Inside Passage

Despite our difficulties getting back to Albany, our vacation to Alaska was fabulous. We took a 7-night cruise through the Inside Passage, which is the tail end of Alaska hugging western Canada. We sailed from Vancouver to the Hubbard Glacier in Yakutat Bay, stopping in Sitka, Juneau, and Ketchikan. The scenery was amazing -- lush green mountains, deep blue ocean, wispy fog, and shocking blue glaciers.

Aside from the natural beauty of the state, the striking thing about Alaska is how wild and undeveloped it is. The port cities cater to the tourists from the cruise ships and belie the remoteness of Alaska. After a day of sailing you quickly sense how far away Alaska really is from the rest of the U.S. Many of the islands in the Inside Passage are either uninhabited or contain isolated populations that connect to the mainland only by boat. The entire state of Alaska only has just over 600,000 inhabitants and the local women are eager to complain to tourists about the gender imbalance in the state.

The most impressive part of the trip for me was visiting the Hubbard Glacier. It's 6 miles wide and 76 miles long containing ice over 400 years old. It has a sky blue tint to it because the smaller wavelength of blue light scatters more than that of the other colors when it passes through clear ice. This is a picture that we took of part of the glacier with the mountains in the background and the wispy fog hanging overhead. We'll have lots of other great pictures and we'll put them online soon.

I vaguely remember an American History class in grade school where we learned how the purchase of Alaska was called "Seward's folly" because of public criticism over then Secretary of State William Seward's decision to purchase the "icebox." After seeing this amazing state first hand, I can now understand why Seward's Day is now a state holiday in Alaska. What a steal!