Sitka AK - Part 2

We have had the good fortune to see a few bears while in Alaska, but always from a distance.  Pretty much everywhere we have been we have been told there were bears in the area, but so far we have had no close encounters.  But we're prepared ... sorta.  We carry a can or two of bear spray pretty much every time we walk in the woods.  One day it occurred to me that these cans were quite old.  I know we carried them on a backpacking trip in Montana in 2007, making them at least 10 years old.  I looked but could not find an expiration date anywhere on either canister, so I went on-line to see what the manufacturer said.  A web page there said there was an expiration date printed on each canister and told where to find it.  With that information I looked some more and found very faint and worn printing that indicated the canisters expired in 2011.  OOPS!  The manufacturer said after the expiration date the canisters would lose their effectiveness.  They didn't say whether the pepper spray might be less potent or if the canisters may lose their pressure.  I looked on Amazon to see about buying some replacement canisters, but Amazon would not ship them to Alaska.  I guess it's a hazardous pressurized material vs. airplane kinda thing.  People who know me know I tend to take chances, so we'll just keep carrying this questionable protection and feel at ease in our false sense of security.  If push comes to shove we can always throw the dead canisters at an attacking bear.

The Sitka Public Library must have the most scenic view of any library in the country.  It's a great place to hang out and get warm and dry.

Myron doing his blogging thing

One day we visited the Sitka National Cemetery.

Raven perched on headstone: I don't know what this means, but it seems ominous

The Sitka airport is on adjacent Japonski Island across the O'Connell Bridge.  One day we went across the bridge to check it out.  There we saw folks who had been on fishing charters packing home 50 pound cases of frozen King salmon and halibut they had caught, as checked luggage.  I had hoped to take a fishing charter sometime during this trip, but talking to these guys and seeing their catch gave me the fever to do it now.  The folks I talked to used Big Blue Charters and recommended them highly. Karen from Big Blue Charters was there seeing these folks off, and I talked with her a while.  Unfortunately, she had no openings until the week after we were to leave Sitka.  Dorcas has little interest in taking a charter.  Perhaps I'll fly back out next summer!  It could happen.

Mowing the yard is a piece of cake

The John O'Connell Bridge crosses the Sitka Channel to Japonski Island

Sitka's Alaska Pioneer home viewed from the O'Connell Bridge

We ate at two different restaurants in Sitka, Agave and Pizza Express, that couldn't decide if they were Mexican or Italian or America restaurants.  At both they served chips and salsa as soon as you were seated.  We were so full of chips and salsa, we took most of the pizza home.

Chips, salsa and pizza: all the major food groups

I've never seen a pizza take-out box quite like this

Chips, salsa and the Texas Burger at Pizza Express

Any craft beer drinker worth his hops knows what a growler is.  For those domestic light beer drinkers (and you know who you are, Hank) a growler is a jug, usually brown and 64 ounces, filled at a brewery or pub to bring draft beer home.  However, even I had never heard of a "squealer", which is a 32 ounce version of a growler., apparently for those who can't drink a whole growler.  It's cute, but really, what's the point?

Squealer vs Growler:  Give me the growler any day

I bought this empty growler at a thrift store in town.  Unfortunately, The Baranof Island Brewing Company was in the process of moving their brewery to another location in town.  Consequently, their production capacity was down, and there was none of their draft beer to be found anywhere in town.  Bummer!

An empty growler is always a sad sight.

In an earlier post I said cruise ships were not frequent visitors to Sitka.  I lied.  For three days in a row  Holland America cruise ships carrying about 3000 passengers each were in town, and it was a mess.  Ironically two ships, this one and another were in port the same day, but had a combined passenger load of less than 1000 tourists, which seemed to have minimal impact.

The Fortress of the Bear is a bear sanctuary about 10 miles out of town.  We had gone out there on several days, but we couldn't get in due to busloads of folks from the cruise ships.  Finally we made it, and it was a great experience.

The sanctuary is at the site of an abandoned pulp mill and the enclosures are old concrete digester tanks each 3/4 acre in size, which is very much larger than the enclosures in most zoos.  There were about a half dozen coastal brown (grizzly) bears and three black bears.  All of these bears would have been destroyed had this sanctuary not existed.  The bears were viewed from an elevated walkway.  They were very active and social.

Begging for fish

Getting up close and personal

Brown bears getting rowdy 

"I can't believe I ate all that fish"

Black bears are not native to Baranov Island, and these guys are the only black bears on the island.  They were rescued in Juneau, which is on the mainland and does have quite a few black bears.

Black bears getting rowdy; or are they dancing?

Bald eagles hang out here too.  They scavenge the fish and meat the bears don't eat.

Eventually the sun had to come out.  We revisited St.Michael's Cathedral, which had been closed when we visited there previously.

St. Michael's  Cathedral 

St. Michael's Cathedral

St. Michael's Cathedral

The New Archangel Dancers is an amateur group of Sitka residents who perform traditional Russian folk dances.  There are no men in the troupe.  All the male dancer's roles are performed by women.

The New Archangel Dancers

Replica of traditional Tlinget canoe

The Russian Bishop's House (photo lifted from Wikipedia)

From the Sitka National Historical Park web site:  "The Russian Bishop's House is one of the few surviving examples of Russian colonial architecture in North America. Imperial Russia was the dominant power in the North Pacific for over 125 years. Sitka (known as New Archangel at the time) was the Russian colonial capital. The Bishop's House was completed in 1842 and was the center of Russian Orthodox Church authority in a diocese that stretched from California to Siberian Kamchatka."

"The Russian Orthodox Church closed the Bishop's House in 1969. The spruce walls had rotted, the roof leaked, and the floors and doorways tilted. The building was in danger of collapse. In 1973, the National Park Service obtained the property and began a 16 year project to restore the building to its 1853 appearance. The restored Russian Bishop's House offers visitors a chance to step back into history and feel and understand what it was like to live in Sitka during the Russian-American period."

The pantry in the Russian Bishop's House

The Bishop's study

The chapel in the Russian Bishop's House

Your intrepid reporter enjoying a partly sunny day