Celebrating Retirement

On the first day of my retirement, I left town and travelled to Skagway, Alaska.  This was not a convenient place to reach.  I left Boston at 6:00am on Saturday, October 19, 2024, on Air Canada, changed aircraft in Toronto and Vancouver, and flew into Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon Territory.  Following a roller coaster flight through wild turbulence over the Rocky Mountains, the diminutive airplane touched down in a snow-saturated landscape at 5:00pm.  My son James met me at the Whitehorse airfield.  After dinner in a local restaurant, we made the two-hour drive through the mountains of the Yukon, northwestern British Columbia, and southeastern Alaska to Skagway and sea level.  My objective in travelling to this remote location was to spend several days visiting James and seeing his excursion trains and cruise ships.

Skagway sits at the head of navigation on the Lynn Canal.  Not really a canal at all, this body of water is one of the many fjords and bays that comprise the Inside Passage, a network of inland waterways that stretches from Washington through British Columbia to Alaska and is sheltered from the open Pacific by a series of islands and peninsulas.  Long an important route for commercial shipping, the Inside Passage is now frequented largely by cruise ships and ferries.  Many of these stop at Skagway, the place where the shipping lines and the railroad meet.

James’ employer, the White Pass and Yukon Route, operates excursion trains for the cruise ship passengers.  These trains embark everyone at the docks downtown and then run “up the hill” on a line that climbs mountains, skirts river gorges, ducks through tunnels, crosses bridges, and delivers the sightseers to scenic spots in British Columbia and the Yukon.  The entire route is tremendously scenic, and therein lies the appeal to folks on vacation.  After several hours of sightseeing aboard the trains, the railroad returns the passengers to the docks in Skagway, and there they rejoin their cruise ships and put to sea again.

As a guest of the White Pass, I had the privilege of riding these trains and sitting up front in the locomotive with James at the controls.  This made for a fascinating series of journeys up the hill and back down again, and to both the cruise ship piers downtown and the railroad shops at the edge of town.  It was late in the tourist season, however, and instead of lush foliage in the mountains, there lay a thick carpet of snow with walls of icicles clinging to the rocks.  It was a very impressive and truly beautiful landscape; nonetheless, I still felt drawn to the waterfront, and I found it just as appealing.

The mountains and the sea together formed my favorite part of the landscape.  Two worlds met at the Skagway waterfront; it was a confluence of geology and oceanography and a place of breathtaking beauty.  Little wonder that so many people sailed there to see it.  My first view of this waterfront took place on Sunday afternoon, October 20.  Watching from an empty cruise ship pier, James and I witnessed the arrival of the ferry Hubbard of the Alaska Marine Highway from Juneau.  I took a sequence of photographs of this event, and I’m happy to present the best ones here:

There were no cruise ships in port that day, nor on the Monday following, but the Norwegian Bliss of the Norwegian Cruise Line arrived on Tuesday the 22^nd, and I was able to take one good picture of her.  The weather had changed by this time.  It was snowing along the railroad in the mountains, but raining at sea level, and so here we see the Norwegian Bliss through the rain:

The next day, Wednesday the 23^rd, saw the arrival of the Norwegian Jewel, also of the Norwegian Cruise Line.  The rain and snow had stopped by this time, but a strong and bitterly cold wind was blowing instead, and this made photography challenging.   Nonetheless, I was able to capture a few views of the Norwegian Jewel at her berth:

 

In this last photograph of the port side amidships, we see how modern cruise ships can resemble high-rise apartment buildings ashore instead of traditional transoceanic passenger liners.  A bold new concept in sea travel, cruising has proven tremendously popular with vacationers.

Wednesday was the last day of cruise ship and excursion train operations in Skagway.  The vacation season of 2024 thus drew to a close.  The ships sailed south to a warmer climate, and Skagway hunkered down for the winter.  James and I left town and made the long drive through the Yukon and the Alaskan interior to Anchorage, where I would enjoy a two-and-a-half-weeks-long visit with my son Steven and my granddaughters Miss Katie and Miss Abby.  Memories of Skagway and its trains and ships would remain with me, though, and so in parting I present some views of the White Pass Route. 

