Christmas in Juneau

It is hard to believe that is has been three Christmas's since our move to Juneau.  Our first holiday was punctuated by a well-packed box of goodies from family in northern Wisconsin, complete with salmon salt-n-pepper shakers.  The next year we were more comfortable on our own, but excited about our New Year's visit to Louisville to spend time with the kids with lots of laughs, gifts and food.  This year we will attempt the milk run to Roanoke in mid-January but will spend the holidays comfortable in our new life here in Alaska.  I thought it was time to describe the similarities and differences of Christmas in Juneau.  Black Friday is just not the same when you have limited shopping opportunities.  No Toys R Us, no TJ Maxx or Kohls, no shopping malls - not even a Walgreens, my favorite one-stop holiday destination!  We do have Fred Meyer, Walmart, Western Auto & Marine and Joanne Fabrics.  Those stores along with some local shops like a seasonal Ben Franklin and the Alaskan Brewery Depot store mean shopping is limited in town.  I sat at home on "Black Friday" slightly amused at the lack of ads in our local paper - I was used to the hefty Milwaukee Journal of years past - but happy that my wallet was not empty!   A local tradition on Thanksgiving weekend is the Public Market, a "fair" of vendors from Alaska and the upper northwest selling native crafts, scenic framed art and photos and handmade items. I did stop at Freddies for 1/2 price Christmas cards and at Joanne's just to look around (do I really need more scrapbooking supplies?  An emphatic NO!). We did spend the evening celebrating the start of the holiday season with friends at the Perseverance Theatre seeing a production of "Treasure Island" and enjoying pizza at Island Pub, which may become a new tradition.  There are only a few Christmas tree lots in town but we did find a great small tree in a backyard downtown (they were selling them, we didn't just cut down the landscaping).  Three work-related Christmas parties had us exchanging our extra-tuffs for more formal wear (your good jeans!) and enjoying great food, drinks and gifts with friends.  An impromptu "white elephant" gift exchange last evening at our Friday happy hour at the boat condo will be followed by a winter solstice party tonight at the Auke Rec park shelter, certainly a different spin on a holiday gathering.  Today is the shortest day of the year where, in Juneau, we will experience 6 hours 30 minutes 20 seconds of daylight - that means almost 18 hours of darkness.  Christmas Eve will be spent with friends (thanks, Cori!) and at Faith Lutheran Church celebrating the birth of Jesus.  Christmas Day will find us watching "A Christmas Story" and enjoying some bubbly along with some salmon and crab, frozen from our summer catch.  Skyping with the kids will help us relive memories of Christmas's past, and we thank them for allowing us to be so far away during the holidays.  Christmas traditions may be different here than where you are, but we have found we have only added to our  memories with these new experiences.  Merry Christmas to all of you, and make new memories wherever you are!

Seafood at its freshest!

Kirk and Kathy opening the shells

A cooler full of scallops

The opportunity in Alaska to catch your dinner is everywhere  Hunting is fine, if you have the right tools and can hike the intense terrain to find that black-tail deer or the mountain goat.  Bear hunting is not something we are going to consider at this point.  Fishing, on the other hand, is something we felt we could do (fit pole with appropriate lure, drop in water).  What I didn't expect was the array of seafood available when you do have the "right stuff".   We have purchased two crab "pots" and are consistently supplied with fresh crab from our friends who drop the pots for us.  We have halibut poles, fishing sometimes 200 feet deep requires heavier "test" line and two pound weights, and salmon fishing poles with longer line are fine for fishing from the shore.  Tonight, however, we were treated to fresh scallops.  Our friends called us as they were on their way back to the dock, saying they had gone diving today and had a cooler full of fresh pecten scallops.  You are familiar with pecten scallops, even though you might not know it.  For years, the Shell Oil Company has used the pecten scallop shell as their symbol - it is very recognizable.  The ones we enjoyed this evening aren't the giant "sea scallops" that you

Cooked scallops prior to "cleaning"

Fresh scallops!

get at your favorite supper club, but are manageable one or two bite-sized shellfish.  Once cooked by boiling the entire mollusk, Kathy showed me how to pull off the inedible parts (while some would eat it all) and I enjoyed the white, firm scallop.  So good!  I ate about a dozen  - simply fresh and without any condiments or seasoning.  We have had fresh halibut, caught and cooked within the hour, crab pulled up and put on to boil within minutes, fresh salmon, grilled whole, and shrimp bought right from the boat.  Come up to Alaska and we will share the bounty with you! 

