Prince George - Zombie Apocalypse?

I'll get to the title in a bit! Today was a 9.5 hour drive along the Yellowhead Highway from Prince Rupert to Prince George. We had some relative excitement at the beginning with a very heavy patch of fog that descended as we were getting into a construction area. 
Here we're approaching the fog.

And now we're into the construction site. The sun was fully up but you could barely see it. Definitely an interesting start to the day. 

After getting through the worst of the fog and the construction, we saw a lake that looked interesting with the fog still swirling around.

I don't usually take photos with power lines but I liked the symmetry in this one. 

Once we got going again, we saw what I think was a grey wolf, a coyote or maybe a small wolf and a black bear. All were on parts of the highway where it would have been dangerous to stop so all we have are memories. We thought we'd be mostly driving through mountains but by about noon, we were on what is called the central plateau and it got somewhat less interesting. No more winding, edge of cliff roads which possibly was good for Marilyn but less interesting for me. There were a lot of logging operations and we had many views like these.

And we crossed what had to be a pretty old single lane bridge beside a train bridge.

At one point we did come across this random glacier on Hudson Bay Mountain. 

Now, on to the title. When we finally got to Prince George, we noticed a lot of development in the outskirts. There were big box stores and chain restaurants as well as obviously new housing. When we arrived at our hotel, which is in the downtown area, we were a bit confused. There were very few people and not much traffic. We asked if we were in the downtown and were told yes. On our walk around to find dinner, we saw only a few people and many boarded up or for sale stores. Being a fan of The Walking Dead, I couldn't help but notice that it looked like a scene out of Season 3. 

Do you see those two guys? They could easily be zombies. Look at the shuffling walk and the shabby clothes. 

Luckily, we didn't get bitten and we made it safely to the Twisted Cork which was recommended by people on Trip Advisor. It turned out to be an excellent choice. It was Canadian Craft Beer Night so pints were on sale. Always a good thing! And they had a tapas type of menu that was ridiculously priced. We ordered a Tapas Tower at $17.95. At home prices I was expecting a medium sized plate of the included items. This is what we got. There are two pictures to show the whole thing.

As you can see there was a ton of food! I would have expected to pay double for the same in Toronto. Since we expected a smaller plate, we also ordered the Cajun Blackened Bison with Blue Cheese Aioli. Oh, and there were onion rings as you can see. It was also excellent but we ended up taking some of the tower back to the hotel. 

We had been thinking about maybe walking around more after dinner. We were talking to our server at the Twisted Cork and she said that there was a really nice park near the river but maybe don't go there after dark! So, we ended up back in the hotel and watched the Jays lose. Again. 
We're off to Burnaby tomorrow, another 9ish hour drive, where we'll stay with Marilyn's cousin Allan. 

Aboard The Taku

Well, I'm just getting over the jitters caused by 2 whole, long days with no internet access. My phone was turned off for 2 days. I wrote the blog post in Word so at least I'll remember what I wanted to say! The voyage on the Taku, other than the internet thing  (did I mention that?) was excellent. They took the inside passage route that the cruise ships take with a few smaller passages thrown in. I think we were much more in touch with the water than you would be on a big ship. If they could just do something about the bunk beds, it would be perfect. 

Here's where I started on Friday at 6:15...

Our last day in Juneau involved a more complicated than necessary search for a Laundromat, a visit to a salmon hatchery, a look at salmon in a creek and a visit to the Red Dog Saloon.

The salmon hatchery was in full swing when we got there as tens of thousands of salmon were attempting to climb the fish ladder from the channel. Little did they know that at the end of the ladder was a plant that would process them by taking their eggs and milt and then turn them into pet food and other products. Salmon that are hatched in the plant will come back to the same location to spawn. It’s a very large operation. Here you can see the salmon in the holding pen and on the fish ladder. 

When we saw the salmon in a local creek, they showed the same determination to spawn. It looked like almost solid fish in some places as they tried to get into the small, shallow creek. You can see it on TV but to understand the true scope of what is going on, you need to experience it in real life.

Back at Auke Bay, as we waited to board our ferry, we noticed a lone bald eagle sitting on a light pole and watching the water. Using our vaunted stealth skills once again, we managed to sneak up on him only to realize that he didn’t care how close we got. I expect he hangs out at the ferry terminal and is somewhat used to gawking humans. After taking a few shots, I figured he was just going to sit until we had to leave. But, just as we started to go, he took off and attempted to snag one of the fish that was jumping around in the water. I was shooting 6 frames per second so have the whole sequence but this is an overview. 

