|
Port Call: Sitka!
Here's Jim standing next to a real fouled anchor.  He also has one on his hat. He earned it with more than 2 decades of honorable service, and by earning the rate of Chief Petty Officer in the United States Coast
 Guard—an accomplishment for which he has every right to be proud. I know that I am proud of him!
The collar device for a chief petty officer (CPO) is a "fouled anchor." I scanned a drawing of the CPO collar and hat insignia from my old Blue Jacket's Manual, 19th Edition, that I received in Navy boot camp in 1973. The book is falling apart with age, which doesn't make me feel any younger. ☹ The brass plaque:
Aside from our best friends, a number of familiar items are in this picture.  Way off in the distance to the left ms Westerdam is just visible. O'Connell Bridge is climbing up to the right, with the landing dock beneath it. I was doing my best to blend into the background, while studying a map of Sitka, while Tammy and Jim are giving their most amicable looks at the camera for Dotti. (Well at least Tammy was smiling. 
Four sea gulls can be seen gliding over downtown Sitka in this picture of Lincoln Street. (And who is the tourist on the left with a back pack on?)
Straight ahead, the Russian Orthodox St. Michael's Cathedral stands in a central position. The Pioneer Home is on the left, which we would be visiting soon, and stores line the street, and naturally we would be visiting them in good time as well. I am standing fairly close to the flowers that are shown in the following picture. Flowers! Dotti, just like on our CFHC Hikes, is  our photographic "botanist". She just loves flowers and her pictures of them always add color and beauty to our hikes and vacation memories. I have put a number of her Sitka Flower pictures on a separate page for you to enjoy by clicking on this thumbnail picture.
Looking across Katlian Street, back in the  direction that we had just come from. (The last picture had been taken not from where the girl in the yellow coat is walking on Lincoln Street.)
The Pioneer Home is at my back, and we are looking at Totem Square. Three anchors are located on this side of the totem pole, with a shape not that dissimilar from the Washington Monument in D.C. There are of course differences, but... The Sitka Airport lies about a half mile in the direction that the car driving across the O'Connell Bridge is going. While this location, with the storage tanks in the background is perhaps not the most scenic spot in the city, I think it is significant to note that the buildings here are all freshly painted and in good repair. Anyone who has spent time around ocean front property knows the brutal toll the ocean, and its storms, takes upon paint and wood. It takes very little time for fresh paint to look weathered and unsightly. The people of Sitka are taking very good care of their waterfront. 
I think it is a safe bet that this is what gives the Totem Square its name.These anchors are nearly as old as the United States of America!  They were produced in the 18th century and it is unknown what ship or ships they came from. Were they from our new country, or were they British?
With the west end of O'Connell Bridge, and the Sitka Channel,  which it spans, in the background; Jim and Tammy stand under the anchors, showing how tall the metal hooks really are. The anchors lean together like rifles stacked by a military rifle company. (Flashback to San Diego, when my company used to do that with our rifles when we went in to eat chow, after doing some serious marching—at least as serious as the Navy does marching. Swap! It looks like the tops of the anchors are standing  about 12 feet in the air, and since they are leaning, that means they are even longer than that.
The Pioneer Home(see Sidebar), as viewed from Katlian Street.
Looking southeast at Pioneer Home, and The Prospector  statue. The flags out front are hanging limply, showing the calm day we were having for our visit to Sitka.
Here are Jim and Tammy posing at  the foot of The Prospector statue.
From this side we can see that the prospector is carrying a rifle in his left hand, and a walking stick in his right. Over his shoulder his shovel is visible. His pants are held up with a rope belt, and he is looking out at the Sitka Channel and the O'Connell Bridge. (He had a great view of the plane I saw taking off earlier in the day.) While Tammy and Jim are happily all tangled up and  looking at Dotti, who is taking their picture, we can see from this side that the prospector has a pack and is loaded for business. He has a cooking pan, an ax, a pick, and a metal spike, perhaps for crevice work.
One of the really enjoyable things about looking  at art is the detail that the artist put into his work. The more we looked at The Prospector the more detail we picked out.
