Jiffy Feet Adventures

[Let me make a note here--I meant to do this a while back, but forgot--I highly recommend clicking on some of the pictures to get a better view of them, particularly the animals. It really does make a difference]

August 21, 2009:

The final day of our Jiffy Feet Alaskan Adventure actually saw us trotting around Vancouver, BC. The ship arrived at the Vancouver port fairly early in the morning and we were off, searching for our luggage, and getting a shuttle to the hotel by 9am. Since the rooms weren’t ready yet, we dropped off our bags and hit the street for some site seeing. Vancouver is the largest metropolitan center in western Canada and the country’s third largest city. It’s broken up into a number of different neighborhoods or areas of town. Each one seems to have it’s own unique feel. Of course, I would love to have been able to check out all of them, but as our time was limited, that will have to wait until the next trip. We were able to check out a few neighborhoods as well as the shopping district along Robson St. (very near to our hotel), Chinatown, Gastown, and the Punjabi Market.

Ending in Vancouver

first view of Vancouver from the ship

some students that ran up to my mom to get a picture with her for their photo scavanger hunt--they had to find someone wearing a red jacket!

Some street art

Art Museum

After a delicious Indian dinner with my parents; Shelley, Lauren, Robbie, and I ended out trip on a [very] loud note at The Commodore Ballroom, courtesy of The Dead Weather, Jack White’s latest project.

Dead Weather concert ticket

And the first thing to hit us the next day when we stepped off the plane around 10:30pm after a day of flying?…Humidity….We’d almost forgotten what that was like….sigh…

August 20, 2009:

This was our second (and last) full day at sea. We spent most of the day wandering around the ship and trying out some of the things that we hadn’t yet had a chance to do: the spa (I won a half-priced massage at a raffle!), some trivia games, wii golf and bowling, art auctions and watching a short video that was the result of a collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvadore Dali called “Destino” (you can find it on YouTube), and admiring some of the decorations around the ship. Fun times…

A chandelier over one of the staircases

mask-ish decoration

ice sculpture

this was the ship's "party band"

the outside pool (with party band on the far end)

an example of how excited we would get to win back the four quarters we'd put into the slot machine at the casino!

my guys checking out the wackos that were trying to play chicken with the cruiseship. They caused the captian to take a sharp right turn to avoid any kind of collision--i think more than a couple drinking glasses slid to the floor during that one!

the wackos

our head waiter decided to entertain us one night by demonstrating his amazing napkin art ability!

napkin talent! you've got your turkey, your swan, your butterfly, and your jacket!

All of our suitcases sitting ouside the rooms the night before, waiting to be picked up for disembarking the next morning

August 19, 2009:

Ketchikan, Alaska: the “Salmon Capital of the World.” What better activity to do in the salmon capital of the world than a little fishing? Robbie, my parents and I decided to put that statement to the test with an afternoon fishing trip. However, Robbie and I took advantage of the beautiful sunny weather that had been eluding us to wander around the town a bit that morning. Besides being the salmon capital of the world, Ketchikan is also the ancestral home of the Tlingit people, who have apparently carved the world’s largest collection of totem poles. The name comes from the Tlingit phrase “katch kanna,” which roughly translated means, “spread wings of a thundering eagle,” a tribute to the hundreds of eagles that nest in the mountain forests above the town. We were lucky enough to get some amazing photos of them during our time there as well…

Our ship did a nice job of blocking the ocean view!

Ketchikan harbor

tall totem

The sign on the front of this restaurant cracked us up. It's a mexican restaurant that advertises "the best pizza in town"...and all that--in the salmon capital of the world!

I love this--instead of having a car and a driveway, they have a sea plane and a ramp!

August 18, 2009:

This was our day at Icy Straits Point near the town of Hoonah, a place that the Tlingit Indians have called home for thousands of year. The village has a strong fishing heritage and is located about 22 miles southeast of Glacier Bay (see post on 8/15).

Although Robbie and I really enjoyed every place that we had a chance to stop and visit, this was probably our favorite. It is a little different from the other stops in Alaska in that the town of Hoonah decided to open Icy Straits about four or five years ago to the cruise lines in response to the commercialization of most of the other stops. They wanted a place that still gave visitors more of an experience of the Alaskan wilderness. Their policy is to only allow one ship at a time to dock in the bay. The shops, museum, and tours that are offered are all primarily run by the townspeople (unlike most of the other stops, where a lot of people come in for the summer tourist season), and this allows a more manageable amount of people on any given day.

