Boulder on Ice

Walking on glaciers.

I’ll admit it: when we went to Alaska in June 2007, we did 2/3 of our visit the lazy tourist way: on a cruise ship. (Seeing what the cruise ship companies did to the quaint port cities is why we’ll probably never cruise again.) Of course, you don’t spend all your time on the ship unless you’re easily entertained by on-board activities. We’re not. So each day, in each port, we went on an excursion.

In Juneau, we took the “Pilot’s Choice” flight with Temsco. Temsco is a huge helicopter tour operator in Alaska with bases in most of the port cities. They fly A-Stars — at least they did in Juneau and Skagway. The Pilot’s Choice tour is supposed to be exactly that: the pilot’s choice of where to fly and land. What interested us is that the tour included two glacier landings. So not only would we see our first glaciers from the air, but we’d actually land on two of them and walk around.

Sounds great, right? It is! This tour is what sold me on the idea of working in Alaska next season. The pilot flies up and down these glacial valleys with all that blue ice beneath us. There are waterfalls and lakes and the clear lines of glacial moraines. The pilot explains what we’re seeing, so it’s a great introduction to the shrinking world of Alaskan glaciers.

Then, of course, he lines up for approach and lands on a relatively flat bit of glacier. He cools down the engine for a few moments, shuts down, and lets us out when the blade stop. We can then wander around the glacier for about 15 minutes before loading back up and repeating the process on another glacier with different views miles away.

Glacial Boulder on IceI took this shot on the first glacier. It’s a huge boulder — probably 8 feet long by 6 feet wide by 3 feet tall — and it’s being held horizontally off the surface of the glacier by a column of ice. The ice, of course, is melting — not from global warming but by summer warmth — and I suspect this boulder is now lying elsewhere on the surface of the glacier, a bit downstream as it moves with the flow of the ice. Perhaps it’s sitting in a similarly awkward position and another tourist has snapped a shot of it — maybe with his wife or kid sitting or standing on it! That’s the weird thing about glaciers: they’re always changing, always moving. The rocks and boulders on their surface are just along for the ride.

I don’t remember the names of the two glaciers we landed on. All I remember is the beauty of the flight. I flew for an entire season at the Grand Canyon and thought that was beautiful. But in Alaska, with the constantly changing terrain and flight plans that vary based on the weather, I don’t think I’d ever get tired of flying. So I’m getting my instrument rating to make me just a little more attractive to employers next April when the season starts.

Who knows? Maybe next summer I’ll be spending more time walking on glaciers.

Quick Dill Sauce

Good on salmon.

Everyone knows what it’s like to be at the right place at the right time. It’s when special things happen.

We were at the right place — Mike’s mom’s apartment — at the right time — when a neighbor came by with vacuum-sealed packages of freshly frozen salmon. The neighbor and her husband had just returned from a trip to Alaska, where her husband had gone salmon fishing. He’d had 50 pounds of salmon shipped home. Evidently, their freezer wasn’t big enough to accommodate it all.

The salmon looked beautiful and was frozen solid. She was gracious enough to give us three packages of it — enough to feed six people. We stopped off at the local supermarket for a cooler bag and stored the fish and some ice in it for the trip back to Arizona.

One piece remained pretty much frozen solid. The other two were defrosted, but very cold. We had one for dinner last night and will probably eat the other tomorrow.

During dinner last night, Mike said it might have been the best salmon he’d ever had in his life. I certainly can’t remember having any salmon that was better.

Fresh Dill WeedTo go with it, I wanted to make some dill sauce. Dill goes really well with fish, especially salmon. A nice sauce would be a change in the way we usually eat salmon — just grilled with salt, pepper, and lemon. I asked Mike to pick up a packet of Knorr dill sauce mix at the local supermarket. As might be expected, they didn’t have any. They didn’t have any fresh dill, either. So Mike came home with a squeeze tube of “dill blend.” I read the ingredients. Dill was one of them. I couldn’t pronounce many of the others. But, in an effort to make the best of a not-perfect situation, I set about finding a dill sauce recipe that I could make with what I had in the house, which did not include cream, sour cream, yogurt, or anything resembling cream.

I tracked down a recipe that used mayonnaise. We had some of that. Although the recipe didn’t sound very enticing, we had plenty of dill blend to spare and I figured it was worth a shot.

Here’s the recipe as I modified it:

  • 3/4 cup mayonnaise. The original recipe called for 1-1/2 cups, which was way too much for my taste. (Keep in mind that when I was a kid, I wouldn’t touch mayo. I was an adult before I started using it (sparingly) on sandwiches.)
  • 3 tablespoons lemon juice. That seemed about right, even with less mayonnaise.
  • 2 tablespoons dill weed. The original recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon, which wasn’t nearly enough. I assumed the recipe called for dried dill weed rather than fresh (my preferred type) or “blend.” I just squeezed in a bunch of the green stuff Mike had brought home and added more, after stirring, to get the right color. I wanted to be able to see and taste the dill.

Combine all ingredients, mix well, and refrigerate for an hour. I think the hour is very important if you’re using dry dill weed, as it will provide enough time for the oils in the mayo to hydrate the dill and release its flavors. If you’re using fresh, chop it up before adding it. And, of course, if you’re using tubed “dill blend,” the flavors have already been released in the factory, where some of them may have remained, along with that fresh dill aroma.

The resulting mix reminded me a bit of tartar sauce (which is another thing I only recently started eating). But it tasted very good with the salmon. I’ll make it again with the real deal dill sometime in the future.

Or maybe I’ll just make a proper dill sauce with the right ingredients next time.

Bridge Over Deception Pass

An example of geometry in construction.

We finished up our recent Alaska vacation with a few days in the Seattle area, visiting Mike’s cousin Rick. Rick took us on an overnight trip out to the islands northwest of Seattle. Although we initially got on the wrong ferry (and wound up on the wrong island) we eventually made it to our destination on Whidbey Island.

Along the way, we stopped at Deception Pass. This is a narrow straight of water with an extremely fast current during tide movements. According to Wikipedia, which has separate entries on Deception Pass and the Deception Pass Bridge:

In the spring of 1792, Joseph Whidbey, master of the HMS Discovery and Captain Vancouver’s chief navigator, sailed through the narrow passage that is now called Deception Pass and proved that it was not really a small bay as charted by the Spaniards (hence the name “Deception”), but a deep and turbulent channel that connects the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the Saratoga Passage, which separates the mainland from what they believed was a peninsula (actually Fidalgo Island and Whidbey Island).

Deception Pass BridgeThe Deception Pass Bridge crosses over this strait, about 180 feet above the water (depending on the tide). There are actually two spans to the bridge with a small uninhabited island between them. There’s limited parking on both ends of the bridge with plenty of places to stop and take in the view.

Deception Pass BridgeThe bridge includes a 3-foot wide sidewalk on each side, which is definitely not recommended for those who are afraid of heights. We walked across on one side and back on the other. To prevent people from crossing the relatively busy roadway, a flight of stairs leads to a pathway under the bridge on either bank. That’s where I took this photo. I liked the symmetry of the construction and the fact that I could frame the photo in such a way that the pattern seemed to go on forever. This is a theme I try to capture in my photos when I can: infinity.

There were kayakers down on the water, braving the strong current. And lots of people walking around in the vicinity of the bridge. If you’re ever in the area, sop by and check it out.

Buy on RedBubbleThe full-frame version of this photo is available for sale as cards and prints at RedBubble.com.