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!