She finally decided on Holland America's seven day package, including a cruise from Vancouver, stopping in Juneau for a local tour that included a visit to Mendenhall Glacier and then a wildlife cruise, then on to Skagway, where we would abandon ship. From Skagway we would take the White Pass and Yukon Route narrow gauge railway over the mountains to Yukon Territory and a bus to Whitehorse, YT. Then we would fly to Anchorage, bus to Denali National Park and take the train back to Anchorage. From there we were supposed to fly home, according to Holland America, but Carmen wanted to go to Seward. So she booked us a round trip train ride and two nights in a Bed & Breakfast in Seward. All of this was reserved and paid for in January.
Then she invited her mom and dad to go with us. They hemmed and hawed about it, but finally booked themselves on the same Holland America schedule with us, but not the Seward part.
Wednesday, August first was our departure date. Our itinerary changed planes with a one-hour layover in Denver. My brother lived in Denver. Carmen thought we should tell him we'd be there in case he wanted to come hang out with us. What the heck, it was only an hour. I acquiesced. At some point Carmen asked me what I thought the in-flight movie might be. We had just seen Shrek with a bunch of church friends. "Well, it won't be Shrek," I said matter-of-factly, "it's too new."
We left with five bags. Two weeks in Alaska requires five bags. Part of one of them was my stuff. The cab driver who drove us to the Orlando airport earned his tip. Luckily, this was August 2001 and not a month and a half later. We checked four bags and carried one on with no security issues. The movie was Shrek.
My brother did show up at Denver airport and hung out with us for about forty five minutes until we were called to board our flight to Vancouver. It was a not-too-unpleasant visit, rare in the years since the early 90s, after his company moved him from Laurel, MD to Aurora, CO and then cut him loose. More about him in my next entry from 2002, "Multiple Myeloma."
The flight to Vancouver was breathtaking, flying over the mountainous northwestern US and into British Columbia. Good thing the view out the window was so good, because the movie was Shrek. We landed in Vancouver airport and were treated to decor unlike anything we've ever seen before or since. As a scenery and exhibits guy, I was fascinated with the construction of dozens of museum-like scenes of various sorts of British Columbia dwellings and structures. I would have taken pictures, but of course I was hauling five bags toward Customs.
Customs was remarkably easy. Our passports were still good from '97, and we didn't look like anything but American tourists happy to leave a bushel of US dollars behind us in Canada. We caught a cab, and rode with a happy Vancouver transplant from the Middle East who raved about his city all the way to the hotel, which was on the waterfront within easy walking distance of the cruise ship port. We hauled our stuff up to our room, stretched out for a while, then went walking, looking for Stanley Park. We were told several times to keep following the seawall. It turned out to be a pretty long walk, but it was worth it.
We took the horse-drawn trolley tour of the beautiful park. We recommend it, especially if you've expended all of your walking energy getting there and still have to get back to the hotel. One of the two horses had been in a movie once. He seemed to feel superior to the other. Periodically we could notice that his traces were slack - he was letting the other horse pull the whole load. Our driver had to flick her whip to encourage him to pull his weight.
We saw eagles and totem poles, many dozens of Canada Geese and billions of flowers. The park is nearly surrounded by water, and Lions Gate Bridge takes you from the north end of the park over to North Vancouver. The trolley didn't go there.
We stopped in a waterfront restaurant on the way back. The food was okay, but at least the price was outrageous. Finally we got back to the hotel and tried to sleep. We didn't have much luck, especially when Sandra and Olen arrived for a visit after their delayed flight from Houston finally got them to Vancouver. We made some plans for the morning - Carmen wanted to go to the Capillano Suspension Footbridge in North Vancouver, and we wanted them to see Stanley Park. We were scheduled to arrive at the cruise dock at 11:00 in the morning, so we had time for all of this if we got an early start.
After checking out, leaving our luggage at the front desk (we had quite an impressive heap of it now!) and an early breakfast at the hotel, Olen arranged for a limousine to take us to the footbridge, wait for us and take us back to the hotel and over to the cruise ship with our luggage. "He's going to need a bigger limo," I said to Olen.