During our time there, we ran across a gentleman pulling weeds near a pond in the area and stopped to talk. He also ended up giving a free tour to a group of us later in the afternoon and gave a good idea of the town’s history and the decision to try to make it a tourist destination for the cruislines. He was a really neat guy, who’d lived there his entire life. His father was the “lookout” for the town and their house was actually right there on the edge of the bay. One thing that he mentioned about that area is that there are about 1,000 residents of the town of Hoonah and about 3,000 bears in the area. Needless to say, he had a couple of crazy bear tales to tell! Overall, they haven’t had much of a problem with bears having run ins with the tourists, although they generally like to lead tours to see them instead of suggesting that you wander off in the woods alone. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a chance to participate in one of those tours so we, again, did not see any bears Maybe next time….

Museum dedicated to the history of the town's fishing industry

hanging out

This exhibit cracked me up--who knew that chopping up fish resulted in mustard and ketchup getting all over the place?! I guess that's how you make it a little more "family friendly".

Fishing industry museum...it's actually an interactive museum now, where folks can learn about the cannery by "canning" a stuffed animal to take with them.

Robbie amongst the crap trap display

A local girl making some jewelry. I tried to get a picture of her "in action" but she really wanted to smile for me...better than the guy around the corner that wanted you to pay $5.00 to take a picture of him at work with his carvings!

Grrrrr....

This guy knew exactly where to take a nap in order to get some attention from the visitors!

The back end of this building was leaning one way, while the front was leaning the opposite direction! (I don't think that was intentional...)

Crooked tree

A walk through the woods to the shore

The beach was covered in tumbled rocks, shells and teeny tiny snails!

Robbie's rock collection from the beach

The shore

A lot of the rocks had these great swirly patterns to them

This was apparently the longest zip line ride in the world!

This guy looks like it's been there awhile!

We cannot figure out what this plant was...obviously not something that those of us allergic to bee stings would want to hang around too much!

Any guesses on this thing? It looks like something from another planet to me!

Eagle totem

The guy that helped us take this picture was so excited to be a part of our "art"

Our new friend and tour guide in front of the home that he grew up in.

This bench used to be the place that the fishermen would sit on outside the mess hall. They would wittle away at is and carve things into it while they waited for the dinner bell

A big old jelly that we saw as we were leaving to go back to the ship

Happy Anniversary!! Our jiffy feet celebrating EIGHT years together that day!

August 17, 2009:

Skagway!

Interesting town. Robbie and I spent most of the day just wandering around Skagway since we didn’t have an actual tour or anything planned. It was a bit chilly and rainy that day, but the weather seemed fitting for the area. Several of the buildings in downtown Skagway are orginal and a lot of the others have been rebuilt to resemble the original building that was there. There were a couple of places that offered tours as well. One place was a tavern that had been there and offered information on the town history. Skagway really began to grow after gold was discovered in the Klondike in 1896. Gold fever hit the area and it attracted all kinds of characters to Skagway: fortune hunters, saloon owners, and adventurers. One tour that we took was of an old brothel over the Red Onion Saloon. Pretty interesting…Another interesting piece of information that we ran across about Skagway was the result of wandering into an old antique store in the area. We noticed several old pillow cases on one of the displays. They have the words “Greetings from Alaska” across the front with an Alaskan mountain style picture as well as the Navy Seabee’s emblem on the left corner. As some of you know, Robbie is a Seabee in the Navy Reserves. So we were interested in the story behind the pillow cases. The man that now owns the store told us that he’d found them in the attic of the building when he’d bought it from the previous owners. He’d actually gotten rid of a lot of them but had held onto a couple. According to him, the previous owner’s had planned on moving at one point during the ’40s because of slow business. They’d literally started walking away from the store when all of the sudden they looked up and saw crowds of young men in military garb coming towards them. Apparently, the Seabees were sent to the area during the 1940s in order to build the Alaskan highway as a way of defending the northern border of the US from Russian invasion. They took over the railroad to move their supplies and spent some time in the area. The project was a secret mission at the time so sending word of their whereabouts to their families by letter was not an option. However, gifts such as pillow cases were not checked, so they were able to send the “Greetings from Alaska” pillowcases home to their families to let them know where they were! Pretty neat little piece of history. We got the two that he had left.

