Barbara Gibbons

PUBLISHED IN: Family Circle; Mademoiselle; Modern Maturity; Working Woman; Consumer Guide; Savvy; United Feature Syndicate; United Media; Bon Appetit; Long Island Newsday; Los Angeles Times; Chicago Sun-Times; San Francisco Examiner; Houston Chronicle; 200 Newspapers.

SPECIALTIES: Food, restaurants; hotels; cruises; shopping; crafts; bargains; women's travel; singles; seniors; health spas; foreign real estate/ investment; retirement abroad; offbeat experiences in popular destinations; business & executive travel.

BOOKS: 14 including best seller.

AWARDS: Tastemaker Award (best cookbook) for the International Slim Gourmet.

(510) 769-2051
Fax: (520) 752-1373
Ballena Isle, Suite 111
1150 Ballena Boulevard
Alameda, CA 94501
» barbara.gibbons@gmail.com

FOUR HOURS IN ALASKA, TIME ENOUGH FOR "RAFTING"

by BARBARA GIBBONS

Business travelers get to go to the places others only dream about. Once there, however, the traveling drone is Cinderella-with-a-briefcase, doomed to toil while others are off having fun. I felt especially self-pitying landing in Juneau, after a totally sybaritic salmon-fed jaunt via Alaska Airlines. In colorful anoraks and fleece parkas, my planemates looked like a casting call for the Eddie Bauer catalog. I vacationed vicariously listening — to their holiday plans:

-- two lawyers connecting with a floatplane to a remote luxury fishing camp;
-- a honeymoon pair on their way to a to Glacier Bay Inn, an antique-filled wilderness inn with a gourmet CIA chef;

-- a California couple with two tow-headed tots en route to the Alaska Marine Ferry and a self-designed backpacker's cruise to Sitka.

I longed to join them, to watch whales, spot eagles, walk on glaciers, fish for salmon . . .

Well, I had half a day before getting down to business. I asked the Concierge at the Baranoff Hotel in Juneau my cut-to-the-chase question: "If you had only four hours, what's the one thing you'd do?" He quickly laid out a buffet of brochures that testified to Juneau's proximity to wilderness: I could take a taxi to the Mendenhall Glacier with plenty of time left over for a wilderness walk to spot an eagle, a visit to fish ladders where the salmon swim upstream ... even hit all the craft shops and art galleries on S. Franklin St. before lunching on reindeer chili at the famed Fiddlehead Cafe.

"Got four hours? You could go on a raft trip. That way you'd see the glacier, probably spot some eagles too ... and get a tour of Juneau on route!" He smiled triumphantly and swept away all the other brochures, then swept away all my doubts: "You could probably go on this rafting trip in your business suit."

White water rafting is in the category of things I would like to have done. Not do ... done! Like writing a novel, earning a doctorate or running a marathon. Four hours? Most of the rafting trips I had heard about were weeklong affairs ... sunrise to sunset, bouncing over rocks, campfire sing-alongs still hip to hip with the same people, the only escape is your sleeping bag. Four hours? Piece of cake! A peaceful float around a glacial lake, a rock-a-bye ride around a babbling brook. On a scale of 1 to 10, I was told, this rafting trip would rate as a 2 ... if it weren't for the gentle babble it would have been a 1.

Awwright! Sign me up.

The next morning was chill and gray; I began to have misgivings. But I boarded the bus, already quite full of tourists, mostly passengers from the Princess Cruise Ship. Many were well over 60, predominantly women, bundled in raincoats, silver hair tucked under rain bonnets ... looking for all the world Christmas shopper at Macy's on a nasty day. The woman ahead of me, dressed like a sofa in see-through slipcovers: plastic rain cape, an accordion-fold rain hat tied under her chin, and clear plastic rain protectors over orthopedic shoes. How bad could this be?

"Not bad at all" according to the tour guide's voice on the bus loudspeaker: "The oldest person we ever took rafting was 96 ... and she loved it! We've never had an accident. Nevertheless we ask you to sign the release we're passing out, which says in effect that it you go overbord everything you own belongs to me," she said with a wink and a chuckle. The release, however, was a no-nonsense form that detailed all possibilities from dampness to death and drowning, and absolved the tour operator of all fault. By the time the clipboard reached the back of the bus it had been signed by several "celebrities" Ronald Reagan, Howdy Doody, and Maria Montez. Maria Montez?

The tour guide explained the preliminaries, beginning with the Port-a-Johns, "no rest stops along the way!" Next, rubber boots. Then, a rain parka, which we provide, and finally a life jacket. The order of these steps was significant: it would have been impossible to fit inside the porta-potties geared up like the Michelin Man. I took off my shoes and slipped my feet into the stiff rubber boots; they felt cold and wet. "Don't worry, your body temperature will warm them up."

