Day Three: Exploring Tracy Arm

 This is the second time we have explored Tracy Arm Fjord. The first time was on the Holland American Ship Amsterdam.  We went in at high tide and sailed all the way to the South Sawyer Glacier  This time it would be different.

Our current ship, the Zuiderdam, was much larger and the tides this time were very low.  So the ship stopped outside of the fjord and we transferred to a smaller chartered catamaran for the trip to the glaciers.

Here we are on the second deck of the tour boat watching our ship sail away towards Juneau 

  

This the first time I've gotten a look at the true size of the ship.  Big mama. 

This catamaran is a twin to the boat we were on.

Indeed that catamaran had received off loaded passenger from a Celebrity Cruise ship just prior to our arrival.  We would shadow each other during the five hour trip.

First we crossed over the Sawyer Bar, a terminal glacial moraine that blocks the entrance to the fjord to large ships at low tide. First thing we saw was a humpback whale. Alas I was too cold and too slow to get a picture.

Soon however we found a black bear scouring the rocks during low tide looking for shell fish and other food.

There weren't very many boats in the fjord and they were all small.

The scale of what you saw was hard to process. This photo is showing a thousand feet of relief.

This for example is South Sawyer Glacier and it is two miles away.  Those little pieces of ice in the water are pretty much full grown size icebergs and they made it too dangerous for a boat/ship of any size to approach it.  Last year we sailed right up to the glacier's face in our cruise ship.  This year we dare not go into that arm at all.  The sides inside of the fjord were often 7000 feet high and 2000 feet deep.

This berg is about the size of our boat.  Remember only 10% is showing above the water.  The bathtub ring on the rocks is the high tide line.

On the shallower south side of the fjord this berg is currently ground on a sand bar at low tide.

This is the North Arm Sawyer Glacier.

The front ice is about 40 feet high and the back face is around 70 feet.

Here the low tide has revealed how the glacier front actually hangs out over into the water.  This is where the weight of the ice causes the glacier to calve.

Without something to give it scale it looks kind of small.

One lone seal.  During the period of spring seal births there would be hundreds of mothers and pups here.  Their enemy, the orcas, do not like to swim into the icy fjords.

Back in Juneau after the 5 hour plus excursion we find our ship and rejoin it. 

Juneau is very much a straight up and down place.  Knowing we would be back here later in the trip, we opted for a nap.

Day Two: Leaving Vancouver & The Inside Passage

Leaving Vancouver.

Talk about a green roof.

This one too.

I didn't do it, honest.

It was two weeks before I finally found out what made these.

To small to be a whale and never saw a dolphin or anything else break the surface.

Later I would learn these were made by Dalls Porpoise. 

Now this is known as a whale's foot print.  They don't break the surface but cause the water to well up as they swim underneath.

Hanging glacier

Humpback were all along the way.  Only problem was they weren't close in when I had my camera.  Here is one surfacing several hundred yards off the side of the ship.

This is what a Humpback Whale looks like when they blow a spout. Up close it is a lot more spectacular.

On this ship we had a balcony, but boy was it wet and cold out there.

BELUGA : Day One

Some people go to the Vancouver Aquarium to see all sorts of stuff. I went to see the Belugas.

 

Most people watched them for two minutes maybe three.  Jeannie and I sat and watched them for one and a half hours.

I was hoping to see a naked female scientist swimming with them.  But that is in Russia.  Besides Jeannie would have made me leave.

Belugas rock.

Coincidence: No Such Thing ?

It has been a lifelong problem.
Knowing or feeling these or them before they are.
Asking for dispensations or favors and having Grandfather listen.
It is is something I shy away from.
It is not something I practice.
When it happens I always tell myself it is coincidence.
In the rationale world it must be random and coincidence.
Grandfather Raven is a clan totem. I don't belong to a clan.
My totem has always been the water bird.
Always?
Since I was 11and I killed one with an air rifle.
Something happened when I did that.
After that things changed.
Things came to me.
Projectile points were found--
A large white mate and mano--
A buffalo skull--
Animals came to me--
I could hear voices in the wind ---
I could feel the presence of things.
Dancers in the night of red and blue.
When I was a warrior I used it a lot.
I would hold things and listen to them to know of those they touched.
All I want then was to be what I was and do what I had to do.
I did that.
After some time I knew it was not a coincidence.
But when I left, I left it too.
Then Grandfather would find me.
Let me find...see...feel...and he did.
Spotted Owl feathers...stones with soul...particles of God.
Things that dropped from the sky, trees, or off the mountain.
I could climb stairs to the mesas that were invisible to others.
An Eagle would visit and and leave a thing of power for me.
The sea would call and the open space sing.
Even when I crawled into solitude, I could feel it all around.
Even when balled up in hate and anger it hovered peacefully out there waiting for me.
Just synapses firing, just coincidence, random, wouldn't that be convenient .

The Dream That Died In 1968

The Scam that will cost America its Faith.

All of this in pursuit of a lie.

Student Loans: Debt for Life - Businessweek

www.businessweek.com

(Corrects the 20th paragraph to provide a more recent total for student loans owed by people 60 and over: $43 billion rather than $36 billion. Corrects position of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators on legislation introduced by Senator Al Franken.)

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  Junior Bear You know what the big lie is? College Pays? Yes it does, but not enough or as much as the big lie says. Take matched students: make the same H.S. GPA and the same entrance examsscore for college. One goes to college and one goes to work. Over a project lifetime of earnings the college grad with the bachelors makes 14% more than his matched counterpart from high school. 14% that's all, not a million dollars, just 14 %. It may be true that the college graduate makes a million dollars more than the average income of all those high school graduates some of whom could not read or write on graduation. But according to this study that matched high school graduate would also earn $860,000 more than the average of all of his non college going class. 
  Yes the Higher education officials know this. But they do not serve the students they serve the institutions, and in America success is growth not product.

  4 hours ago · Like
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  Junior Bear To put this in perspective the current lie is that a college grad make 74% more than a high school grad, or than five times (500%) more than the actual. So we are borrowing money to pay for a product that is inflated by five times.

  4 hours ago · Like
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  Junior Bear http://www.economist.com/node/17723223

  

  The disposable academic

  www.economist.com

  ON THE evening before All Saints' Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to

   the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those day

  
  

  
  

  When I started my career of desegregating Oklahoma Higher  Education the Dream was real for everyone. Over time I could feel in gut that it was changing.  Minorities could still grab the golden ring, but for most it was becoming a scam.

  Most of the degrees in higher education are bogus and even the valuable ones are over priced and over subscribed.  By the time we calculated cost benefits in 1993 the ratio was so miserable that it never saw the light of day.  20 years later is is much much worse.