observed every move we made with eerily watchful eyes. My favorite organisms were some improbably bright opalescent somethingorothers (nudibranches) that were maybe 2 inches long with the head of a snail and the body of an anemone and hid on the undersides of the occasional kelp leaves. They were the kind of thing that you see on a Discovery Channel special about the creepy crawlies they find thousands of feet below the surface of the water that have bizarrely brilliant colors, odd shapes, and fascinating biology. But ... these were in shallow water. In Alaska. Who knew?

After an hour in the cold cold water, our fingers were popsicles and we all headed back to shore. As if to prove to us just how low the tide was, we found the shoreline riddled with bat stars that had been stranded by the tide, clinging in between rocks and waiting for the water to come back and allow them to relocate. One of our group accidentally stepped on one, and we were all a bit surprised to see that it was undamaged and sprung back to shape immediately. It's like they've figured out how to survive for hundreds of thousands of years or something. Even with big clomping neoprene-and-rubber-clad human beings resembling extraterrestrial penguins stepping on and squishing them.

The neoprene hoods and face masks left highly fashionable and super attractive lines on our faces, and after that sea water hair treatment, I was even able to cancel my blowout at the spa. I mean, look at us! Sexxxxxy.

We had another excursion set for the afternoon, so rather than spend time tendering back and forth to the ship, we grabbed a quick lunch in town (salmon kebabs!) at the Two Chicks and a Kabob Stick lunch truck and then stopped in to visit St. Michael's Cathedral.

St. Michael the Archangel was the first church built in Russian America, in 1848. A fire destroyed the building entirely in 1966, but nearly every artifact inside was saved by the people of Sitka and the church was rebuilt to the exact specifications of the original.

The artifacts saved included the chandelier that hangs above the altar, which was apparently removed by one man in a rush of adrenaline but took a whole team of men to lift and return to the rebuilt church. And in the process of trying to remove the icon shown below, the whole section of the wall it hung on had to be cut away from the burning building; it is only from the mouldings on this piece of wall that they were able to to reconstruct the exact architectural details for the rebuilding.

We spent some time chatting with the docent at the church/museum about the church, the history of Russian Orthodoxy in Russian America, and the founder of the church, Bishop (later Saint) Innocenti (Innokentii). Anyone who's had the (dis?)pleasure of discussing organized religion with me knows that I have, well, strong opinions about it. Don't get me wrong - I think spirituality and faith can be beautiful and rewarding, but historically have also been highly manipulated for political and financial power. And I'll not even address the issue of subjugation of women. But imperialism, conquest, and destruction of peoples and their cultures is probably what leaves me most bitter, and it is for that reason I was so interested in Bishop Innocenti's story. A Bishop of the Russian Orthodox church but also a scholar, he learned six native languages of the Aleutian islands, traveling among the islands in a small canoe (yes, in Deadliest Catch territory) to teach not only religion but also construction techniques and medicine, and with many local dialects in mind, he created a common written language based on the Cyrillic alphabet and translated many parts of the Bible and other written works. He also encouraged the maintenance of local customs and traditions and ensured that services were offered in both Russian and native dialects. Even today, although the church was transferred to the American Orthodoxy governance when the Alaskan territory was bought by the United States, services are offered in both English and Tlingit.

It's good to know that sometimes history can make me stick my foot in my mouth.

Nick and I walked around, looking at the various artifacts, remarking about the intricacy of the icons and how the look and smell of this church were able to transport Nick back to the Serbian Orthodox church of his childhood (of the same name, as it turns out).

We spent longer in the church than we'd originally intended, and realized that we were soon due at the pier for our afternoon excursion. But before we left, Nick made sure to light a candle (for no one in particular, Lynda, I promise!).

We boarded our boat for the Sea Otter and Wildlife Excursion and headed out into the gloomy afternoon - the weather hadn't improved much.

