Going with the Flow in Juneau: Day Fifteen on the Alaska Road Trip

I would like to begin this blog by highlighting my stupendous mom who made this whole trip possible and amazing and awesome.

Everybody, Jane in two habitats:

Jane birding on Mt. Roberts.

Jane and her alter-ego, the giant hoary marmot.

Thanks for everything, Mom! I love you!

Ok, now for the Day Fifteen update. Juneau was lovely and vital and full of people who seemed really happy to be there. Our friend Marna and her two daughters live in a house on a crooked street in a quirky neighborhood filled with steep hills, flower gardens, dead-ends and staircases. The waterfront, quiet in the morning, soon filled up with four enormous cruise ships, each of which disgorged a thousand passengers onto the quaint downtown streets to shop for jewelry and trinkets.

Jane and Marna on Basin Road.

Marna was impressed by the fast-paced road trip schedule we’d been keeping, so she gave us four different attractions to pack into our day. “My family would take on one of these in a day,” she told us, “but for you guys, no problem!” We started with a walk up Basin Road, a street that soon became a cantilevered wooden track under sheer cliffs of moss and precarious forest.

We then headed down the hill to the waterfront, where we caught the first tram up to Mount Roberts. It’s unbelievable how steeply the mountains rise around Juneau!

Looking down the tram wires from Mt. Roberts.

The network of alpine trails could take a backpacker weeks to explore, so we saw just a snippet with breath-taking views and a handful of shy songbirds. The Lobaria lichens were the lushest, greenest, shiniest, most lung-worty specimens I’ve ever seen!

So green!

Nice ascocarps!

We looked for willow ptarmigans, but instead found another thrush. We should be getting good at these guys by now, but we still can't tell... is she hermit or gray-cheeked?

Birders, what do you think: hermit or gray-cheeked?

We left, before we had seen enough, to catch the 1 pm tour of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) fisheries science building. Compared to dramatic clifftops, touring a government building may sound dull, but I love seeing NOAA labs, and my mom indulged my strange request.

Compared to the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center where I worked this summer in Seattle, the Juneau building was state of the art. A mural of 50 life-sized model fishes from the region adorned the lobby’s wall. Four projectors shone on a globe-shaped screen to give the impression of a rotating earth. We got to watch NOAA’s “Science on a Sphere” presentation about the world and climate change here.

Science on a Sphere and the fish wall.

The wet lab contained touch-tanks of my favorites, including a sunflower star, Pycnopodia helianthoides. The biology and chemistry labs were staffed with friendly, busy scientists, and the lobby’s aquarium contained the largest leather star, Dermasterias imbricata, I’ve ever seen.

Jane examines squid eggs.

Two sculpins, a great (Myoxocephalus polyacanthocephalus) and a buffalo (Enophrys bison), cuddle puddling.

The building is heated by an efficient heat-exchange system that draws energy from the chilly waters of Gastineau Channel. In winter, it also recaptures heat blowing up through vents from the chemical hoods. The conference room has a glass wall overlooking the ocean, and our tour guide told us he gets too distracted by breaching whales when he sits facing that way. What a life!

I want this poster for my wall!

After the tour, we headed straight to Mendenhall Glacier. Two of the four trails were closed: one for bears, the other for flooding.

Mendenhall Glacier melts into Mendenhall Lake.

I think these terns may have been flooded out of house and home.

We fought our way through the crowd of cruise-boat tourists for a look at the receding blue ice, admired the icebergs she had calved into Mendenhall Lake, and moved on to the stream.

Red squirrel munching on a mushroom.

Here, bright red sockeye salmon were spawning! The waters were so shallow over the river rocks that the salmon had to expose their dorsal halves in their frantic push to move upstream. Several white carcasses rotted on the banks. I realized that I had never seen a healthy stream of salmon before! I’ve learned about these fish since grade school, visited the fish ladder at the Locks, witnessed the life stages at the Seattle Aquarium, watched documentaries about the fate of Alaskan salmon if Pebble Mine is dug… but here in front of me were the real thing, unaware of their symbolism, just trying to reproduce like the rest of us. I wish you the best, big sockeyes!

A sockeye too large for its small stream.

As we watched salmon from the bridge, a National Forest ranger approached us. “Are you looking for birds?” she asked. Finally, a ranger-ornithologist! Together we spotted juncos, yellow-rumped warblers, a Pacific slope flycatcher, and a western wood-pewee. She gifted us a Birds of Southeast Alaska checklist and recommended a trail for dippers.

Pacific slope flycatcher.

Western wood-pewee.

We were in luck. As we walked back to the parking lot, we passed a secluded bridge over another stream. The tree branches dripped with lichens, and the soil embankment was caked with emerald moss. “If I were a dipper, I’d live here!” I told my mom. “Oh my gosh, there’s a dipper!”

Ideal dipper (and Nina) habitat.