The limo ride through Stanley Park wasn't nearly as nice as the trolley tour - we mostly stayed on the main road - but we did stop at a couple of picturesque spots and took picturesque pictures. The Lions Gate Bridge was high and a little scary for us bridge-o-phobes, but the Capillano Suspension Footbridge was very cool, very high, and hardly scary at all to me. Others in our party were more nervous about it, but we all crossed over and back. Then our driver took us up to the highest point in North Vancouver with a spectacular view of the bay and the city. We could see our cruise ship parked in its berth across the bay. We guessed it was time to go.
The trunk wouldn't close. Our driver figured, and we agreed that for the short distance we were going, the steaming heap of luggage would be all right. It was.
Our first experience with the Holland America process turned out to be pretty typical: it was a long wait in a big concrete room with no entertainment other than the people coming around to try to sell extra amenities such as bottles of wine. They offered onboard massages, which Sandra and Carmen signed up for. Party by party we were called up to a table where our reservations were verified and we received our cruise package including ID cards, ship maps, event schedules and tour itineraries. After several hours we were sent on through Customs. The ship was part of the United States, since our next opportunity to exit (on dry land) would be Juneau. We had trouble with our film. The Customs and security people dusted every roll to make sure they weren't explosives. Did I mention that this was a month and a half BEFORE security was stepped way up?
Everyone was starving by the time we got on the ship at around 2:00. One restaurant was open and almost two thousand of us were trying to get some lunch. Luckily, more food sources opened before anybody died of starvation. After that, there was food available pretty much everywhere on the ship at pretty much any time of day or night.
We went to our rooms - on different decks - to stow our stuff before heading out to the Lido Deck for the Casting Off Party at 4:00. It started about 4:30. The fun directors were introduced, and some loud music began. We actually got underway some time after 5:00, to great fanfare. We all went to our cabins only to be called out again for lifeboat and life vest drill. After that was over it was time to eat again.
We had reservations in the fancy dining room. Sandra and Olen changed their assigned table to join us at our assigned table. Also at our table was a couple from Lethbridge, Alberta. Lethbridge had been home to a double A minor league Dodgers team during the years I did a lot of work for the Dodgers in the early eighties. They had been big fans, and he'd worked for the Dodgers in Lethbridge, so we had a lot to talk aboot. That's how they said "about." Aboot.
Early in the evening it was time for the ship's naturalist to tell us, in words and pictures, what sorts of wildlives we could expect to see on the way and in Alaska. He had no pictures of himself in a Superman costume, but only because he hadn't thought of it. His most memorable line: "Some black bears are brown, some brown bears are black. The way you can tell which is which - if a bear is chasing you and you climb a tree, a black bear will climb up after you. A brown bear will just push the tree over."
Later on there was a song and dance extravaganza on the main stage. It was moderately entertaining. After a late night snack, we all went to bed.
Friday was a long day with nearly zero scenery other than a thin strip of brown and green at the eastern edge of the ocean. I got up at 5:30 and went out in search of my first breakfast. Afterward I returned to our cabin and waited for the other three to get ready for their first, my second breakfast. We were eating by some big windows, and I could occasionally spot a fin breaking the surface for an instant while the others weren't looking. I would report this, everyone would look, and see nothing. "There it is!" I'd say. They'd look. "There it is again." None of them ever saw these Dall's Porpoise but me.
I checked the movies- they were playing "Chocolat" and..."Shrek." I went to see Chocolat again while Carmen laid out on the deck. She got a sunburn out there. Came from Florida and got a sunburn in the coastal waters of British Columbia. After the movie was over, and before Shrek could start, I went to the same auditorium where the naturalist had been and found Carmen there to watch the Tlingit story teller. She was very entertaining. Then Carmen found Sandra and they went for their massages. I went up to the upper pool deck for some lunch.