Overall Skagway was a pretty interesting little place. I think my favorite part was moving off the beaten path a little bit to explore some of the neighborhood. We ran across a trailer park that was full of large campers and buses. Some were clearly new and probably just there for the tourist season. However a number had obviously been there for some time. I’m so intrigued by the people that must live in those homes. I’m sure if the weather had been better and people had been hanging around outside, I’d have stopped to talk. Guess I’ll just have to plan a trip back for that!

View from the balcony off of our room. Skagway graffiti--ads from all over the world!

Skagway skull

our ship docked at Skagway port

Alaskan railroad

Building in downtown Skagway

Red Onion Saloon

downtown Skagway

original bottles found under the floorboards of old saloon

Homestead of some of the orginal town inhabitants. We spent a little time touring the home and reading about the family.

There was also a lot of information on the work that went into redoing the home. Not sure if the outside colors were original or not...may have looked a bit more like the little storage house on the left?

The entire length of the creek that ran all the way through the town was absolutely PACKED with salmon. A local man that we talked with told us that it was one of the biggest runs they'd had in some time.

It was so full, you could literally reach right in and pull one out...as I tried to demonstrate here. Slimy little guys..

town museum

These are what the navy seabees stayed in while they were there. Still several of them around the town.

Another part of the stream packed with salmon. See what I mean?

I think these are what they refer to as "fireweeds"

Someone's funny lawn art...thought it was worth a picture!

Jiffy feet, Skagway

August 16, 2009 (part 2):

After spending some time with the whales, our tour group headed back to shore for the second half of the excursion. We were driven to a nearby national park for a hike through the forest towards Mendenhall Glacier. This glacier is a river of ice, approximately 1.5 miles wide and over 6 miles long. It hugs Juneau’s north side and is part of the Juneau Icefield, a 1,500-square-mile ice field that is home to 38 large glaciers. After visiting the glacier, we headed back to the boat to change into some dry clothes and then set out to wander around downtown Juneau for a bit…

Somewhere along our walk.

Somewhere else along our walk

A look at Mendenhall Glacier through the trees.

Large chunks of glacier ice. I think that's the glacier in the background--it's kind of hard to make out in the pictures because of all the fog.

beautiful chunk of glacier ice

Can you make out the glacier in the background?

That's right...the shoes came off here too--how often do you get a chance to set foot on a piece of glacier ice, anyway?!

Our colorful tour group stomping through the trees.

Pretty flower?...not so much. This is actually part of the plant's defense mechanism against a particular fly that lays eggs on the leaves of the plant. As a means of protection, the leaves will form this flowery casin around the eggs. It eventually turns brown and dies off, keeping the bugs off the rest of the plant.

Dowtown Juneau

Exploring Juneau

Exploring Juneau II

August 16, 2009 (part 1):

This was our day in Juneau. Juneau is the capital of Alaska and is located in the Panhandle of Southeast Alaska, 900 air miles north of Seattle and 600 air miles southeast of Anchorage. It’s also one of the two places in which we decided to take part in an organized excursion. The excursion was called the Alaska Whales & Rainforest tour. It was pretty amazing! All of us went on this one and I definitely recommend it to anyone else thinking of taking a trip like this to Alaska. The first half of the tour took our group to a much smaller boat to do some whale watching for Humpbacks in the area. According to our tour guide, Humpbacks are typically solitary feeders. However, they’ve been doing more community feeding recently, a method known as “bubble-net feeding” in which they blow a net of bubbles, rounding up fish to feed on. This has been researched and it appears that each whale involved has a pretty specific role and has the same position each time. It was incredible to watch…

guess someone was anticipating some bbq fish later that day...

our tour guide explaining to Shelley and the rest of us what to look for when we get to an area that whales might be at

It took me a bit to realize what I was looking at in some of these pictures. the part of the whale with the pinckish looking line is actually the top of the inside of the mouth!

you can see the mouth starting to close in this picture

Humpback whales I

Humpback whales II

whales III

whales IV

these shots give you a good idea of how deep the water is right off of the shoreline!

that's one large open mouth on the right there!

waving goodbye! (that's what I tell myself, anyway...)