The Birds, with respect to Alfred Hitchcock

Today is a cloudy day, but you can feel Spring.  The air is calm, the water glassy but the snow on the mountains remind us that winter still has a hold on Southeast.  Last spring was the first one for us in Juneau and every day brought new sights and sounds in our little tidal basin. What we found most interesting, however, were the eagles and we spent countless hours watching them.  The eagles are now EVERYWHERE again; in fact, there is one that sits on the stop light pole every morning on the way to work.  Off our deck, especially during low tide, we are seeing eagles swoop and soar among the tall sitka spruce trees and up into the seemingly endless sky.  The bright white heads are easy to spot in the dark green trees even though the recent snows have left snow-covered branch ends that have tricked us from time to time. The ones without a white head (and golden beak and feet) are the young eagles, which reach full maturity and coloration in four to five years.  In the case of eagles (rather than some other bird species), both male and female have full coloring but females are bigger.  That is because the male eagle said "I have to lose a few pounds", stopped drinking beer and lost 20 pounds.  When we came home from church today, hoping to catch an Ohio State loss (I mean, watch some NCAA basketball), Bill called me out from under the laundry and kitchen detail (really, I was reading the Sunday paper) to have me look out the window.  There, just under our deck, were EIGHT eagles - a few more were a little farther away and even more flying in the sky.  The pictures here are of that "group" of birds of prey.  In a gathering of a few, it is called either a "convocation" or "aerie" of eagles but we just say "WOW - what a lot of eagles!"  Enjoy the pictures (and come see your own eagles in Juneau!)

 

Top Chef - Juneau style!

The outdoor area of the Gold Creek Salmon Bake

Salmon Bake "tents" where the chef's served their food

 I love the Bravo television show "Top Chef".  I always watch it - every season.  I love the challenges, the contestants, and Tom Colicchio.  Unfortunately I also hooked Bill on the show and now he calls Padma Lakshmi his second wife.  I've learned the terms sous vide, aioli, crudo and torchon.  I've seen the chefs cook geoduck and foie gras - knowing I'll never eat either.  My 9 p.m. Wednesday nights have seen me root for Fabio Viviani, Stephanie Izard, both the Voltaggio brothers (couldn't choose!) and Marcel (and his famous "foam").  The locations have been across the map - from east coast to west, Chicago to Miami.  However, earlier this summer, I heard a rumor that completely blew me away - TOP CHEF WAS IN JUNEAU!  Yes, that is right - the cheftestants, the judges, the challenges were here in my town.  A work colleague happened to ask me if I had every heard of Emeril Lagasse (she hadn't) and I suspiciously asked "why'?  Well, she said, her fiance had told her that Tracy's Crab Shack (the popular crab stand where he worked during the "season") had been shut down for the the day for filming a show with Emeril that involved a bunch of chefs.  I barely squeaked out "you mean "Top Chef"??  My office is next door to the Juneau Convention and Visitors Bureau and, knowing the staff there, I quietly opened their door (more like broke in running...) and asked if the "rumor" was true - was Top Chef filming in Juneau?   Their lips were saying "we can't confirm that" but they looked rather guilty and I knew that what I had heard was true.  I went home that evening and searched the world-wide web for any mention of the upcoming season and found that "Top Chef Seattle" would be filming the two pre-finale episodes in Juneau.  The next night found Bill and I driving around looking for the tell-tale signs of importance - the black limo.  We drove through the parking lots of the hotels and restaurants in town but found nothing.  We "heard" via a bartender friend at one of the hotel bars (where supposedly the staff and "stars were saying - the cheftestants were staying at an undisclosed location in town) that they might be filming at a local outdoor "salmon bake" (like a fish boil in Wisconsin) so off we went.  Driving up to the Gold Creek Salmon Bake road, we were stopped by a young man saying that the Salmon Bake was closed today.  Bill said, "but I'm Tom Colicchio's brother".  The guard said, "sorry, we're closed, come back tomorrow".  Bill insisted that he was a relative until the guard said "if you were really Tom Colicchio's brother, you would know that we are closed - come back tomorrow".  AHA!  It was true!  While I did not see any of the show's stars, there were reports in the paper of the famous chefs walking through the streets of Juneau.  I was eager to watch the two episodes and was not disappointed when I watched those two episodes of the show filmed here a few weeks ago.  Most would assume that  the episodes that were broadcast in February were "live" but to see the contestants bundled up knowing that it was filmed in August was pretty funny.  One of the venues that was used in the first episode was the fishing dock that is right in our tidal basin!