Friday evening was the fancy dress dinner, or "the penguin party" as we called it. That was one thing we were definitely not going to. The four of us ordered room service and we ate down in Sandra and Olen's room. Afterward there was another song and dance thing. I went to see it, a smear of blue jeans among the sea of penguins. The coolest part was that during the show we passed out of Canadian waters and into Alaskan. The ship made some sharp turns and a barely perceptible stop to let off the Canadian pilots and bring on the US pilots. To us in the seats it was about twenty minutes of slightly strange bumps and rolls. To the dancers on stage, it was an invisible obstacle course. It's hard to dance when you're not sure where the floor will be under your next step.
Saturday morning I had my early breakfast as usual, and waited around in our cabin for the move to second breakfast. There were two big events today. First, at 11:00 the ship was passing through prime feeding grounds for humpback whales - there was a whale-watching extravaganza hosted by Mr. Natural outside on the deck. Then, in late afternoon, we were stopping in Juneau. I was ready ready ready to get the hell off of that floating prison.
The Whale Watch was very cool - and very windy going sixty knots. We saw at least thirty humpbacks. I swear I saw one killer whale off in the distance, but only once and not well. We learned when we got home that what looks like a whale tail in person can easily look like an indistinct black dot on your photographs. We did get a few good shots. Then we went inside to warm up, eat lunch and get ready for the Juneau adventure.
After two days of wide vistas of water with distant borders of land, suddenly we were cruising up a narrow waterway with colorful houses and small boats everywhere. We were told via ship's intercom to be ready to go ashore when the word was given to do so. We hung out in one of the plush lounges with big windows, watching Alaska go by. Juneau came along - a thin strip of mostly horizontal land with a vertical wall of mountain sealing it off from the rest of Alaska. There are precarious-looking steep and tall stairways cut into the mountain leading up to houses cut into the mountain.
We pulled into the dock and stopped. The word was given that we should proceed to the place where we had entered the ship on Thursday. We followed crowds toward elevators, and soon decided that the stairwells were a better deal. We almost made it to the exit when ship's employees began heading us off, telling us that the exit we were really using was two decks below. We headed back to the stairs and dashed down about halfway to the next deck before we slammed into the throng that was bottlenecked on the stairs. Carmen expressed discomfort with the crowded conditions, and we were prepared to climb back up to the deck above, but another throng was bearing down on us from above. For about a half hour we were wedged into a hot, stuffy, noisy stairwell, waiting for anything to move. Finally, slowly, the crowd loosened and began to trickle down to the proper deck and out the door to the gangway. Wow, fresh cool air. Soon after, solid ground.
We found our tour bus, which was scheduled to leave an hour or so before but wisely waited for the ship to spill its load. We rode through the brown landscape to Mendenhall Glacier where we hung out and took pictures for an hour or so, then continued on to the Wildlife Cruise dock. We boarded a boat with an enclosed central seating space, where the onboard naturalist (evidently naturalists are everywhere in and around Alaska during the summer) told us about what we were looking for. Outside there was a walkway all the way around for wildlife watching, and up the stairs was an upper deck with 360 degrees of visibility. We saw most of the items on the wildlife agenda.
There was a mother humpback with a calf. The boat crept close. Mama was not intimidated. She came up beside the boat and rolled over to give us a long look. She rolled back to vertical and exhaled. We were engulfed in an oily cloud of fishy bad breath. That'll teach us.
On the way back to the dock the naturalist talked to us some more, and offered us samples of smoked salmon. This was when Olen uttered a quote that lives on: "I don't care for salmon," he said, "it tastes like fish."
The road back to downtown Juneau took us by a lagoon at low tide. About thirty bald eagles were standing around in the mud.
We did a little shopping before retreating back to the ship. Believe it or not, we found a place on the ship to get something to eat before the Westerdam backed out of its berth and headed for Skagway.
