Icy Strait Point

Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Juneau, Alaska, United States
Good evening all;

I am sitting in the cabin thawing out from a day of whale watching and bear searching at Icy Strait Point. We arrived mid-afternoon, spent some time going ashore by tender (takes a while to unload 2,000 of us) and now we will sail off at 10:00 this evening. I was glad to have all my layers today as we hung outside on the whale watching boat diving inside now and again to dry the lens of the cameras off so the photos would be more than just rain drops. Fortunately the rest of the group reported only a drop or two of rain in Icy Strait Point today.

For those of you who have never heard of Icy Strait Point, which included us until we came on this cruise, it is a privately owned tourist destination just outside the small Tlingit village of Hoonah, Alaska. If that doesn't help it is about 280 nautical miles from Juneau Alaska, about 200 miles from the Hubbard Glacier and just 22 miles southeast of Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska. One could say it is sort of in the middle of nowhere.  

It is owned by the Huna Totem Corporation which was established as a part of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. The corporation purchased the site in 1996 and first opened it for cruise ships in 2004. The beauty of this stop is that only one cruise ship is present at any given time, unlike the other ports in Alaska where 4 or 5 cruise ships dock at once with 2,000 passengers disembarking from each. You have to be nimble to avoid the stampede to the diamond stores in Juneau!

The corporation's goal is to preserve the character of the local village and culture as much as possible, despite the influx of visitors, while providing opportunities and jobs for the local members of the Huna Tlingit.

The site includes the 1930's Hoonah Packing Company facility...once a cannery and now a quite wonderful museum, walking trails into the forest and along the shore, a tram, a zip-line, a beach of wonderfully flat stones for kids of all ages to skip and tours to search for whales and bears. It is wonderfully under commercialized is what I am saying.

 What to do? Gary and I went searching for whales and bears with greater success in finding whales in the rain than the bears.  Gill, Charlie and Paige took a covered tram ride for a forest and nature tour. Wayne and Sandra spent time in the Native Heritage Centre Theatre watching members of the Huna Tlingit Dancers troupe enact their heritage through song, dance and story telling. Sandra also contributed to a young girl's university education fund and helped the Centre out by stocking up on souvenirs. Besides befriending the famous Icy Strait Point cat Garth and Lisa walked to the local town of Hoonah, a mile away from Icy Strait Point. It sounded as if the cemetery was a highlight of the walk.  
 


We did see a group of 6 or 7 humpback whales at the Point Adolphus feeding area, about 17 miles out of Icy Strait. Following that expedition we drove about 12 miles out of town over logging roads to search for wildlife, hoping to spot a brown or black bear. We had to make do with a bald eagle fishing for salmon in the river.

Everyone enjoyed this, our first stop, after spending a day cruising northward along the Inside Passage, exploring the ship and finding out whether your sense of direction allowed you to find your stateroom once having ventured forth. We all managed, eventually with minimal backtracking.

   Gary had cleverly got staterooms for us all close together at the front of the ship where we could get to the gym, theatre and kid's area on one staircase or bank of elevators. In theory you had to go further afield(meaning to the stern) to forage for food. The first evening Charlie and Paige discovered room service!

Tonight we are all doing our own thing for dinner since everyone is coming back to the ship at a different time.

See you tomorrow when we cruise and gape at the magnificent Hubbard Glacier. Blue skies and sun would be wonderful after today.
 
Doreen
 

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