BLOGGERS' EXODUS SPURS RRUN-RRUN TO IMBIBE ALASKA

By Juan Montoya

We alighted the American Airlines flight on a Friday morning in Seattle, jumped on a shuttle bus to Bellingham, Wash., and then embarked on the Maritime Highway Ferry to Juneau.

We could have booked a trip to the end of the line to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians, but how much water and pods of whales can you see before you become blase?

At this time of the year, the salmon is running, and whales and sea lions cavort in the channel between islands off the coast of southern Alaska within sight of the snow-capped mountain tops of British Colombia.

We had  comfortable cabin with the all the accoutrements. On some decks, some budget travelers, mostly students and a baby boomer hippie here and there, took shelter in a large glass-enclosed solarium with public showers and seemed to be having a great old time.

We were aboard the MV Matanuska, a long-range ferry that took us to Juneau and then back.

And sorry, Rosita Gowen, you can't get from here to there in a car or other land-based transportation like a chisca. It's either the ferry or by Alaska Airlines with the Eskimo painted on its skin.

Unlike South Texas, the air is nippy and smells of salt and fresh pine from the forests along the shore and on the islands. The ferry stopped stopped in places with Alaskan-sounding names like Ketchikan, Metlakatla, Wrangell Island, etc.


The largest national park in the United States - the Tsongas National Forest- covers entire islands and is bordered by little towns along the route.

Surprisingly, at the stop in Petersburg, we spent a half day and even visited a little Mexican restaurant, El Rincon de Carmen y Victor, former salmon cannery workers who own their business. Other Mexicans even own their own fishing boat and harvest salmon along with the local fleet. There are scores of young people working on visas from countries that used to be behind the Iron Curtain.

They work alongside Mexican workers from Sonora and Baja Caifornia who trek there each year for the salmon run.

This in a town that boasts of its Nordic beginnings.

We were told there was another popular Mexican restaurant in Sitka.
Since the salmon were running, we even saw them swimming up creeks, red and battered, to the place where they spawned.

The banks of the creeks are imprinted with the paws of bear who feast on the tired fish and we were encouraged to look and leave quickly just in case a hungry bear emerged from the dark green woods.

The entire area around this city is within the boundaries of the Tsongas National Forest, the largest national park in the United States.

It was not unusual to see fishermen come in with 150-pond halibut, a distant (and monstrous) cousin of the Gulf of Mexico flounder. The workers in local canneries need forklifts to process these fish.

We'll post a couple of photos here to show just a bit of what the place looks like. After this, who wouldn't want to take a break from the oven called South Texas and cruise Alaska?