There she was, popping in and out of the clear water, the droplets rolling off her graphite back. A bird that loves mossy streams! I am so fond of dippers.

Dipping for bugs.

Ahhh!

Now back to Marna’s for a mouth-watering salmon dinner. Our first home-cooked meal. And after that, a jaunt back up the tram (tickets are good for the whole day, so we wanted to get our full use!) for sunset on Mount Roberts.

Gastineau Channel at sunset.

Looooong shadow dancers.

I think this black leafy stuff is tree pelt lichen, Peltigera collina.

We were hoping to get to bed early, but at 10:30 pm I realized I couldn’t find my (dead) iPhone, so I spent half an hour tearing apart my suitcase, the car, and everything in the room. Finally Annabelle (that’s my iPhone) appeared in the folds of an emergency blanket in the trunk of Prius. Oh, what can you do when inanimate objects play pranks on you…

End of day summary:

• Day of road trip: 15 
• Start: Juneau, Alaska, United States 
• Miles traveled: 45 
• Hours driven: 1 
• Favorite bird sighting: American dipper 
• End: Juneau, Alaska, United States

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Spruce Beetle Sap: Day Thirteen of the Alaska Road Trip

We left Tok, drove ten miles, checked our gas gauge, checked our map, headed back to Tok, got gas, and headed back out of town. Because the Tok-to-Haines-Junction section of the Alaska Highway is a repeat on our road trip (we passed through here on Days 5 and 6), we saw that particular 10-mile stretch of highway four times. Luckily, it was beautifully treed with yellowing aspens and populated with gray jays, kingfishers, ravens, and a merlin.

A merlin on the much-traversed stretch of Alaska Highway.

It was too rainy to stop in Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge, but we fondly recalled last week’s hikes to the row boat and beyond.

After a substantial wait at the US-Canada border, we stopped in at our happy home from last week, Buckshot Betty’s, for second breakfast. Our harried waitress told us she was out of bacon, so no BLT’s, and my blueberry scone contained one blueberry. C’mon, Betty!

It's already looking like fall in the Yukon.

A black bear crossed the road in front of us, right before we stopped for the first of many road-construction delays. I swear, this “paved highway” is mostly dirt and gravel in the Yukon!

Big mountains by the highway!

Our less-than-accurate Birder’s Guide to Alaska told us to stop at Bear Creek Summit Pass for a trail into the alpine. Because nothing was signed, we pulled off at the high point of the mountain, parked next to a hibernating backhoe, and hiked up a brushy dirt road.

Snow-capped peaks loomed above us.

Jane worried I was scaring away the grouse and ptarmigans with my bear songs.

I made lots of noise to alert both bears and any stray humans of our presence. Don’t worry, we saw nobody but juncos, a northern flicker, and sparrows (either chipping or white-crowned -- any birders to the rescue?!)

Northern flickers are at home in the remote Yukon, or in my backyard in Walla Walla!

It has a rufous stripe on either side of its head, a pink or orange beak, white wing bars, and a clear breast.

... we are torn between chipping sparrow (pale first winter) and white-crowned sparrow (taiga/interior west first winter).

The one-mile Spruce Beetle Interpretive Trail was more inviting, with its informative signs and well-maintained trail, but it contained a total of zero birds.

Welcome to a real trail.

The lichens were plentiful, the red squirrels were agitated as usual, and a brown animal hopped out of sight as we rounded a corner. “A rabbit or a deer!” Jane proclaimed.

Jane also made friends with this gnome-faced shelf fungus.

We found this mushroom, oddly high in a spruce...

... Then its stasher came out to protect his snack!

We learned all about the spruce beetle infestation that has caused thousands of acres of boreal forest to die in recent years, probably due to warmer winters.

The beetles drill through the bark of spruce trees, leaving these holes.

Under the bark, their larvae tunnel and damage the tree's phloem.

The tree's defense mechanism is to exude oodles of sap and flush the beetles out. This tree tried and failed. Now, a brittle snag, it resembles a wax-laden candelabra.

Forgive me again, dear reader, as I prance into lichen land! (My mom had to forgive my lolly-gagging on many a hike as I stooped to take these photos.)

Flaky freckle pelt, Peltigera britannica. (That's really the name!)

Club moss.

Little Cladonia turrets.

British soldiers, Cladonia bellidiflora.

At the end of the spruce beetle trail, we came upon a glorious mountain overlook.

Ta-da!

We gazed at this epic crevasse, pondered all the mountaineers who have lost their lives to such things, and decided never to climb tall mountains.

As we drove down the highway into Haines Junction, we passed a dozen chocolate-brown snowshoe hares nibbling grassy bits on the shoulder, so that’s probably who we saw in the forest, too.

A road-side snowshoe hare.