There are an extra pair of boots resting on top of his pack. The double ended pick is well tied together with the shovel, and both are secured to the pack. His creature comforts included a coffee cup and a coffee pot. That had to go well with a chilly Alaska morning! His stylish mustache, and the rest of his face, was covered by a hat that would help redirect the rain away, and keep the sun out of his eyes, on the off chance it came out. On his gunstock he had various famous mines around Alaska listed: El Dorado (near Fairbanks), Bonanza (about 225 miles east of Anchorage)...along with Walker's Fork, Kuskokwim, Iditarod, Fairbanks, and Dan Creek. Just in front, and under his left boot,  the statue has this plaque mounted.
The Prospector's brass plaque:
The face and head (but not the body) of the statue  was said to have been molded after one William "Skagway Bill" Fonda, who hailed from Fonda, New York (the same town where Henry Fonda's ancestors came from) and who was indeed a prospector.
The face below it belongs to yours truly. You can see how much larger the statue is than a real live man. At 6'3", I didn't even make it to his shoulder. You would never know that the statue and I were only two years apart in age. Although the steps to create the statue had gone on much longer, the statue itself was mounted on its current location in 1949, two years before I was born. The statue still looks brand new, but I on the other hand... Can you tell Dotti was having a good time? We had been  ashore about 30 minutes so far and we were already having a lot of fun.
Jim snuck behind Tammy when she was taking  a picture of Dotti and I, and caught all three of us.
The view from the statue. Sitka Channel and O'Connell  Bridge dominate the scene but there are many other things to see, including the rusting old anchors, and the weathered wood of the totem pole, surrounded by green grass. A dock and boats let you know this is a harbor town.
From the steps of Pioneer Home, where chairs on the  front porch remind us that people are living here, and we are entering their home.
The year 1934 is engraved high on the wall because that was  this year the building was opened for business for the Alaska Pioneer Home. The door stands open in welcome, just in case you missed the sign on the left.
Here are a couple of old guys testing out the  chairs to see how they feel.
"Back in the good old days," said the guy on the left, "When I was a young pup..." "Ah yes, I remember it well," replies the guy on the right. Inside we found a table with a puzzle in the process of being put together.  The picture on the puzzle is a painting by Ted BlayLock, an artist who loves to capture America as it once was. (This picture is called Nuggetville, and it has a steam engine, the Nuggetville Café, a man with his dog and his Model T Ford, with a mine high up the hill behind.
The name of the town, the mine, and even the snowy peak in the background, all seemed right for Sitka, Alaska. This brings back some memories for me. The parlor,  and the piano, reminded me of my childhood days when I joined a group from the church and we went to homes for the elderly, kind of like this one, and we would sing while my Mom or another pianist would play the piano or small organ. Even in high school, I went with the school choir and performed the Messiah for the residents at a place that was just about the same size as Pioneer Home. I can still see the smiles on the old faces as they listened.
The calendar on the wall, in front of the wheelchair ramp, says September 21. The time was 10:28 a.m. Back outside, map in hand, I was ready for  some more exploring.
The other day in Vancouver, Washington I saw an Alaska plate  and I thought of this picture, because the plate looked like this one. (The plate picture I took in Juneau showed a different design for that Alaska license plate, including colors.)
While I agree with the plate's statement that Alaska is still a frontier, I am less sure that it is the last frontier. Our oceans are virtually unexplored, and as Captain Kirk has said, "Space [is] the final frontier...where no man has gone before." But I don't want to quibble, not when I am so excited about this wonderful State! Sitka is very different from Juneau in many aspects,  but this stretch of Lincoln Street had a lot of similarity with Franklin Street in Juneau, where we had spent much of the previous day. Shops line both sides of the street.
Of course the Russian Orthodox, St. Michael's Cathedral stands up and declares, "This is not Juneau!" The United States Post Office and Court House building  was directly across the street from the Pioneer Home.
The oldest hotel in Sitka.
It may be old, but it has phones! It has recently been  renovated and now also sports an "Ethernet Connection." I am hoping that the Ethernet in question is also connected to the Internet. Here's Jim outside the Pioneer Home, with some flowers  in the fenced in yard behind him.
|