August 15, 2009:

Our first full day on the boat was just that–a full day on the water. We spent some time wandering around, trying to see all the things that the ship had to offer. This was one of two days at sea that we had and I have more pictures of the boat from the second day that I’ll post later. However, I did get some nice ones from the first day at sea as well. One of the things that Robbie and I did was to go to a celebration party for couples celebrating their anniversary or honeymoon on the cruise. Apparently a little birdie mentioned to them that we’d be celebrating our anniversary on the 18th. It was nice–they served us all champagne and cake and gave out awards to the couple with the longest anniversary (56 years I believe) and the newest (2 months). Here’s a shot of the wedding band that was playing for us:

looking down the hallway outside our room. that's my dad coming towards us--wave hello!

mom and dad in their room--they had these afternoon goodies delivered nearly every day! luckily they were willing to share

view from the balcony on our way into glacier bay

large chunks of ice in the water heading up to Hubbard Glacier

Hubbard Glacier wall

Hubbard Glacier wall II

closer look at the glacier

closer look at the glacier II

mom and dad inspecting the glacier for frozen dinosaurs.....hey, you never know!

and of course--our jiffy feet wanted a look too!

our boat was part of one big icee for a little while!

a look at some of the sludge from the bottom that was disturbed by the cruiseship

right edge of the glacier losing a piece of itself into the water

glacier compolation--a combonation of 4 or 5 different shots that I put together to try and give a better idea of the glacier as a whole

August 14, 2009 (part two):

After spending the morning wandering around downtown Anchorage, we headed back to the hotel to meet up with the large group of people waiting to jump on a bus. Our feet decided to join them. The bus took us to a train station. My parents had already departed earlier that morning on the final leg of their ground tour prior to heading to the boat. So Robbie and I were joined by Shelley and Lauren at a table on the train. We had some drinks and lunch and enjoyed the scenery…for the entire afternoon and into the evening. It had been advertised as a 3.5 hour ride, but turned out to be closer to 6 hours. We were told not to worry about the time it was taking because “they won’t leave without you”. I’m not sure if that was really true. One thing is for sure about cruiseships–they leave port when they say they will, with or without you. No sending someone to run back into town to try and track you down first. Luckily we didn’t have to find out the hard way since the ship wasn’t scheduled to depart until 9pm that night. We were safe. And made it in time for our 8:30pm dinner. Here are the train ride photos from the 14th:

the choo choo!

Coastline

This is how people in Alaska get around when all the snow melts and the sled dogs can't be used...

Scenic shot

glacier...all of the glaciers that we saw during the train ride are known as "hanging glaciers". they all have individual names too but I don't know them. we can call this one "George".

mountain snow and glacier

dueling shots

this is Shelley's "I'm amused...really..." look

cave in frozen hillside. i think it's where a yetti must live. or maybe just a bear. they didn't let us stop to investigate.

some large pieces of glacier ice that were floating down river

glacier peeking over the side of a mountain. the ghostly 'orb' towards the right is the reflection of an overhead light in the train window. I didn't even need the help of TAPS to figure that one out!

glacier water winding it's way down a mountain

a new friend on the train. don't worry--he didn't try to jump

i love the way the flowers and landscape reflect on the side of the train in this shot.

glacier and mountain snow

plane coming in for a landing on the water

scenic shot

And after the long but beautiful ride on the train we arrived here…

one BIG houseboat!

couple more shots from the balcony off of our room (we had a BALCONY to sit on out in the middle of the ocean!! still can’t get over that!):

looking to the right off the balcony...the orange things are the lifeboats. much larger than what I had in my head!

looking to the left off the balcony. pretty much the same as looking to the right!

luckily, we never had to see this guy in action!

jiffy feet looking into our stateroom from the balcony

August 14, 2009 (part one):

We started the day by dropping our suitcases off in front of the hotel to join the piles of other suitcases forming beside the building. Then, since we had a little time before we needed to catch a bus that would take us to the train to get to the boat, our feet decided to do some walking around downtown Anchorage. Here are some scenes from that:

downtown Anchorage

wall painting in downtown Anchorage

more wall paintings

we think these are Anchorage news anchors

There were some colorful characters climbing the walls around there!

One of the natives trying to take a bite out of Robbie

our jiffy feet resting with another pair that we met along the way

Shelley, Lauren, and the owner of the feet

My friend, Bullwinkle

pretty flowers

main strip in downtown Anchorage--reindeer dog stand...you didn't really think Santa still worked with the ORIGINAL Rudolph and pals, did you?!

A tribute to the fishing industry in the area

Town hall...i think..

Welcome Center with a truly "green" roof!

tribal decorations on building

August 13, 2009: Our jiffy feet started us on one big adventure today.