First, this locomotive reposed on a passing siding in a spot called Glacier[1] on Tuesday the 22^nd, as it waited for a passenger train to come by on the main track:

Next, as seen from the conductor’s seat in the leading locomotive on Wednesday the 23^rd, the train was about to cross a short bridge over a river gorge and then duck into a short tunnel on a stretch of track called the High Line[2].  The surrounding massive rock formations and the abundance of coniferous trees formed a very distinctive Alaskan landscape:

Not far from the tunnel this massive rock wall sported an impressive collection of icicles formed by a succession of daily freeze-thaw cycles, also on Wednesday the 23^rd:

Finally, the unofficial railroad photographer, Rod Jensen, took this picture of James and me alongside the main line in a spot called Gulch on the same Wednesday as the excursion train operations were winding down for the season:

As both a seaport and a railroad town, Skagway provided an exciting start to my retirement.  Even at my age, it was clearly not too late for new destinations and new adventures.  Surpassing these opportunities, however, was the priceless gift of time spent with a beloved son in his special element, and this would soon be amplified by time spent with another beloved son and two beloved granddaughters in Anchorage.   

For all of this I was very grateful and also mindful of the scriptural injunction to “live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he hath bestowed upon you” (Alma 34:38).

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[1] James possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of the makeup and operations of the White Pass.  In response to my simple request for the name of the place where this siding is located, he informed me that “It runs from milepost 12.7 to 14.1, it’s 7,400 feet long.  It was lengthened by a mile in 2019.”

[2] Once again from James’ remarks:

The short tunnel is at MP 15.9.  The bridge is a wood trestle which was built in the winter of 1898-1899.  The area has no official name although informally the bridge crosses “Glacier Gorge” and the tunnel runs through “Tunnel Mountain.”

Commuting to Alaska

With two of my grandchildren resident in Alaska, I must endure an uncomfortable imprisonment in the middle seat of an airplane for seemingly endless hours in order to visit them.  Actually, two middle seats aboard two airplanes, first from Boston to Seattle, and then from Seattle to Anchorage.  Miss Patty occupies the window seat; a stranger sits by the aisle.  Thus confined through the long and dark night, I sleep intermittently and occasionally study the on-screen navigational map.  Despite the discomfort, I realize what a blessing it is to be able to travel so far so quickly.  More importantly, I know that the reasons for this travel, our granddaughters Miss Katie and Miss Abby, are themselves the most sublime and supernal of all blessings.  It is always an honor to visit with them.

This point became all the more clear in church one Sunday morning.  As the speaker held forth on the importance of family, the two girls took turns climbing on laps, alternating between me and their Oma.  Their sweet innocence, unfeigned affection, and complete trust spoke volumes, “for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14).

Our visits to the Alaskan grandchildren often involved opportunities to visit the Alaskan coastline as well.  The majestic beauty of Nature showed forth in a grand confluence of geology and oceanography as the snow-capped Chugach and Kenai Mountains intermingled with cold North Pacific waterways.  Far-flung seaport villages dotted this sparsely settled coast.  Two of them, Seward and Whittier, lay near enough to Anchorage to make day trips feasible.

On Monday, October 4, 2021, then, we drove to Seward on the Kenai Peninsula and visited the Alaska Sea Life Center.  This marvelous facility consisted of an aquarium, an aviary, a museum, and a research laboratory.  Birds, fish, and marine mammals abounded.  One sea lion in particular took a liking to Miss Katie and Miss Abby and put on an impromptu demonstration of diving, jumping, splashing, and making faces at them through the glass wall of the tank.  Naturally, the two girls loved the attention.