Sunday morning's first breakfast is one I'll never ever forget. I was sitting by a window watching the shoreline go by, and then we stopped opposite Skagway. Over by the bank was a young humpback whale playing. It would stretch its long fin straight up in the air, then WHAM! slap the water with it. It would poke its tail straight up in the air, then WHAM! slap the water with it. I grabbed my muffin and coffee and ran four decks down to our cabin. I woke Carmen, and together we watched this show for a half hour or so.
Those of us who were leaving the ship in Skagway had a package slid under our door overnight. It had tags for our luggage and instructions about where to put it. We were instructed to gather in a certain auditorium for further information before we exited the ship. We showered, dressed and packed our five bags, leaving four of them in the hallway for the luggage fairies.
In the auditorium we were divided up into our various tour packages. Everyone in our group of twenty or so tourists was going to Whitehorse, Anchorage and Denali, and we were under the watchful eye of our tour guide, whose name I don't recall. When we finally got the go-ahead to exit the ship, first on the agenda, of course, was shopping in Skagway. Being Alaska, I wore a jacket. Unfortunately, the sun came out and it got too warm for a jacket. We could tell this was unusual. Shop owners and employees were going outside and looking up with puzzled expressions on their faces.
The next waiting program was at the railroad station. There were several groups going on the train. After a half hour or so of waiting, our group took up residence in one car at the very end of the train. I guess our luggage was in a baggage car. The next time we saw it was in Whitehorse.
If you remember my previous posting entitled "Tyrone," you'll know why I could call the next three days "Harry!" Harry was a gregarious and boistrous young adult who was mildly mentally challenged. His mother never let us forget his name.
The White Pass And Yukon Railway crosses the high rugged mountains that divide Skagway from the Yukon Territory and the gold in them thar hills. It was our introduction to another ongoing theme for this trip, Spectacular Mountain Views everywhere you look. The weirdest thing about the train ride, however, was that, while we were crossing mile-deep crevasses and executing hairpin turns aroung the edges of steep cliffs, Carmen was on the little platform outside at the rear of the car, hanging onto the railings taking spectacular mountain pictures.
At the other end of this wild ride there was a big luxury bus waiting for us. There was a Customs official there to check identification, but he didn't go through our (six now) bags. Soon, off we went across Yukon Territory, a land filled with green foliage, and blue green glacial streams and lakes. Oh yes, and spectacular mountain views. We stopped in a couple of little towns along the way for shopping and snacks, and it was supper time when we got to Whitehorse. Our tour guide gave us our orders for tomorrow's plane trip to anchorage including when and where to put our luggage for the fairies. Supper in the hotel restaurant was included in the package, so we HAD to eat there. The tour guide highly recommended the show, "Frantic Follies," and even though we were all ready to fall over and sleep, we went to the show. As advertised, it was great!
The next morning was another waiting game - waiting for the bus to the airport took an hour, during which time I went across the street to the home improvememt store. I wasn't going to buy anything, but then I saw this cool head lamp for ten bucks Canadian. "Hmm," I said, "I may never find one of these again." I turned the package over. It came from a distribution company in... wait for it... Orlando, Florida. I didn't buy it.
Finally we were allowed to board the bus to the Whitehorse airport, where we waited for another two hours or so to board the plane. It was on this flight over Yukon Territory and Alaska to Anchorage that I finally understood the description of glaciers as "rivers of ice." Out the windows we could see long blue lines that looked like rivers winding among the spectacular mountains. Glaciers. Ice packed so deep that the weight of the ice causes the bottom layers to heat up from the pressure, the whole heap slip-sliding downhill at an imperceptible rate of speed and calving off ice bergs at the end. Now I get it!
We landed at Anchorage airport and went through Customs AGAIN with our six bags, no problem. We boarded another bus (with no air conditioning) which took us to the Alaska Native Heritage Center for a couple of hours, which was very cool and we wished we could stay longer, then on a long, hot, stuffy tour of downtown Anchorage. All we wanted was to get off the bus and get something to eat. We passed our hotel three or four times. "Can't we just get out?" we asked three or four times. One good thing was that we passed (twice) a big sign outside a restaurant with outdoor dining that offered "Alaska King Crab Leg Dinners $10.99" Olen had to have him some of that. So after we stopped at Ship Creek to watch dying salmon die for twenty minutes, we finally made it to the hotel, checked into our rooms and made a bee line for the crab legs. The waitress came over. "What can I get you?" Olen piped up: "Two orders of king crab legs. What would you like, Sandra?"