We ended up at the airport here in Jacksonville where we hopped on a plane around 11am. Luckily we’d packed a couple bags and had our camera! The plane ended up stopping in Houston but our jiffy feet wanted to keep on trekking. So we hopped on another plane to…Alaska!! And a time zone four hours behind us! And wouldn’t you know it–our bags made it too!

We made it to the hotel room in Anchorage around 8pm (or 12am our time). Here’s a look from the window of the room:

Jiffy Foot, Anchorage

view of Anchorage from hotel room

That’s right, folks–8pm. It didn’t start getting dark until about 11pm that night!! As you can see, it was a bit drizzly and gray. If you assume that it was on the chilly side as well, you’d be right! We also discovered that our jiffy feet must have been in cahoots with those of my parents, sister, and my sister’s friend, Lauren, because they were all there as well! Along with a WHOLE LOT of other people getting ready to set sail with us the next day. We made plans for getting from Anchorage to the port in Seward and put our feet to bed.

August 12 2009:

Has anyone ever told you that you have “jiffy feet?”

Yeah, me neither.

Apparently this is a Jacksonville thing. Like one big River City Inside Joke or something. From what I understand, a guy from this area started these little quick mart type stores called Jiffy Food Stores. They used to be all over the area but now we think there may just be one left on Cassatt Ave. Anyway, so people would wander into these Jiffy stores from the neighborhood to grab this or that. I guess a lot of them would be shoeless at the time, resulting in pretty dirty feet. Thus the “jiffy feet” expression was born to describe just such a pair of dirty, shoeless feet. Well, I don’t know that Robbie and I have extremely dirty feet or anything, but since I think that pretty much all feet are kinda gross (except Elizabeth Preston–she’s the only person I’ve ever met that I thought had pretty nice looking feet), I’d say that they qualify anyway.

And I thought it would be fun to chronicle the steps that our jiffy feet take every once in awhile. So where will they be taking us soon?…Stay tuned!..

Laura and Robbie's wandering 'jiffy feet'

A friendly splash of color

wedding band at the anniversary party

That was also the first chance we had to make some new friends on the cruise–some nice couples from Canada. Here are a couple more shots from that day–including some sightseeing shots of Hubbard Glacier, which is the largest calving (i.e. gives birth to ‘icebergs’–some as high as 10-story buildings!) glacier on the North American continent, covering 25 percent more area than the state of Rhode Island. Sometime in the afternoon we arrived at Glacier Bay and had the opportunity to get some nice pictures of the very large glacier that resides there. One thing I already knew about glacier ice from taking a walk through one during a high school trip to Europe, is that the ice is very BLUE. This one didn’t disappoint! However, taking a walk through it would have involved a dive into the icy water and a couple hours of digging and hacking our way into it’s side, so we decided to just admire from afar this time…

some shots of boats around the dock

I can't remember what the name of this plant was, but we liked the way the water droplets rested on it.

Path into the forest. According to our guide there were bears in the area. We had a little "bear safety" talk but never got to apply any of that information because we never saw any bears

A group on the way to the shore from the cruise ship, which was parked out in the bay

The life boats took on the job of ferry to get us to and from Icy Straits Point that day

And as for all those fish….

freezer full of wild alaskan salmon-I'll take this over the frozen pizza any day!

sunset as we leave Ketchikan for a final day at sea...

Our jiffy feet celebrating a good day with the boot of our fearless fishing guide!

Here's our catch: 7 good size coho salmon, 1 big chum salmon, and 2 or 3 pinks (not pictured). Yeah!

my dad on the way back to the ship from fishing---celebrating a big catch!

my mom reeling in the biggest one!

you're being watched...

open wide, say awwwww

dad reeling in a bigger one!

bald eagle

robbie reeling in a big one!

my parents and our fishing guide

mom on the way out to do some fishing--anticipating a good catch!

This perspective really gives you a feel for just how big our ship was!

this cute little screech owl was hit by a car and taken to the agency. her right wing is broken and she is unable to fly well enough to make it in the wild.

This eagle had gotten it's foot caught in a trap while attempting to get dinner. He lost the back talon on that foot, making it impossible for him to grab anything (it would be like losing the thumb on one of your hands); thus reducing it's chances of survival.

we ran across a couple of guys that were trying to raise money for an organization that took care of injured and/or domesticated birds that could not live in the wild. This was a hawk that they had outthat was too demosticated and could not survive in the wild without the assistance of humans.