Doug and I were at the top of the ramp in Hoonah Harbor, returning from a dog walkie in the rain, when a gentleman walking up the ramp stopped us with that question.
“Yessss......” with the unspoken how did you know that and do we know you?
“I’m a friend of Bart’s, and he told me you were in Alaska.”
We both started mentally sorting through the various marinas and anchorages, searching for Bart among the people we had met along the way.
After a couple of other hints (such as Bart’s last name...), our 20-question episode ended with “Bellingham.” OH! BART! Our brains had been searching for strangers. Bart is Jolie’s B’ham friend, who we met in Friday Harbor.
John came down to the boat for coffee. He is skippering a whale watching boat in Hoonah working with the the cruise ships that call at Icy Strait Point. Although John and his wife call Newport, Washington, home, he had many stories from years of working in Alaska. We loved it. For a moment, talking with him about Kodiak, he had me convinced that we could take Greywolf there next year. Maybe not.
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Container gardening in Hoonah.
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Hoonah has been on our “list” since our first trip. When I heard that a cruise ship line installed a zip line in Hoonah, it did not compute. A ZIP LINE in a Native village in Alaska??? Just what would that look like? It looks much better than I though it would. And that was not exactly what happened.
The Huna Tlingit people settled in Hoonah two thousand years ago when they were forced to abandon their original villages in what is now Glacier Bay National Park because of advancing glaciers. That area remains sacred to the Tlingit.
In 1912, a large salmon cannery was built north of the town. The cannery, and the salmon fishery that supplied it, provided jobs under various ownerships to Hoonah families until the cannery closed in 1953. Hoonah still has a large fishing fleet.
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| Little pods ferrying passengers. Note rain/clouds. |
The ships only call at Icy Strait Point on Mondays and Tuesdays and there is no cruise ship dock. As far as I can tell, no one can see the world’s longest zip line because of the dense cloud cover which alternates with the rain. The on-line pictures show an amazing (sunny) view from the top of the zip line; it looks like you can see all the way to Glacier Bay, twenty five miles away. I think for the majority of the participants (victims) it would be like hurtling into a void with an infusion of moisture into your skin.
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| I caught these two wooden fish at Icy Strait Point, but have no license, so I had to put them back. |
Doug and I arrived in Hoonah early on a Tuesday afternoon and decided to walk to Icy Strait Point. In the rain. As we ambled along (in the rain), one of the tour buses stopped to ask we wanted a ride. We told him that we weren’t cruise ship passengers, but he welcomed us aboard anyway.
We strolled through the shops and grounds, stopping to inspect the landing zone for the world’s longest zip line. No victims were in sight. The small shops offered a well-selected variety of Native and other merchandise. No oriental rugs. The school district operates one shop, selling cards, and books (of course) as well prints by Rie Munoz and other artists. I bought cards.
On our way back to the boat, we stopped at The Office, a bar that won Esquire’s One of the Best Bars in America award in 2006. This is 2012. BUT, they had beer and peanuts. Yes, beer and peanuts do warm you up and help you forget that you are soaking wet.
As we walked into the small dark building,with 3 small windows overlooking the bay, a man about our age was assembling photos and flyers on the pool table. We bellied up to the bar and he came over to share a little Hoonah history with us. One picture of the town in the 1940’s showed the shore lined with houses. They were all destroyed in a fire in 1944.
“Was anyone killed?”
“No, all the men were out fishing. The women got the children into small boats. They watched from the water as the town burned.”
Wow. I learned later that many of the families lived in the cannery buildings while they were rebuilding their homes.
He had other pictures and stories. We asked him if he was the mayor of Hoonah. No, just someone who likes to give visitors a little background. We appreciated him sharing his love of this town.
We went back to The Office the next night to eat crab and use their internet.
“Oh. We don’t have crab tonight.”
“That’s fine. We’ll have pizza.”
“No pizza tonight.”
“What do you have?”
“Tacos and nachos.”
“Two Alaska Ambers and nachos.”
Our vision of a lovely interlude of fresh crab, a cold beer and the ability to check our email was dimming.
It got dimmer yet when the Cheeze Whizz nachos arrived and our waitress signed us in to what passed for an internet connection. But the beer was good, and Cheese Whiz is really not bad when it is warm. Fortunately, we didn’t need to download a huge file, or even a small one, on the computer. (As we were leaving, we found out they did have crab, but it was cold. Not freshly cooked that hour. We are fine with cold crab.)
Disclaimer: The following are ramblings about what Hoonah felt like to an almost-elderly white woman. This is a little dis-jointed. You might want to just skip down to the pictures...
When Doug and I visited the Queen Charlotte Islands (by car and ferry) we both felt the magical history of the Haidas that permeated the land. My impression of the Huna Tlingit home was similar to that feeling of the land and the people holding the history.
When Doug and I visited the Queen Charlotte Islands (by car and ferry) we both felt the magical history of the Haidas that permeated the land. My impression of the Huna Tlingit home was similar to that feeling of the land and the people holding the history.
Hoonah has houses in need of paint and some abandoned houses, but Hoonah did not feel sad, and depressing like Prince Rupert's commercial district did.
Totem poles are allowed to decay. They do not get restored. Nothing is permanent. The houses seemed to reflect that.
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| Eagle’s nest. With eaglette. |
 Cemetery along the main road | ||
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| If we were hold a boat name contest, this would be a finalist. |
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| We have to ask someone how these traps work.... |
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| Salmon canning supplies. |
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| Hoonah Trading Company has EVERYTHING from radishes to refrigerators. |
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| Totem pole near city hall and one of those tourists. Note raincoat. It probably did stop raining for a bit while we were in Hoonah. |
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| Icy Strait Point. |
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| Bottom of World’s Longest Zip Line. I have this feeling that if I were to try it, I would actually like it. |
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| Did we tell you how much we appreciate watching the scenery from the warm, dry pilothouse? |
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| Icy Strait, headed to Cross Sound. This is directly across the strait from Glacier Bay. |
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