Our port of call on the 20th was Icy Strait Point. It is a relatively new stop (since 2004) for cruise ships. The post was built by the natives that live in Hoonah and is owned by 1,350 Alaska natives with ties to the town of Hoonah.
At the start of the day it was gray and cloudy and we even had a bit of rain. By the middle of the day it was beautiful with sunshine, which was unexpected. We spent the morning wandering around the area taking a walk on a nature trail through the forest and then along the beach.
The trees were magnificent in the forest as the picture below shows.
Caroline in the roots of one of the gorgeous trees.
After walking through the forest trail we came back down the shore line at low tide. You can see how much shore there was. The tides in Alaska are 18 feet or so. When we were leaving the tide was in and where I am standing was well under water. I wandered around a bit looking for edible stuff and only found what looked like mussels. According to the locals, when the tide is out, food is available.
As we came from the shore walk to the main building we saw people looking up in the trees. That can only mean one thing—an eagle. Sure enough there was and Caroline got a great picture of him sitting in the top of the tree.
Eagle
The original industry in Hoonah was a salmon canning factory. At its peak in 1914 2,367,072 cans of salmon were canned in by the Hoonah Packing Company. The building has been turned into a museum where you can see how salmon were caught, processed, and canned. Fascinating.
We met our friends, Mary and Gene, for lunch at the Crab Shack. They had a Crabby Mary (a bloody mary with some crab and shrimp as shown in the picture below). For lunch we had 2 huge crab legs. Delicious crab in a cool spot.
The Crab Station Crabby Mary (the drink, not the woman, although we did tease her)
The weather “straightened up” (Caroline would say) as the day went on and as we walked back to ship it was quite nice. All in all, a nice stop.
Caroline: When we were on the whale watching excursion yesterday, out guide told us that when they see blue in the sky, they call it a “sucker cloud,” as most of the time it doesn’t turn into good weather. At Icy Point, it was blue skies most of the time that we were there. Living in Colorado spoils us as we have over 300 days a year of sunshine, during all seasons.