Sitka

The tour books all say that Sitka (population 3500) is “everybody’s favorite town" in Southeast Alaska.   I can certainly see that that may be the case and we were sad to have had only 4 days here due to the ferry schedule.  Speaking of the ferry, the ride from Petersburg to Sitka was 14 hours in length and started at 3:00 in the morning.   For that reason, we rented another stateroom so we’d have a place to relax and sleep after our long, long night.   Upon checking in with the ferry boat purser, we were delighted to hear those magic words, “Oh, your room’s not ready, we’ll be giving you an upgrade.”   You know the feeling!!  Whoo-hoo!!   So, not a jacuzzi suite, mind you, but a much bigger room than we had Bellingham to Ketchikan, with a real bathroom and separate kitchen area—very fun!  

3 a.m."truck camper line" at the ferry dock from Petersburg to Sitka

We got to stay in cabin 1B, one of the largest ones at the very front of the boat!

The beautiful ferry ride to Sitka also distinguished itself by giving us our first close-up view of whales!   As we sailed along, suddenly just off “starboard”--my, what old salties we’re getting to be!—we saw spouts of water shooting skyward and great big tail fins near the surface of the water!   Humpbacks!   They were feeding, and stayed there spouting and diving repeatedly for a nice long time.   What a thrill!  

The Le Conte glacier came into view shortly after the ferry left Petersburg

Pre-dawn scenes from the ferry

Sitka is gorgeous, very friendly, and steeped in history!   Just as Norway figures into the history of Petersburg, Russia was the major player in the history of Sitka.  And just as fish was the impetus for establishing a settlement in Petersburg, it was sea otters that brought the Russians to this area.   Russian explorers discovered the Aleutian Islands in the mid 1700s, and noted the abundance of sea otter there whose beautiful pelts had great trade value in their dealings with China.   By the turn of the century they pressed the indigenous people of the Aleutian and Kodiak islands into hunting sea otter for them and established a fort in the Tlingit village called Sheet’ka (later Anglicized to Sitka). There were bloody wars with the Tlingit over the land, but in the end their settlement, which they called “New Archangel” became the capitol of Russian America, the center of their fur trade, and the most populated city on the West Coast of North America.

Tlingit noble, Stoonook, led his men in battle against the Russians and won, driving them out of Sitka in 1802...only to have them return with a vengeance and successfully drive out the Tlingit in 1804. 

Ceremony in Sitka as recently as 2004 in which Russia apologized to the Tlingit in order
  to bring about more peaceful relations  

View of downtown Sitka, St. Michael's cathedral dominating the scene

A significant part of Russian rule in the day was the orthodox church and as early as 1820, a bishop was installed here in a very impressive residence of clever construction. About 20 years later a cathedral was built.

The mustard and red Russian colors used on the entire settlement back in the early 1800s

Oppulent drawing room of bishop's residence

Chapel in bishop's residence with ancient icons covering the walls

St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Cathedral built in 1840s

We listened to beautiful bells rung manually from the top of the tower 

Interior of cathedral

The whole Russian-American endeavor was about business, however—the pelt business—not colonization,  and it began to unravel as, after killing hundreds of thousands of the animals in about a 15 year period, it was noted that the resource was getting depleted—duh!  This, coupled with the difficulties of providing food for their people in such a harsh environment as Alaska caused the Russians to begin to withdraw from the region.    Of course none of this happened overnight and we know the end result—the transfer of the Alaskan territory to the United States in 1869.   We thoroughly enjoyed learning about Russian history and culture about which we knew nothing, and found it fascinating!

On taking possession of Alaska, the Americans treated the Tlingit harshly.  They were forbidden to speak their language, carve totem poles, or otherwise participate in their culture.  Very sad.  In the midst of this, a Presbyterian missionary named Sheldon Jackson was appointed the state’s first "General Agent for Education” and in 1878 established a boarding school for indigenous children.   In his 10 years in that position, he travelled all over the territory and was obviously taken with the cleverness and beauty of cultural objects that he saw.   He acquired thousands of artifacts from all the tribes, and to protect his collection built a fireproof museum, the first concrete structure in Alaska.  Even as his boarding school tried to strip the children of their native culture, Sheldon wanted them to at least be familiar with these wondrous objects in the museum.  A Tlingit man serving as docent at the museum who appeared to be about our age, told us of an interesting turn of events.  His father had lived through the boarding school era, and as such did not speak Tlingit, nor teach the language or culture to his young children.   When his father got older, however, he went to college elsewhere to study the culture.   Decades went by and Sitka established a teaching center for Tlingit culture and invited back, you guessed it, this man’s father as professor!   The man we met at the museum attended the cultural school and so ended up learning the language and culture from his own father many, many years after he could have learned it at his knee, so to speak!!  The museum housed a beautiful collection and we spent hours admiring the work and learning about the lifestyles of the diverse peoples from all over what is now Alaska.  Another site, the Sitka Historical museum included a totem collection outdoors as well as in, and had an elder native craftsmen there demonstrating construction and function of traditional Aleut sun visors.

This museum houses what must be one of the most beautiful collections in the world

Seal mask used in war

Ptarmigan feather child's clothing from Eskimo people

Surrounding by large artifacts, the drawers held countless fascinating smaller objects

Bird bolas

Snow visors

Handle of carved ivory on device used to haul seal back to camp

Aleut in his kayak

Another new experience for us here was to see the tsunami sirens and posters telling us which way to go in case of a tsunami!   We've not seen these in previous ports because they were all tucked into the intercostal waterway while Sitka faces the Pacific Ocean itself.   That was pretty neat...and gave me the heebie-jeebies, truth be told!

What did not give me the heebie-jeebies, though, was the huge, beautiful banana slugs in Sitka.  Refresh your memory of the yellow one I showed in the Ketchikan post.  In Sitka, they really get dressed up all fancy, as you can see below.

It rained a great deal while we were in Sitka and that afforded us a chance to really immerse ourselves in the museums here.  We did have a few beautiful hikes into the rainforest, and one into mountains surrounding the city which was especially memorable.  It started on a misty morning with an ever-present threat of rain which thankfully did not materialize until we were safely back in our campers.   The clouds and mist in these steep-steep, green-green mountains was quite breathtaking, however, and the peek-a-boo quality it leant to the scenery was mystical!  While hiking, I kept thinking of Frodo and “The Lord of the Rings" and sister Kathy said songs from “The Sound of Music” kept replaying in her mind!  

Kathy and Jim head up the trail

Bernie in the mountain mists

The trail.  I promise never to complain about endless boardwalk trails again!

The mists begin to clear, revealing the ocean way below

Ocean on one side, mountains on the other

The trail continues--up!

"The hills are alive ....!"

Beautiful alpine trees, growth sculpted by high winds

View of a corner of Sitka below with cruise ship visible on shore

We did not have time to fish here in Sitka, nor, truth be told, did we have the intestinal fortitude required to endure heavy rain in order to do so!   We did get to a microbrew—the first we found since leaving Montana!  Talk about a dry spell!!  

It was called the Baranof Brewery after the guy who founded the first Russian settlement here.   He gave his name as well to the island on which Sitka is located.  He could never have guessed it would grow into the biggest city in America today!  “Huh?”, you say—but it’s true!   Sitka’s boundaries encircle Baranof Island, fully 4710 square miles.  New York City covers a mere 301 square miles!  Gotcha!