15 June 98

DJH & JBH

Our Alaska adventure ended on Sunday evening (June 7) when Jill and I arrived back in LA. It was such a pretty trip. We had wonderful weather, good food, and fun times. While the memories are fresh, we wanted to summarize the trip. The following is an approximate chronicle of the trip from the perspective of Jill and I starting with some of the preparation. This was the first time either of us had ever been to Alaska, and also the first cruise we’d ever been on. As traveling companions, we had Jill’s brother Lacey, and his wife, Leslie. They were fine to travel with. Given the chance, we’d do another trip with them without hesitation. But I’m sure they’ll have their own angles on this trip. Perhaps they’ll take a few minutes and jot down their own chronicle.

Jill and I had made our reservations for this trip early last December. After considering many options, we threw a dart and hit on Holland America Line (HAL). We paid the travel agent a package price for Tour #19, starting May 25 in Fairbanks, and proceeding south for a week land tour and then a second week cruising on one of their ships called the Ryndam from Seward, AK south to Vancouver. Over Christmas, we mentioned the trip to Lacey and Leslie (just like everyone else), suggesting that they might enjoy coming with us. About late January, they let us know that they’d signed up. For the subsequent months, this trip was the source of much planning and discussion. What would it be like? How will the weather be? What should we bring? What to wear? …. I thought it was a little amusing because I figured such planning could be handled on the weekend before leaving as we packed. But with about five weeks to go, we came across an issue that impacted me directly. I was going to need a tuxedo for some of the dinners on this ship. I hadn’t planned on that. We went to two of the local rental places and found that since we were going at just about prom season, no one wanted to rent me one for less than $300. I can buy one for that money. Then we found that HAL offers a rental service for considerably less. So we got the application form, took the necessary measurements, and sent it in for the package that had both a classic black tuxedo and a white dinner jacket. I’d never worn one of those before. The order clerk needed to know the time frame when I would need the tuxedo, so I explained that I was on Tour #19 starting in Fairbanks on May 25. That did not compute for the clerk. Apparently unencumbered by the thought process, she insisted that there was no ship leaving Fairbanks on that date (maybe she got a C- in geography?). But, with some effort, we were able to work through the confusion.

In anticipation of over-indulging some, we both figured we ought to try and work off some of the winter softness beforehand by climbing up the hill behind our house. Jill and I trudged up the hill every evening after work for the last two months before leaving. It takes us about 45 minutes to get up to the top and back down.

With the trip about two weeks away, a threshold of immediacy was crossed when we got home from work and found our tickets in the mail. We were routed through Seattle and were supposed to arrive in Fairbanks at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon of May 25. We checked the map- this was going to be the farthest north either of us had ever been. The package included a bunch of advertising about side trips available at extra cost. It seemed like most were oriented for cruise customers whose ship arrives in a port early in the morning and is leaving later that same afternoon or evening. The side trips were mostly only a couple of hours long and pretty expensive. They had lots of airplane flightseeing trips and helicopter tours (fat people are discouraged) to walk on top of the local glacier while enjoying a "gourmet salmon picnic basket", or "champagne toast" or some such. Considering that most were asking for more than a hundred dollars per person, we figured we could do without most of that stuff. Someone advised us that the cruise line adds their own markup to the local price, so if we decided that if we wanted to do something along those lines, we’d make arrangements there at the dock.

Finally, the last day of work came and ended, and it was Saturday (May 23). We had the weekend to pack for an early Monday morning departure. I was able to get all my packing done in essentially one hang up garment bag plus a day pack that I used as a carry-on. I even had room to include a bottle of 18-year old Glenlivet Single malt Scotch. I figured if I was going on a nice trip, I might as well drink good booze, but doing it at what I anticipated to be ship’s bar prices wasn’t what I had in mind. I had this vision of putting my feet up on the furniture in our cabin, and enjoying a decadent sip or two on ice as Alaska sailed by out the window. Jill, on the other hand, quickly ran into trouble with her packing. She had much more to bring than she had room for. Admitting defeat, we went out to the luggage store and got her a hang-up garment bag too. She managed to get all her stuff into that plus two other bags, one of which was a carry-on.

The evening before we left, Jill set out a present for me to open. It turned out to be a black bow tie (for formal dress) with hot chili peppers printed all over it. That was fun. I found a place to put it in my luggage.

We flew uneventfully to Fairbanks on May 26, and got there about mid-afternoon along with about 30-40 other HAL and Princess customers heading out on the "Trail of Tours" south through Denali National Park to Anchorage and to points beyond. They herded us onto buses for the short drive into town. On the way out of the airport, we passed by a half-dozen or so old junker DC-3 aircraft, all sitting out fully exposed. They were obviously being used for spare parts to keep others going. They all had key bits and pieces missing. A rudder here, and engine there, ... Resourcefulness seems to be an essential characteristic in this part of the world. By 5:00 we were checked into an average business person’s hotel in the middle of town called the Westmark. It was then that we found out that HAL must have had at least a hundred other customers there at the same time, spread out in three different hotels. All were starting Tour #19 that day. The 30-40 people we had seen at the airport were only those that had arrived on our particular aircraft. Judging by all the buses we saw driving around town, HAL was not alone. Princess Cruises (and maybe others too that we never learned about) had their own, approximately parallel tours going at the same time in their own hotels. It was apparent that this tour was going to be a big logistical exercise in bulk movement of people. Such tours must be a gold rush in their own right. We could all have been at Skagway, heading out on the Chilkoot Trail for White Pass. Grayline, HAL, Princess, et al, have managed to market Alaska into this river of humanity heading down the Trail of Tours. They and who knows how many local shopkeepers pan their living out of it.

