Travel

/

Home & Leisure

Taking the Kids: Visiting Sitka, Alaska

Eileen Ogintz, Tribune Content Agency on

Sitka National Historic Park is just a 15-minute walk from the city docks along the Lincoln Street greenbelt. Be forewarned that if you stop at the Sitka Community Playground (accessible to all) the kids may not want to go any further. When was the last time they could experience different water sounds at a playground with the push of the button, ride a “dolphin” or climb to the top of a “ lighthouse”?

Keep your phone or camera handy to snap the adorable sea otters floating in the water.

See the Sheldon Jackson Hatchery outside the Sitka Sound Science Center along your walk. See Southeast Alaska’s unique marine ecosystem in action at the aquarium and hatchery. Feel spiky urchins and bumpy sea stars in the tidal pool touch tanks or step into the Salmon Bubble to see how fish view the oceans. The hatchery raises and produces millions of coho, pink and chum salmon each year, as well as trains many of Alaska’s fisheries biologists and managers.

Did you know the Tongass National Forest is the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest? Take a walk along the Indian River Trail past waterfalls, creeks, and rivers filled with salmon.

Summer is the best time for whale-watching as gray whales, orcas, and minke whales travel through the Sitka Sound Whale Park, about six miles from downtown, which offers the chance to see marine wildlife from land. There are even free viewing scopes.

Consider that if you are lucky enough to see a bald eagle in the wild in Alaska, you won’t get nearly as close as you can here at the Alaska Raptor Center. Check out their feathers — bald eagles have about 7,000 waterproof feathers and a wingspan of up to eight feet, though they don’t even weigh 12 pounds.

Some of the raptors can be rehabilitated (there is also the state’s only avian hospital where surgery can be performed) and released into the wild. Others who no longer can survive in the wild start a new life as educators, teaching visitors. Talk to the veterinarians and educational specialists at the center.

At the Fortress, you can get within 25 feet of three populations of bears (just $15 for adults and $5 for kids seven and older) rather than taking an expensive flight to a remote bear habitat. Ultimately, the Fortress hopes some of the rescued and rehabbed bears can return to the wild, although Alaska currently prohibits that.

 

Meanwhile, it’s clear the bears are loving life in what is an old pulp factory. See Toby, the female brown bear, put her paws together. That means she wants more food. Check out the white heart-shaped patch of fir on Bandit’s chest.

Definitely make time for ice cream — locals flock to the old-fashioned soda fountain at the family-owned Harry Race Pharmacy for their homemade ice cream, sundaes and milkshakes.

Maybe a Mt. Edgecumbe Eruption.

========

(For more Taking the Kids, visit www.takingthekids.com and also follow TakingTheKids on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where Eileen Ogintz welcomes your questions and comments. The Kid’s Guide to Philadelphia and The Kid’s Guide to Camping are the latest in a series of 14 books for kid travelers published by Eileen.)

©2022 Eileen Ogintz. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.


(c) 2022 DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

Comics

John Darkow Dog Eat Doug Ed Wexler 1 and Done 9 Chickweed Lane Jimmy Margulies