It hooks to the rest of Alaska like a jade pendant.

It’s a rainforest green land of mountains and fjords where glaciers thunder, whales dive with playful belly-flops and bald eagles roam the skies.

It is Southeastern Alaska, the place where Alaska begins for most travelers, the place where czarist Russia transferred Russian America to the United States more than 130 years ago.

Here is where you’ll find a summertime fleet of hundreds of cruise ships, large and small, and a covey of Alaska ferries traveling the sheltered waters of the famed Inside Passage.

And this is where you’ll find more than half of Alaska’s leading visitor attractions -- from the crown jewel of Glacier Bay to the former Russian capital of Sitka.

It is an uncrowded wonderland. Less than 75,000 Alaskans reside in the seven towns and 14 Indian villages scattered along 380 miles of quiet sea-lanes between Ketchikan on the south and Skagway to the north.

Southeast Alaska covers 20 million acres, about the size of Maine. Most of that -- 16.7 million acres -- is America’s largest national forest, the Tongass.

Weather is on the mild side, even in winter, thanks to the warm Japanese current swirling across the Pacific. Summer temperatures hover mostly in the 60s (F), but sometimes climb into the 80s. When that happens, happy locals break out the picnic baskets and talk of "heat waves."

"This must be about the most beautiful place on earth," they say.

Oh, there is rain, to be sure, but sunny days seem instantly to erase memories of soggy weather. Ketchikan, for example, is soaked by about 150 inches of rain a year.

"Come rust with us," the residents joke.

There are plenty of bright, warm days here in summer, followed by lingering sunsets that streak sky and sea with crimson and gold. The afterglow moves like a paintbrush, tinting mountaintops and glaciers with reds and pinks.

"Southeastern," as Alaskans call their Panhandle region, is a place of big and little dramas. A kayaker brushes by icebergs bobbing in Glacier Bay National Park. A curious seal pops its head above water to watch a visitor. A drop of rain is caught in the tiny cup of a lupine leaf in the silent forest. It flashes like a diamond. A humpback whale, weight maybe 35 tons, leaps like a blubbery ballerina from the icy waters, flexes and falls with a colossal crash.

A cruise ship coasts through the bay of glaciers. It looks like a toy alongside the cobalt face of a glacier higher than a 30-story office building. Suddenly, there is a clap of thunder from far back on the glacier. The sound volleys like rifle shots. The great glacier, winding out of the mountains like a river of ice, is grinding forward under incredible pressure, cracking, pushing its bow of ancient ice toward the sea.

A blue-white pillar of ice, big as a house, splits from the snout of the glacier and tumbles into the bay. More thunder, like cannon fire, as the glacier groans. New swords of ice fall, sending geysers of water high into the air.

Early-day explorers named it Glacier Bay. The Tlingit Indians of the area always knew is as Thunder Bay. The Tlingits had it right.

Tlingit ("KLINK-it"), Haida ("HIGH-dah") and Tsimshian ("SIMP-she-an") Indians were cruising these coves and inlets in cedar canoes long before the Russians discovered Alaska in 1741. Discovery might not be the correct word.

"We knew where Alaska was before the Russians showed-up," say the first Alaskans.

The Russians, by the way, were not exactly welcome. Near the port town of Haines, on the Lynn Canal, Indian warriors warned the 18th-century party of Russian fur hunters not to come ashore. They did, and they were slain. According to local lore, the Russians’ scalps still hang today in a clan house in the village of Klukwan (cq) ("CLUCK-wahn"), 21 miles northwest of Haines.

Today’s visitors get a better reception.

Long ago, ice ages shaped this rugged and beautiful slice of Alaska. Where the glaciers plowed great trenches, now there are fjords 1,000 feet deep, and hundreds of islands. Steep slopes rise from the water’s edge to the tips of cloud-scraping mountains. Scattered communities cling like wilderness outposts to skinny stretches of coastline.

Creeks and rivers churn with runs of silvery salmon. Brown bear, black bear, deer and mountain goats ramble through forests of spruce, hemlock and cedar -- forests so limitless that they appear to be green waves surging toward the horizon.

Indian totems decorate the forest fringes like masterpieces in a dark green gallery.

Yes, southeast really is a rainforest green land of mountains and fjords where glaciers thunder, whales dive with playful belly-flops and bald eagles roam the skies. A jade pendant hooked to the rest of Alaska.

(This story courtesy of the Southeast Alaska Tourism Council.)

Want to learn more about Alaska’s Inside Passage, order a free copy of the Southeast Alaska Tourism Council (SATC) vacation guide via the Internet at www.alaskainfo.org.