Travel Blog

Some of my memories are sketchy at best. What I mean by that is sometimes I remember things that my sister, Gina, said never happened, and conversely I don’t remember doing things that my friends and family said I did. (Kerrie and Gina know what I’m talking about, like them telling me I’ve been to Dollywood…whatever.) But I have a memory of my folks having a friend who flew helicopters. And I remember him saying he was going to give me ride in it. But then he died in a helicopter accident. My family can tell me if I’m full of it, and that story, true or not, really doesn’t have much to do with this blog, except that I finally got my helicopter ride. And it was awesome. In my mind, there’s no other way to fly. And I’m a nervous flier. I don’t like plane rides. I think it’s the buildup of the runway takeoff and landing. With a helicopter, that drama isn’t there. Right up you go.
So anyway, locals can take their chances and try to fly standby for a discounted price. Phil and had tried once before, but they had no room for us. So last Sunday we called in the morning to see, and they said we could stop by in the afternoon and see. We got there and they said they wouldn’t know until right before it was time to take off, but they sat us down and had us watch a safety video with about five other hopefuls. It didn’t look good for us. The other people waiting all seemed to know the workers, and the bus from the cruise ships dumped off quite a lot of paying people. But our names were called, and we were in! Two other people were turned away, so we lucked out. We paid up, and then suited up. We had to wear a inflatable life vest thing (like that would help if we hit the water)


and some cool spiky shoes (sorry, Lou, I was once again wearing shoes other people had worn before, but if it makes you feel less grossed out, they go OVER your own shoes).


And then we waited around for our choppers to come for us. They fly out to the glacier, dump people off, and come back for more people. We were slated for lucky number five helipad.


Our chopper landed, folks got off, and then it was fueled up.


I wish we could have sat up front, but since Phil and I are fatties, some small folks got that honor. But there are no bad seats in the chopper, even though I was smooshed between Phil and another lady pretty good. It’s a good thing I took a shower that morning.
It’s hard to talk in a helicopter, so there wasn’t much discussion. You have headsets on, and if you have something to say, you reach above your head and push a button, like a walkie-talkie. I did speak up enough to find out how long our pilot, Ryan, had been flying (eight years).


(Ahhhh, I’m a sucker for that military haircut. Ladies, you with me?)
The flight to the glacier took about twenty minutes. I wish it would have been longer. And the day was a nice one, so the pilot said we were lucky enough to be going a route they rarely get to take.








We got to the glacier and met up with our glacier guide, Kyle, who told us about glaciers and who walked us around for a while.


It was a good thing we had those shoes on because we did a bit of crevasse jumping.

And there were cool holes all over the place.

To stay warm out there, Kyle and crew have this little hut. They sleep overnight there sometimes, too, and do cool things on their days off. He told us he was staying overnight to go caving the next day. Pretty neat summer job, eh?


Random shots from the glacier:












And before we knew it, it was time to go back. Kyle took a picture of us with our chopper in the background.



We went back a different way and got to see Long Lake.



And then we were back in Skagway.