After supper there was more shopping. I bought a cap that said "Anchorage" on it to replace my Annapolis cap that I bought in...Annapolis... in 2000, which I lost on the ship. Remember this Anchorage hat. It surfaces again in 2005 in a story we're going to call "Mass. Hysteria."
I don't remember clearly, but I believe we went to bed early in preparation for our trip to Denali in the morning. Early or late, it's still daylight in the summer. But first we did what our marching orders told us to do with our luggage - leave it in the hallway for the fairies. This time it was being stored at the hotel until we came back from Denali the next night. We were to take everything we might need for an overnight trip - two bags.
I do remember that I got up at 5:00 and went in search of my first breakfast. I circled the block and three more blocks and never even found any coffee. My first and only breakfast was at the same time as everybody else's, at the restaurant in the hotel.
There was, believe it or not, a long wait to go to Denali. We were crammed into a little vestibule of the hotel for almost an hour. Then we filed onto a nice big bus and spread out for the ride. Our tour guide was supplemented by another Holland America tour guide who worked the Denali run. They had games for us to play, told silly stories, led us in songs, and communicated with the other tour bus by radio. Harry was in fine form, and I became known as "loud raucus laughter guy." It was a long ride. We stopped in a couple of little towns - Willow and Talkeetna - and the whole trip took nearly eight hours. We were scheduled for a four-hour wildlife bus tour of the National Park after we arrived. We nearly skipped it, but after checking into our cabins and resting a bit, we all four decided to go.
We saw many caribou, one moose, lots of Dall sheep, a grizzly bear, and the state bird, the willow ptarmigan. Oh, yes - and plenty of Spectacular Mountain Views! Not Denali itself, though. Mount McKinley was shrouded in clouds the whole time we were there. Harry stood up by the driver during most of the tour, his mother shrieking his name periodically. The driver even opened the door for Harry to take pictures without dirty glass in the way. All in all we were glad we went.
It was nearly nine when we got back to our cabins. We were hungry, and our tour guide recommended the pizza place within easy walking distance. Practically the whole busload of us went. The pizza was good.
The next morning we had until 9:00 to board the bus to the train station to catch the train back to Anchorage. Sandra and Olen did the helicopter ride landing on a glacier. They said it was fun, but it was a cold ride. We did some shopping and had a liesurely breakfast (my second - I found a gas station convenience store open at 5:00.) While we ate we watched another couple from our tour party having their picture taken in Gold Rush duds, sitting in a dogsled in front of a log cabin set.
We got on the bus right on time, no waiting. The waiting came in at the railroad station. It was cold and windy. Luckily there was cold weather gear for sale in the station gift shop.
The train ride back to Anchorage was kind of melancholy. The twenty or so of us that had been touring together for four days were splitting up after this ride. Harry had a route going, through the upper deck of our car, down the steps to the lower deck, which was the dining area, through that to the other set of stairs and back up for another round, stopping to talk to anyone who would talk to him. Lunch was done in shifts, taking up a large part of the four-hour trip. The views were spectacular, of course, and I even saw a black bear out the window - although nobody else did.
We didn't get any orders for luggage or anything else this evening. When we got back to the hotel and checked in, the tour was done. Everybody was going home to somewhere except for Carmen and me. We had an early morning train to Seward. We said our good byes to Sandra and Olen and went to bed.
I felt kind of crappy when I awoke Thursday morning. As we cabbed to the railroad station and waited for the train, I felt exponentially worse. I was able to enjoy the ride, with its plethora of spectacular mountain views - some with waterfalls! - bald eagles everywhere, and a moose. By the time we got to Seward, all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and die. So we checked in at our B&B, stowed our luggage - seven bags now- and went out to explore. We found the dock where our wildlife cruise would depart in the morning. We had lunch in a Chinese restaurant, then continued down the main street to the Alaska Sealife Center.
