Alaska

When I took my first trip to Alaska last summer, I figured we’d be hiking through snow drifts to look at penguins and igloos. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Our first day in Alaska took us to Juneau. We hiked through mountains, saw wildflowers and totem poles, and—eureka!—went panning for gold. We learned about the local Tlingit Native American tribe, thanks to a Tlingit gentleman. We even attempted to speak the language. Did you know, Ax-xooni (my friend), that no roads lead in or out of Juneau? The Tlingit have to order many of their goods through the Internet. And although the dogsleds promise high-speed fun, the natives of Juneau use Fords and Chevys brought in by barge to get around. No igloos here.

Riding the White Pass Railway in Skagway proved to be one of the trip’s highlights. We traveled past such boomtown icons as the Gold Rush Cemetery, the famous Dead Horse Gulch, and the Trail of ’98. If you look closely, you can still see rusty shovels and buckets left behind by the gold-seekers over a hundred years ago.

While in Skagway, we happened to stumble upon the Skagway July 4th Parade. The procession included everything from bagpipers to clowns, fire engines to carriages, showgirls to the Salvation Army. When the last float passed, we got up to leave—but the parade had turned around at the end of the town and was doubling back.

The next day we sailed off to see the famous Hubbard Glacier and passed “some dumb” mountain, Dry Bay, and Dangerous River. What a terrible way to refer to one of Alaska’s majestic mountains, I thought. Later I learned more about that mountain named Sumdum.

Our ship came within a half mile of the Hubbard Glacier (the captain’s record to date, he said), but it seemed as though we could reach out and touch it. Most amazingly, the face of the Glacier rising 200 feet up out of the sea was completely blue. Beautiful? Yes. Quiet? No. Out of the blue came a thunderous rumbling like I had never heard before. The glacier was calving. It dropped huge chunks of ice into the sea, some as big as ten-story buildings.

But of all the spectacular things we saw and did, my favorite Alaskan memory is of the wildlife. No, there are no penguins in Alaska. But we encountered bald eagles, ravens, porcupines, and grizzly bears. We spotted everything from otters to dolphins, puffins to (my favorite) humpback whales. To see a wild humpback whale breach the waters of the Inside Passage is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Alaska, truly the place of a lifetime, Gunalcheesh ho ho (thank you).

—Chelsea Germak

Pennsylvania-based Chelsea Germak is a ninth-grade student at East Juniata High School in McAlisterville.