The Raven Hotel was our nicest lodging yet, with shiny new furniture and crisp white linens. We thought it was 8:30 pm, and luckily the restaurants in Haines Junction close at 9:00 pm. Unluckily, there is an hour time change between Alaska and the Yukon, so it was actually 9:30 pm! The friendly owner of a bar called K. P. I. for Kluane Park Inn, serving “western and Chinese cuisine,” let us in. Jane ordered red wine and I asked for a bowl of egg flower soup. Instead, an enormous pot of steaming hot-and-sour soup arrived, loaded with shrimp, beef, chicken, regular pork, barbeque pork, and mushrooms. We finished the whole thing.

Meanwhile, a couple from British Columbia decided to buy two of the oil paintings on the wall done by a local artist: a musk ox silhouetted against a flaming sunset, and a cedar waxwing picking red berries. “For our daughter in Whitehorse,” they explained as our waitress stood on my chair to remove the painting and its thumbtack from the fake brick wall.

End of day summary:

• Day of road trip: 13 
• Start: Tok, Alaska, United States 
• Miles traveled: 310 
• Hours driven: 8 
• Favorite bird sighting: merlin 
• End: Haines Junction, Yukon Territory, Canada

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X Marks the Spot: Day Twelve on the Alaska Road Trip

Back on the road, our first stop was the tiny post office of Moose Pass, an itty-bitty town, where I mailed off my paperwork (printed nearly a week earlier in Fairbanks, a hazard of being in rural Alaska) and bought postcard stamps.

Better late than never (sorry Olivia!)

We backtracked past Anchorage and paused at the world’s-slowest-diner, Kava’s Pancake House, for second breakfast. My meal included three massive reindeer sausages; I saved one in a piece of buttered toast for dinner.

A great birding spot, Reflection Lake, materialized within the boundaries of Palmer Hay Flats State Game Refuge. We saw a black-capped chickadee gleaning spiders from twigs, reinforcing our earlier sighting of boreal chickadees.

This black-capped chickadee had less rufous on its sides and more white on its cheeks than did the boreal chickadees of earlier in the week.

Mama ring-necked duck with a big clutch of teenagers.

In the lake, a red-necked grebe and his baby caught fish.

Necky and Stripey.

Goofy and Hatty.

A hermit thrush hopped in the open ahead on the path! (Birders: are we interpreting those rusty tail feathers and spotty chest correctly? Swainson's and gray-cheeked thrushes live here too.)

Hermit thrush exhibit A.

Hermit thrush exhibit B.

Best of all, we finally found our icterid lifer, the rusty blackbird!

A male rusty blackbird is a striking bandit-masked critter!

“That’s our bird-of-the-day!” we cheered, but little did we know what was coming next…

As we climbed the pass between Anchorage and Tok, we ascended back into our beloved boreal forest biome. I thought we had left the stunted black spruce behind, but now, as we retreated into the interior, we were back among them!

“Let’s keep scanning the treetops for northern hawk-owls,” Jane suggested, an activity we had given up days prior. Futile though I expected it to be, I began to scan the trees. A minute later – there was an owl!

Jane pulled a U-turn and photographed the quizzical little owl like crazy. His long, off-center tail and stripes give him a little-kid-in-pajamas look. What a guy.

Long tail, stripey chest, don't care.

Alone atop his very own spruce.

It was a boomer day for raptors. Shortly after the hawk-owl, a real hawk emerged!

Hey, hawks like spruce trees, too!

We think he's a juvenile red-tailed hawk from the stripes on his wings and tail. Thoughts?

We stopped at roadside ponds for waterfowl, meeting several other travelers along the way.

Non-breeding-plumage buffleheads in a roadside pond.

Canvasbacks and an interloping wigeon.

This lone trumpeter swan was one of the few we saw without a mate.

“Excuse me, are you a birder?” asked a woman at a rest stop. “I could tell because of your binocular harness. X marks the spot!” (She was referring to the criss-crossed straps on Jane’s back.)

We checked into the Golden Bear Motel in Tok, and then moseyed out to the lobby for tea and hot water. Two, then three, crusty local dudes told us lore of the 85-degrees-below Tok winters.

“Scientists say if you are running in the nude at that temperature, you’ll die as quickly as if you were runnin’ through fire!” one of them told us. Most of the winter isn’t that bad, they assured us. The air is so still, ten inches of powder can pile up on each telephone wire, and the sun is often shining on the crunchy white snow.

“Sure, it’s dark,” one man conceded.

“Yeah, you watch the sun come up, and hover for a couple hours, and go back down,” another added.

“But the twilight lasts forever!” said the first. “Not like Hawaii. I was there once and when the sun set, BAM, it was night. I was like, what the hell? Where’s the twilight? Nah, Tok’s not so bad.”

We all nodded and sipped our tea.

Tok, Alaska - it ain't so bad.

End of day summary:

• Day of road trip: 12 
• Start: Seward, Alaska, United States 
• Miles traveled: 442 
• Hours driven: 8.5 
• Favorite bird sighting: northern hawk-owl 
• End: Tok, Alaska, United States

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