The back porch of the Sea Life Center overlooked Resurrection Bay.  This view was magnificent with the snow-capped Kenai Mountains nearly surrounding an expansive and placid fjord of Pacific seawater.  Local lore held that Captain James Cook of the Royal Navy discovered Resurrection Bay on Easter Sunday and named it in honor of the occasion.  The historical record indicated otherwise, however. This showed that it was actually named by Alexander Baranov, a Russian colonist and the first governor of Russian America.  His ship took refuge in the bay during a severe North Pacific storm and then emerged in calm weather on Easter Sunday.[1]  He also founded the port of Voskresenskii, which was later renamed Seward, on the bay’s western shore in 1793.[2]

The discrepancies between fact and folklore notwithstanding, our visit to the Alaska Sea Life Center and Resurrection Bay was a fascinating and unforgettable experience filled with breathtaking natural beauty evocative of “the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep” (Ps. 107:24).

On Sunday afternoon, May 15, 2022, we drove to Whittier and visited the commercial shipping docks.  Two grand vessels were in port that day, the cruise ship Nieuw Amsterdam of the Holland America Line, and the ferry Aurora of the Alaska Marine Highway.  Both of these ships were part of our family history, and it was good to see them again.  Our family, then lacking grandchildren, had sailed aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam in the Caribbean in February of 2012, and I had seen the Aurora at her dock in Whittier on my first visit to Alaska in October of 2015.

Whittier stood on the south side of the Passage Canal, which was not a canal at all but an alcove adjoining the larger Prince William Sound.  Captain James Cook discovered this body of water in 1778, and it was subsequently named after the third son of King George III.[3]  In time, Whittier developed into a busy commercial, military, and fishing port with highway and railroad links to Anchorage.  The Nieuw Amsterdam docked there so passengers could make a convenient connection to the Alaska Railroad.  The Aurora docked there to load and discharge passengers and their private automobiles.  Surrounding both ships was a pristine oblong fjord nearly encapsulated by tall and jagged snow-covered mountains.  It was truly a view of the majesty of Creation, one that “let the beauty of the Lord be upon us” (Ps. 90:17).

The two granddaughters watched in rapt attention as the diminutive but elegant Aurora made her approach.  She passed directly in front of us as she turned and then backed down to her dock.  After the stern ramp was lowered the traffic started off the ship, and this, too, held the girls’ attention.  With her business concluded after only half an hour in port, the Aurora took in her mooring lines and got underway again.

The Nieuw Amsterdam, by comparison, was much larger and more stationary.  She would sail late in the evening, long after our return to Anchorage.  Meanwhile, she dominated the waterfront with her immense size and graceful lines, and yet she was dwarfed by the surrounding mountains that towered over her.  We found a small floating dock and attached gangway near her bow to be the best vantage point for viewing, photographing, and reminiscing.

On Thursday, May 19, 2022, I set out alone and on foot from the house during the granddaughters’ naptime.  Fifteen minutes of walking brought me away from the activity of the city to a pedestrian and bicycle trail paralleling the Cook Inlet.  This stretch of water extended from the open Pacific northeastward to the Anchorage International Airport and thence to downtown Anchorage.  The trail connected these two areas, covering a distance of several miles.  Scenic lookout spots, where one could sit quietly and imbibe the view, dotted the path.

My favorite of these lookout spots gave me unobstructed views in several directions.  To the northeast stood the modern skyscrapers of downtown with the Chugach Mountains behind them.  To the northwest and across the inlet from the city the Panamanian cargo ship Bunun Wisdom of the Wisdom Line[4] lay anchored near the opposite shore.  To southwest the airport occupied a peninsula from which every ten minutes or so an airplane took off into the northerly breeze.  Surprisingly, the distant roar of the jet engines did not seem intrusive, nor did the occasional sounds of locomotive horns from the freight trains on the nearby railroad tracks.  More quietly, though, spread out directly in front of me were the extensive low tide mud flats of the Cook Inlet backed by a much larger expanse of blue water.  It was a truly magnificent vista.  I could have stayed there all afternoon, but the granddaughters’ nap time would not last that long!

Of course, these granddaughters, along with our sons and daughters-in-law, were the reasons why Miss Patty and I had traveled to Alaska in the first place.  All the sightseeing was a nice bonus and an uplifting spiritual experience.  The family, however, was paramount.  With this family we had wonderful vacations, times that went by much too quickly, but also times that reminded us of how fortunate we were to have both children and grandchildren, as well as good children-in-law.

Two great spiritual events took place during these family reunions.  The first was Miss Katie’s baby blessing on Sunday, March 4, 2018.  Following the family tradition, she wore the christening gown which her great-great-grandparents, Robert Burns and Julia Murphy, had purchased in 1949 for their first grandson, and which has now been used by three generations of our family.

The second, and the true spiritual summit of our visits, took place in the evening of Wednesday, October 6, 2021, in the Anchorage Temple.  Miss Patty and I gathered in the sealing room with our two sons and daughters-in-law and carried out the requisite sealings for my deceased parents.  First they were sealed to their parents, then to each other, and finally to me.  Afterwards, we retired to the celestial room for an interval of quiet contemplation before leaving.

While one need not fly to Alaska in order to enjoy a happy family gathering and a meaningful religious experience, the investment of time, effort, and discomfort in traveling makes the trek seem like a pilgrimage, and thus it enhances the intensity of the occasion.  Such were my thoughts during my confinement in the awkward middle seats of the airplanes on the long nocturnal flights home.  Now, I look forward to going back and doing it all again!

Next, let’s look at some pictures:

At the Alaska Sea Life Center in Seward, a sea lion meets one of our granddaughters on Tuesday, October, 4, 2021.

 

 

 

 

 

A view of Resurrection Bay from the rear balcony of the Sea Life Center on the same day.

The ferry Aurora of the Alaska Marine Highway arrives in Whittier on Sunday, May 15, 2022.

Same day; same ship.  The Aurora discharges passengers and their vehicles at the dock in Whittier.

Same day; different ship.  The Nieuw Amsterdam reposes quietly at the main commercial dock in Whittier.  She is a large vessel, but the mountains easily outsize her.

 

A view of the Cook Inlet in Anchorage on Thursday, May 19, 2022, with the anchored cargo ship Bunun Wisdom.

"And the light shineth in darkness" (John 1:5).  The steeple of the Anchorage Temple on Wednesday, October 6, 2021, following the completion of my parents' sealing ordinances.

Some lights shine just as well in the daytime.  The steeple of the meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on West 40th Avenue in Anchorage, where my sons and their families attend church, on Sunday, May 15, 2022.

Neighbors.  Across the street stands Our Lady of Guadalupe Cathedral.  Built in the Spanish Mission Revival style, the cathedral has twin belfries, each topped with a Mediterranean-style red tile roof surmounted by a Latin cross.  A traditional symbol of Christianity, the cross reminds us of the brutality and suffering involved in the Atonement, a point we should always remember and appreciate.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Bay. 

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Andreyevich_Baranov.

[3] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_William_Sound.

[4] Information from marinetraffic.com.

Pictures from Alaska

An assortment of photographs taken on my visit to Alaska, October 8 to 10, 2015. As always, click on the photo for a larger view.

James' and Sarah's new house in Anchorage.

Statue of Captain James Cook, RN, in Resolution Park in downtown Anchorage.

James and the Aurora of the Alaska Railroad in the Anchorage station, preparing to depart for Fairbanks.  I rode this train to Wasilla, the first stop.

The Alaska state flag over the Wasilla station.  I particularly like the depiction of the constellation Ursa Major and Polaris, the North Star.  I used Polaris many times at sea for navigational purposes.

The ferry Aurora of the Alaska Marine Highway, just arrived in Whittier.

The railroad barge Anchorage Provider in Whittier, with railroad freight cars on the main deck and shipping containers stored in the upper works.

The bow of the Anchorage Provider.  Note the bulwarks situated to protect railroad cars and shipping containers from the rigors of the Pacific Ocean.

The ocean-going tugboat Gulf Titan, the towing vessel that hauls the Anchorage Provider between Whittier and Seattle.

Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cemetery in Eklutna.  Very distinctive with the "houses" for the spirits of the deceased.

Saint Innocent Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Anchorage.  An impressive sight with its plethora of onion domes.

Saint Nicholas of Myra Byzantine Catholic Church in Anchorage.  The largest onion dome, over the main entrance.

The statue of the angel Moroni atop the Anchorage Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.