We cruised for a bit before coming upon this solitary sleeping otter. It was bizarre to be so close and for he to remain asleep, almost comatose, like a stuffed decoy. Well, okay, we weren't CLOSE, per se, as you can see from the picture below (that dot that I'm pointing my camera toward is the otter, and the picture I was taking is right below this one).

But what was super, awesome, OH MY GOD ONCE IN A LIFETIME AMAZING was THIS:

Yes, ladies and germs, that's a mother sea otter carrying her PUP on her stomach. Our guides were speechless, too - I believe they had actually seen this same mother/pup duo a few days before and were so excited to see them again they frenzily whispered about how cool it was before everyone fell totally silent and watched mama otter carry this "baby" that was nearly her size. I laughed at how she had to grab the little guy around his neck just to be able to get a good grip!

Once mom and pup had moved out of our range, we continued on in the hopes of seeing a humpback whale (we caught little teasing glimpses) and eventually came across a pair of bald eagles sitting on this rock outcropping. From this angle, it's hard to see that there are two, but you can catch a bit of the white from the second eagle behind the first.

For most of the boat ride, I was wildlife-watching through my 100-400 IS lens. I was trying to be cognizant of how much I looked through the lens, how much I actuated the image stabilization, and how much I kept both eyes open while shooting. Nonetheless, right about this time I commented to Nick about how I was starting to feel a little barfarific, and one of the guides offered me a ginger candy to help with the queazies. I happened to notice a fellow passenger who'd also been shooting with an image stabilized lens and who looked quite ashen, so I offered my ginger candy to him ... but within minutes he was at the back of the boat, leaving the majority of his gastrointestinal tract in the ocean. From that point on, I became a bit more judicious about how much I kept that camera plastered to my face.

Truly living up to the "Sea Otter" part of our wildlife excursion, we happened across a pair of young male otters ducking and diving through the waves.

And not too long after that, we finally came to the raft of otters that the pilot had been aiming for the whole time. As otter rafts go, I suppose this one wasn't very big, maybe 15 otters, but there were a lot of older males there. As male otters age, their faces get lighter, so it was cool to see so many otters with bright white faces.

This little guy, the oldest-looking of the group, was seriously hamming it up for us. You might say he was just cleaning his face, but seriously? He's sticking that tongue out for me. (insert conversation bubble: "Heeeello, Erin! Take my picture, pweeeze!")

The Sitka spruces were everywhere, even on these little rocky islands -

And then we got the biggest surprise of the day - a Gray Whale! Although Humpbacks frequent the waters off of Sitka, it was unusual to see a Gray Whale, especially during the summer. And this guy kept surfacing for us, over and over. He was so much bigger than the picture could show, although you might get a sense of it if you look at the bottom left of the top picture of the series and see the ducks ...

We stayed with him for a while and he even showed us some whale tail a few times before we left him to go try to find a bald eagle nest. On the way, we happened to see a couple of solitary eagles out hunting, perched as sentinels on tree tops, but when we got to the nest it was empty! Doh!

As we were stopped near the nest, I looked down into the water and happened to notice these things that looked sort of like jellyfish but bright orange. And, DUH, everyone knows that jellyfish live in warm water, RIGHT?! So I mentioned it to one of the guides who told us that some jellyfish DO live in cold water, and the ones we were seeing are called Lion's Mane Jellyfish and are (holy crap) the largest known species of jelly. Not that the ones we saw were bad-B-movie-sized or anything, but damn.

A view of our route:

We were deposited at the ship, and shortly thereafter we began our sailaway from Sitka. OF COURSE as we started to leave port, the weather began to improve and the clouds started to break up, but I didn't mind experiencing this beautiful town in the weather we had. Transiting through the straits, we were close enough to shore to spot bald eagles in the trees, and we marveled at the beautiful mosses and lichens that colored the shoreline.

We passed a lighthouse (of course) but also an old WWII bunker, a reminder of Alaska's important role in the war.

And at dinner that night, we watched the clouded sunset through the window: