July 29
The WiFi in the Juneau hotel is at a snail’s pace. I will wait until I return to Ohio on Tuesday, August 1, to load information into this page for Ebey’s Landing NHR and Glacier Bay NPres. It took what seemed forever to load photos and text over in the Daily Trip Reports.
A quick note. The photos for these two parks are in the Alaska section of the Daily Trip Reports. They are the latest two date entries. Had to decide where to put them.
Finally, back home in Ohio after 10 hours of flying and airport waits. Thankfully, there is one non-stop from Seattle to Cleveland. Seattle’s SEATAC airport was packed, in the D and N terminals. This is still summer vacation season. I did not pay as much attention on Saturday morning as I quickly went from the plane to the new Rental Car Facility. Seems most large airports now have this area way off-site from the terminals, requiring a shuttle. No issues until I was passing the Seattle Mariners and Seattle Seahawks stadiums where I-5 began to look like I-95. For those who live on the East Coast, you know what this means. Stop-and-go for the next 40 miles, until Marysville. My destination was Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve. This is the only NPS park with this designation. It is unique in that the park is a partnership between the city of Coupeville, Island County, Washington State Parks, and the NPS. Man, any decision-making must take a long time to realize.
Washington state route 20 is the sole vehicle access to the Reserve since it sits on Whidbey Island (there are a few vehicle/passenger ferry docks connecting to areas south towards Seattle). If folks were not on I-5, they were here. A crawl to get to Coupeville, the center of the park. This is one of the oldest towns in Washington. The protected harbors of Penn Cove and the surrounding area made for prime business opportunities. The historic wharf area draws plenty of tourists, for the shops, restaurants, and scenery. The pier leads to a grain storage facility, built in 1905. This was also used as the main means to bring in goods to the town. One of the four remaining blockhouses on Whidbey Island from the 1850s sits next to the town’s VC and museum. There had been about ten blockhouses built 170 years ago per orders from the Washington Territory governor as protection from expected Indian attacks. One of the other blockhouses is at the Jacob and Sarah Ebey’s house site. Makes sense to place your defenses as close to your home as possible. The Indigenous peoples were mad that white men were populating the area. Indians were forced to sign treaties which they wanted no part of. For Jacob and Sarah, their home and blockhouse were never attacked.
Over the decades more and more people and businesses descended on this area of lush farmland. The locals finally had had enough. The Donation Land Law of 1850 had allowed people to homestead and after four years of farming they were deeded the land, free of charge. But this is America, and Capitalism is one of our major economic forces. People were selling land and development interests were making the area look un-19th century. The 1970s saw a large push to preserve the region, resulting in the National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978 putting a kibosh on new development. Any work on buildings now has to go through a review process, a situation found in many historic towns across the country.
Traffic had only eased up slightly for the return to SEATAC airport. Just remembered something. Alaska Air planes are B-737s, without tv monitors on the back of seat headrests. But the planes now have free WiFi, so just turn on your iPhone, laptop, or pad and connect. The same for American Airline B-737 planes I have been on. Be sure to bring ear buds, plugs, or similar.
The Juneau airport is very small. Even the Canton-Akron airport is larger, more than twice the size. But this means passenger volume is light, so getting bags checked and then going through Security is very quick. I showed up at 9:15 AM for the 10 AM flight (this is now Sunday morning) to Yakutat and walked right on to the plane. Coastal Air Services is located in Yakutat. Hans and Tanya (and three lovely dogs) are the owners/operators. Alaska Airlines has one flight a day in each direction, from Juneau and from Anchorage. If you want to stop at Yakutat for the day, be sure you stay in Juneau. The Juneau-to-Anchorage direction is in the morning (one hour flight to Yakutat), with the Anchorage-to-Juneau direction is afternoon. So, I had five hours in Yakutat for Hans to fly me out to Dry Bay, which is the landing strip in Glacier Bay National Preserve. My previous flight with Hans was on his Otter plane. Today would be his helicopter, a first for me in this type of aircraft. Sunshine all around for the 25 minute flight to Dry Bay. We passed over a female moose resting in some grass. Salmon were in the Alsek River. The landing strip looks the same as it did eight years ago, just grass and some gravel, a rectangular area carved out of an evergreen forest. Hans put us down in the clearing next to the runway near some NPS signage placards. One sign had a large map of the Preserve, with a nice arrow pointing to “You Are Here” in Dry Bay. The Preserve is only 90 square miles, while Glacier Bay Park is a bit over 5,000 square miles. Text on the park’s website indicates the only reason the Preserve was created was to allow for hunting, which is not permitted in the Park. But, due to that legal technicality, there are two separate entities relative to NPS management. That is why I have to travel to the Preserve portions of these larger parks (i.e. Denali, Katmai, Aniakchak, Craters of the Moon, Great Sand Dunes, etc.). Three men had their fishing equipment and personal gear waiting for a pickup by another outfitter. The Alsek River has some of the best salmon fishing in the state.
A number of areas between Yakutat and Dry Bay look like large golf courses. There were long fairways between rows of trees, with plenty of water hazards. Hans and I agreed that thankfully no golf balls go flying around this area. This is nature at its finest, with no interference by man. On the way back to Yakutat we could easily view Mount St. Elias over in Wrangell-St.Elias National Park and Preserve. This mammoth goes to over 18,000 feet in elevation. Hans also flies people into that park. So, if you are in the mood to get to Glacier Bay National Preserve or to the southern portions of the largest national park in America, give Coastal Air Services a call.