the fish dock across our tidal basin where the chef's chose their fish

In fact, if they would have turned the camera around as the chefs were choosing their fish from the ice-filled bunkers,

you would have seen our condo. This first episode of the two also had the chefs cooking for "locals" at the Gold Creek Salmon Bake, where we took our good friend in May when she visited (and the site of the aforementioned entrance failure!). 


And, Tracy's Crab Shack, where the first "quick fire" challenge was filmed, was the site of my surprise birthday

Tracy of Tracy's Crab Shack (the chef's cooked inside this "shack')

party this past August - about one week before they filmed the challenge there! 

photo from the tv show at Tracy's Crab Shack

They also filmed at the top of the Mendenhall Glacier (via helicopter) and at the Governors Mansion.  I poured over the episodes, looking for something or someone that I knew and it was fun to see the location shots knowing exactly where they had been.   If you haven't seen the show, catch those two episodes on www.bravotv.com or on reruns in the next few weeks.  While the weather certainly could have been better for the filming of the show, the scenery shown is as amazing as my every-day view. 

President's Day - it's a good thing!

Frozen waterfalls on Thane Rd

A view of Douglas from Thane Rd

View of the mts above Thane Rd

 Today was a holiday of sorts - both Mr. Meier and I had off for President's Day and we had already done all of our errands over the weekend.  I had made a big pot of chili for supper and prepared some fruit for dessert  (pineapples were looking good, not so much the strawberries!) so that we could spend the day doing something fun!  Alas, the weather didn't cooperate as much as we would have liked.  But then we decided that this is where we live and this is February in Juneau so we set out for a drive.  We had been to the end of the road (north of us, "out the road") many times, but I hadn't been to the south end on Thane Road since our first visit here years ago.  That is where we started today, driving through the quiet downtown (federal and state workers were off so the library and all city buildings were closed, too) past the cruise ship docks, past the Thane Oar House Salmon Bake venue, and finally to the "end of the road", a turn out at mile 0.  The road is narrow and winding, with the mountain on one side and the water on the other - in some parts, that side of the road drops off down the hillside!  There is still a threat of avalanches, though the February rain has melted most of the snow in the lower elevations.  Water falls are everywhere, running out of the rock and freezing upon

Driving north out of Douglas

contact with the chilly air, making for some stunning ice formations.  We made our way back to town (it took only minutes to drive the six miles from downtown to the end of the road) and took the Juneau/Douglas Bridge across the Gastineau Channel and turned south, driving through beautiful downtown Douglas (being a bit sarcastic here!) to the end of the road.  There, a trail head marks the beginning of the Treadwell Mine area, a very interesting place - we hiked the trail back in 2007 when here, but weren't able to get back there this past summer.  Now, due to very wet, slippery conditions, it is closed until Spring. We then drove back through downtown Douglas (no better this way!) and through the round-about at the end of the bridge and out to the north end of Douglas Island.  We have driven this way many times and it is really beautiful - the road is wide open and gently curving, right at sea level so the views are 

Our friendly harbor seal

tremendous.  Lots of pull-outs and hiking trails, leading us to promise each other to come back here often this summer!  We stopped at Fish Creek, where there is a nice bridge over a salmon stream, but alas it was icy and we decided that our hips might not survive a fall, so we instead walked to the small cove with the ice was just disappearing from the surface of the water.  It was very quiet and serene - might be a nice place for a little wine and cheese picnic on a nice day.  Salmon fishing is allowed, so Bill can catch dinner while I enjoy the scenery!  Then back home, past more familiar spots along a road that we drive many, many times but still find incredibly scenic.  The eagle sightings are becoming much more frequent and we were also treated to the sight of our friend the harbor seal today during high tide.  Tomorrow it is back to work - but a day off once in a while is definitely a good thing!

Bill checking out the "fishing hole" on Douglas