Several women were turned back to the bus to lock up their purses and shopping bags "There are no gift shops out there." A few were reluctantly separted from their umbrellas. The staff was uniformly young, muscled, tan and sunstreaked blond.

The rafts were Queen-Size orange-striped inflatables with rubber waterbed floors that shifted underfoot. We crowded in, three abreast on the varnished boards that served for seats, leaving the center spot for the staff rower who served as our captain and guide. Soon we were a whole flotilla of rafts, each packed like toy boats stuffed with teddy bears dressed in screaming-color ponchos and lifevests, the only bright spots on the silver glacial landscape.

Our raft was first around the bend; first to see the Mendenhall Glacier. uddenly we were sitting in the center of a calendar picture, a still life of such incredible frozen beauty that we all sucked-in in unison. The glacial lake was glass-smooth, framed on both sides by mountains. Between the twin peaks lay the iceflow, like frozen aqua-tinted lava. I waited for one of our companion rafts with its colorful cargo to glide into the space between the two mountains, and then clicked the shutter. My lens steamed up in the damp chill and I realized that a gentle rain ws falling.

We maneuvered around floating chunks of ice like colorful pieces of fruit in a punchbowl. Glacial ice, we were told, is clear as crystal, no bubbles, because all the air has been pressed out by the sheer weight of the glacial mass. The Japanese regard glacial ice a status item to serve with drinks; they import it. We floated past a trio of sport fishermen standing waist-deep in their waders; they looked at us alarmingly, hoping we'd be silent and not scare away the fish. Further on we passed settlements of waterfront houses behind wire fences patrolled by large heavy-coated dogs of indeterminate but uniquely Alaskan parentage. A sort-of Malamute hurled himself against the chain Around a bend we came upon an embankment of rusting cars that elicited groans. "Not what you think," said the guide, "these junkers were put here intentionally, to save the bank. They tried everything else to keep it from eroding but old cars seem to be the only thing with would do the job. When the banks are secure they'll be removed.

So much for bobbling around in this tranquil lake ... it was now time to begin our trip down the river. "It's best to brace yourself against the seat in front of you," said the guide, but there wasn't any seat ahead so I held on the underside of the wooden bench, my camera tucked under my lifevest. The current picked up and propelled the raft downstream. I began to relax as I realized that the ride was gentle.

"Look!" The hand lettered sign said

"FALLS ... 1000 FEET"

"All right now, everybody get prepared for some rough water" announced the guide with a mischievous grin. The sign was a prank, but we were heading into the "rough part" that earned this trip a "2" instead of a "1." The once-gentle water began to simmer like a pot of soup, then it reached a rolling boil and turned white like a bubbling broth. We slid over shallows, barely inches over the rounded stones. The guide maneuvered the raft skillfully between rocks as it picked up speed. Suddenly the raft veered sharply to the left and the soup we were in boiled over the side of the raft. An icy wave landed in my lap and poured into my right boot. I took it off and poured out a pint of water. I was soaked through, but with the exhilaration of the journey I was barely aware of it until it was time to get out for our picnic. Picnic? We pulled up to a glacial island, about as unlikely-looking a crew of picnickers as you can imagine. Now it was raining hard. Despite our colorful parkas, we were wet and shivering once we left the puppy-huddle warmth of the raft. The stop was mercifully short: Alaska cheese, reindeer sausage and salmon jerky, plus a punch made from champagne, brandy and apple juice. Several of the rafters went straight for the brandy, forget the apple juice.

Back in the rafts we passed a steep wall of layered earth baring the exposed roots of tall evergreens. "Eagle!" I focused my long lens and snapped, then the magnificent bird took off, wings flapping, just like the Post Office commercials. A female, said the guide. How did he know? Because of her size. Not only is she larger than her mate, she's the dominant partner; eagles mate for life.

Now I became acutely aware of the water trickling down my neck as the drizzle continued. How long have we been on this trip! I was ready for it to be over. And as soon as that thought formed, it was. The rafts emptied ashore. We shivered on benches and replaced the stiff wet boots with our own shoes, still nice and dry, a change of socks. I looked down at the feet next to me and saw an ankle wrapped in an elastic bandage. But no complaints: everyone was ebullient as they crowded back on the bus. "Wait 'til my grandson hears this." END

[NOTE: Article resulting from the Travel Journalists Guild press trip to S. E. Alaska. This was my 4th article from that trip; eight other stories appeared in the travel sections of several newspapers including The LA Times. According to the Computerized Media Report -- a database log members' clips that I developed for TJG -- this Alaska trip produced 28: articles: 1,264 column inches with a combined total circulation of 5,322,575.