The Alaska Sealife Center is a research, rescue and educational facility funded by Exxon as part of their settlement of the Exxon Valdez oil spill debacle. It was very interesting, but the coolest thing for us was this huge octopus sulking in the corner of a big tank. We stood in front looking into those soulful octopus eyes and feeling sorry that it was reduced to cowering in a tank with boneheads like us gawking at it. Suddenly it propelled itself out of its lair and came straight at us. It spread its tentacles to their full extension - about five feet in diameter - on the glass in front of our faces. It stayed there for a few minutes in all its glory, then returned to its corner. Years later, Carmen saw a story in the news about an old octopus at the ASLC that had been introduced to a female. They produced some baby octopi before the old man died. We felt like he was an old friend.
We explored a couple of shops and museums on the way back up the street before we returned to the Bed & Breakfast. I curled up to finish dying, and Carmen went to find us something to eat. I don't remember anything after that.
The next morning Carmen went and had breakfast with the owners and the other couple in residence - visiting from Wales. I got showered and changed into my wildlife cruise duds. We mosied down to the dock, checked in at the office, and went for a cruise. This one was very different from Saturday's at Juneau. The first life we saw was one lone sea otter - one of the items on my personal agenda - floating on its back as we cruised by. Puffins were everywhere. Ice floes were everywhere, each with a seal perched on it. We went to the Northwestern Glacier, discovered by a team from Northwestern University many years ago, and watched it calve. As each chunk broke off and fell into the sea, a seal would pop up on it. The naturalist told us that there were things in the water that ate seals. We never saw them.
I felt progressively better as we cruised through the day. It was a nine-hour 150 mile round trip and very enjoyable. Then we had dinner at a waterfront restaurant and headed back to the B&B.
Saturday we packed up and left our bags in an out-of-the-way place at the B&B office while we returned to the Seward exploration project. She bought some stuff and had the shops ship it to Orlando. Generally, we were killing time until the afternoon, when the train would be ready to return us to Anchorage. And even though we were no longer connected to Holland America, we waited a long time at the train station.
The only thing I recall about the trip back to Anchorage was that I snagged my thumbnail on a piece of train hardware and broke a little chunk out of my nail. Now I was snagging on everything, and the nail clippers were somewhere in the checked luggage. It was dark when we arrived. We cabbed to our new hotel, near the airport, and went right to bed. We had an early flight out in the morning, and we were happy to be nearby.
First thing Sunday morning we cabbed to the airport and checked five of our seven bags. We kept our regular carry-on, and Carmen held onto her bag with the pottery in it. For the rest of the day, people were giving me the stinkeye because Carmen was carrying the big heavy bag of pottery. I would have been glad to carry it, but she wouldn't let go of it.
I'll make a very long story short and say that our flight was delayed twelve hours. One man standing in the line of disgruntled passengers waiting to talk to airline reps about changing connecting flight schedules keeled over after three hours. When we got up there, paralegal Carmen came away with several meal vouchers and an upgrade to First Class on our connecting flight out of Minneapolis. Once we had that behind us, we grabbed a cab back to the Alaska Native Heritage Center for a liesurely and enjoyable visit. The only bad part was that everybody there gave me the stinkeye because Carmen was carrying the big heavy bag of pottery.
When we returned to the airport, we used a meal voucher, lounged around for a bit, then went ahead through security. We staked out our spot to wait the remaining hour and a half. I went into the little gift shop by the gates and found what I was looking for: nail clippers! This was a little set with a bottle opener and a knife included in a pouch that said "Alaska" on one side and "Made In China" on the other. Good thing it wasn't a month and a half later.
The two flights home are a blur in my memory. I slept a lot A. because I was exhausted, and B. because the movie on both flights was...Shrek.
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