Here, he's stretching his wing just before take off.

He dives off the light.

He soars towards the target.

Goes right into the water.

And comes up empty! Fish 1, Eagle 0.

And here he is coming up to the railing to dry off. You can see the water falling off but we found out that eagles don't have oil on their feathers like ducks. So, when they take a dive like this guy did, they have to sit around for a while until their feathers dry out. 

This is our second ferry, the Taku. It’s smaller than the first one and supposedly a bit newer. We found our room, which was not unlike a college dorm room, to be small but efficient. I can’t even remember the last time I slept in a bunk bed! The beds were comfy, there was a bathroom and we could plug in our cooler and electronics. 

Here's the convenient 1.5 litre bottle wine rack that they provide.

This is the bed and electronics set up. I always bring an extension cord on trips now. It was needed this time as the only outlet was in the bathroom. Also, climbing up that ladder in the middle of the night is not fun. I have bruises to prove it! Better than Marilyn falling out of the top bunk, she says!

Now, this is a first. I'm going to try to add a small video that we made to showcase our cabin. I'll be interested to see if this works.

Once the ship gets out into open water, it’s quite cool and windy but the scenery is still worth standing on deck for. So far, we’ve seen humpback whales, orcas, porpoises and seals. One orca even breached but of course we were watching that through the window in our room. I had a glass of wine in my hand instead of my camera! It stayed light until quite late and the sky and sea made for some great photo opportunities.

The ferry has been a great way to travel. Just tried out the shower and it was one of the best we’ve had on the trip! Again, no luxury, just a good shower. We brought our plug in cooler onto the boat. That’s been our best buy this trip for sure. It’s kept drinks, snacks and Marilyn’s yogurt cold since we left home. We are going to try out the ship’s restaurant tonight and possibly the bar as they serve the Alaskan beers that we’ve come to enjoy.

Since I'm compressing a couple of days into one post, I'll put in a few random pictures from the trip to Prince Rupert.

An interesting house on pilings in Petersburg, in a very narrow part of the inside passage.

We were supposed to dock in Ketchican at 5:45 this morning. I woke up around 5 and saw that we had the first really sunny morning of the cruise. We decided to get up to watch the docking and see if we could catch the sun coming up over the mountains.

This cruise ship got ahead of us and delayed our arrival at Ketchican this morning. Apparently, in the ship world, bigger is better. We heard a number of interesting local opinions about the cruise ship companies on our voyage.  

An interesting fog bank that we approached and went through on our way to Prince Rupert. It inspired me to make a small video that might see the light of day after some editing. No wine was involved. Marilyn stayed away while I was doing it as well. I could have used her as an extra but she wasn't interested...

Our arrival in Prince Rupert.

The odd and somewhat unsettling cow themed streets of Cow Bay, a section of Prince Rupert. At least there were no real cows running around. 

And finally, a couple of food pics because there weren't any others in the post! We ended up eating in Cow Bay because, in our brief exploration, it was the nicest looking part of Prince Rupert. There weren't many places open as it was after 6 on a Sunday, but we found The Breakwater Pub. They had local beer and some good fish based food so we were happy. They even had a patio overlooking the water. I'm all about the patios now, despite what some of my school friends my tell you. There don't seem to be a lot of wasps or bees to bug people on patios in this part of the world!

Marilyn had Baha Fish Tacos that were great even though they were a bit spicier than expected. I know because I helped finish them!

I had a lighter version of halibut and chips where they use panko instead of a heavy batter on the fish. 

A Convocation Of Eagles

Today started off with the threat of more "liquid sunshine" as the Alaskans like to call rain. You basically take clothes for any possible weather and carry on. We headed out to a place called Eagle Beach hoping that there would be eagles there. We've seen a number of eagles flying around but always while driving. Our actual destination was another beach just past Eagle, but there was blasting going on and we would have had to sit in line for a while waiting and we didn't want to do that. Turns out that we didn't need to worry. As we were parking the car, we started to see eagles all over the place. The tide was out and they were sitting on logs and rocks all along the beach. There were dead salmon on the beach that had been eaten and live salmon that had been trapped in pools when the tide went out. Lots of food for eagles and possibly bears. ** A group of eagles is a convocation. I looked it up!

Other than a few people digging for clams, we had the entire beach to ourselves. Amazing!

This raven was the first to catch our attention. He was eating one of the many dead salmon.

These 3 seem to be watching the cruise ship go by. 

The adult eagles wouldn't let us get any closer than maybe 200 metres before they took off. This younger one let me slowly approach to about 10 metres! It was poking around in the grass, picking up sticks and looking at me. I was trying to remember if an eagle would attack me after getting a good look at the really long, sharp talons he had. But, he just went about his business and allowed me to get some really decent close up shots. 

Sorry if this is a bit gross but I wanted to show how big the salmon on the beach were. The second picture shows the footprints of the eagle that did the eating and how they compare to Marilyn's shoe. They were big birds!

Once I realized how the eagles were reacting to us I was able to anticipate a bit and got a few shots of them flying. 

We found a few feathers on the beach and picked them up. Didn't see any signs saying that you couldn't so we kept them. 

There are more ravens than you can count in Alaska! They seem to be everywhere and they're quite loud. This guy was pretty much posing as we were leaving so I took his portrait!

Since it was still nice out, we headed back to another place on our list, The Shrine of St. Therese. I don't tend to go to a lot of shrines but this was a beautiful, peaceful place. They have cabins where you can just stay for a vacation or they offer retreats. 
This is the chapel. By a bit of a fluke, we were there in between tour groups so no people to clutter up the scene.

They have a labyrinth made of stones that you can walk in.

As we drove away from the shrine, the sun came out and we figured our next hike on the other end of Douglas Island would be no problem. But, as usually happens, as we got to the outskirts of Juneau it clouded over and started to rain. We arrived at the historic Treadwell Trail in a steady misty rain. This site is not advertised by Alaska or Juneau apparently because it's not totally safe. It is a fascinating site that was the location of one of the first major gold mines in the area. A man named Treadwell started a gold company that grew into what was a small city outside of Juneau on the Gastinau Channel. They mined over 3 million ounces of gold. At some point the water broke into the mines and caused a massive collapse, ruining most of the buildings along the water. Now the place is like a ghost town of old buildings and machinery. When the tide goes out, as it was today, you can see pieces of machinery and ordinary items like broken dishes littering the sand. Everything has just been left in place. If you are ever in the area I would highly recommend a visit. 

This is one of the abandoned buildings and the next shot is an hdr image of the inside.

Throughout the forest, there are many different structures or parts of structures, some labelled, some not. 

This is where the mine collapse started. When the water poured in, the mine became a giant sinkhole that pulled in everything around it. You can see the remains of a building and some pipe in the upper part. Surprisingly, no one was killed as they had time to evacuate but all of the horses that were working in the mines were lost.

These are some of the thousands of piles used to support the buildings and a 600 ft. by 300 ft. wharf. They're mostly underwater at high tide now. 

Here are some of the artifacts that you can see on the beach. The white piece is one of thousands of bits of dishes scattered on the sea floor. I'm totally amazed that people haven't taken everything. Maybe in Alaska, people don't do things like that. 

By the time we had explored as much as we could, it was raining more and we were hungry again! A pub had been recommended to me by someone on Trip Advisor. We drove around a bit and I was ready to head into Juneau when we spotted a possible pub down a side street. It was The Island Pub and it happened to be famous for its pizzas. The parking lot had only local cars which was a good sign. We had some Alaska pints and a pizza called the Motherlode. Very good! When going to a new place, it's a great idea to connect with locals about hidden gems like this.

All that hiking led to a suggestion that we go back to the hotel for a break and to tidy up for dinner. We came back and I ended up talking with one of the people who work here about cameras and lenses for a while. Then it was time for dinner. Now, I know in compressed blog time, it sounds like we just jump from one meal to the next but there is really a quite a bit of time between meals! Today, we went back to Juneau early so that we could check out some of the shops we'd missed. It was a good plan as all the cruise people were back on their ships and the downtown area was pleasantly uncrowded. Dinner ended up being at a place called Twisted Fish which is attached to the Taku Smokehouse which does all the smoked salmon. The restaurant used the fresh fish from Taku. We both had wild salmon dishes and they were both incredibly fresh tasting. Every place we've seen here uses wild caught salmon.
This is my salmon in puff pastry with crab and shrimp stuffing. This is why we walk so much!

And this is Marilyn's cedar planked salmon with bourbon molasses sauce. 

Tomorrow, we board the ferry at 6:00 p.m. for a two day ride to Prince Rupert, BC. Luckily, we have a cabin with beds (bunks!!) and a bathroom with shower. So we won't have to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags. We are on the luxury cruise plan which means we get to bring our own food in a cooler if we want. Or we can buy stuff from the restaurant on the ship. The MAJOR downside to all this is that there is NO INTERNET on the ship. I know, it's hard to believe! As a result, we will be silent on the blog front until we arrive in Prince Rupert. I'm sure there will be lots to go on about!