The weather in Fairbanks was sunny and warm- well into the high-70’s. The only air-conditioning in the hotel was an open window and a table top fan in each room. With nothing else to do that day, we walked around town. We learned that Fairbanks is a town of roughly 25000 to 30000 people built in the middle of a large valley next to the Tanana River. The land around town is forested with a roughly even mix of smallish birch and evergreen trees. The evergreens consist of mostly of black spruce, with a sprinkling of white spruce, and a few hemlock trees. Black spruce is a rather ratty looking tree whose bark is nearly black (hence the name). The permafrost limits the size that trees are able to grow to not much more than 20 feet high for the most mature, with the majority less. They say Fairbanks only gets about 14 inches of precipitation in an average year. That accounted for the many buildings we saw with flat topped roofs. That may be, but what a 14 inches it must be. The buildings all have a weather worn look, sort of similar to the look of buildings on the northern California coast. The choice of construction materials looked pretty much like you’d see anywhere else. But we noticed that all over town, the concrete curbs were all chipped up. The same on concrete used in buildings. The only reason I could think of is freeze expansion of residual water in the concrete. There were many buildings that still had their Christmas decoration lights hung. As near as we could tell, these lights always stay up. Considering that putting them up and taking them down appropriately for the season is a discretionary task done in the dark at about -30 degrees, I can see why folks are in no hurry to take them down.

We walked past an old 2-story motel from the 50’s or 60’s that was painted light blue (cinder block construction with the metal rails upstairs. Upstairs, in an end unit was a lawyer’s office with a sign on the outside of the building advertising his services. I wondered what his rental agreement with the motel is. A week- to- week agreement would allow for short notice mobility, if necessary. The look of the place suggested he’d been there for a while longer. Who knows- maybe he owns the place? It was certainly a scene right out of a sleazy detective story.

At this time of year, the sun goes down at about 11:30PM, and comes back up at about 2:30AM. In between, it never gets any darker than that twilight condition when people are turning on their car headlights. Fairbanks is the home of several companys’ farthest north outposts, and they sell T-shirts advertising so. They include Denny’s restaurants (we only drove past it, and took the word of the bus driver. We didn’t actually go in, let alone eat there.), McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Harley Davidson, and probably others too that I don’t remember. The local Harley Davidson place has especially cool T-shirts for wearing to the Hawg Smoke Café, or wherever. They say they take orders either via their 800 telephone number, or by mail, or by their clever Internet address at www.mosquitonet.com/~harley-d. Looking that one up shows pictures of what the T-shirt design options available.

The following morning, they rounded us all up, loaded us onto buses again and drove us all out of town a couple of miles to the river’s edge where a locally prominent family named the Binkley’s own and operate three stern wheel drive riverboats. They’ve been doing it since the Alaska Gold Rush, and it was obvious from the operation that the Binkleys’ have earned a comfortable living from it. This boat was freshly painted with lots of polished brass and electronic gadgetry. They started around the turn of the century by moving cargo around the state that was in growing demand for the Gold Rush. Today, they say they still do that, but I think they do better mining gold from the tourist traffic. These boats could easily be at home on the Mississippi. They get $40/per tourist, and the boat was easily big enough to carry at least 8 bus loads of customers at one time. The idea is to load all the tourists onto the boat, and it tours up and down the river as a professional sounding commentator offers his locally colorful interpretations over the PA system. The boat only draws about three feet of water so is supposed to be especially suited for rivers which are wide and shallow. But they’re having a small problem with El Nino. They had a below average amount of snow last winter in the area, and there’s barely enough water in the river to float that boat. As a result, they were only able to take the boat down river for a few hundred yards, turn the boat around, and head back to the dock. The problem with that is that stern wheelers don’t have reverse. They had to turn the boat around. But with the level down, the river is just about as wide as the boat is long. So turning around means dragging the bottom on the bow and stern. They didn’t get stuck, but we did wonder. Another inch less of water might have had us hung.

During our brief mini-cruise, they had set up a demo with a local bush pilot. As we came to his place along the river bank, the boat’s commentator wondered something along the lines of, "Let’s see if Mr. Bush Pilot is home, boys and girls." And by golly, he came out of the house with his own hand-held microphone tied in to the boat’s PA system and told us about all the swell things such pilots do in Alaska. He got into his little red, single engine airplane, started it up and was airborne in the length of less than a football field. He flew around the boat and tree-tops and landed again in the same space, on approach threading the needle between two house rooftops and one of those backyard trampolines by inches. After docking, they thoughtfully let us spend a few minutes in the Binkley’s gift shop for the usual tourist stuff. We considered one clever T-shirt which said, "Women adore me, Fish fear me." but we didn’t get it.

Back on the buses, we drove down river (because the boat couldn’t get there) to a dog sled kennel owned and operated by Susan Butcher, the woman who won the Iditarod Race four times. She has about 75 dogs in summer training. They’re trained from puppies to work as a team and respond to the owner’s directions. For summer training, they have weighted dogsleds on wheels. The dogs get hooked up into the sled harness and just can’t contain their excitement because they know they’re about to get to go. The teams go tearing as hard as they can around a large dirt oval track laid out along the river side. The people giving the talk and demo said that the dogs learn the commands for GO, LEFT and RIGHT in about two days, but the one for WHOA takes a couple of years. That’s the primary reason they put a senior dog in the lead position. But even then, if a musher lets go of the sled, he can’t count on the dogs stopping to wait for him. They might be waiting at the next race checkpoint, but then again, … They also said that control of the dogs is always somewhat tenuous if the dogs get distracted by a rabbit or something else interesting crossing in front of them, so an unplanned side trip can be part of the territory. While we were there we saw a beaver out in the river adding some sticks to his house. After an hour there, we loaded back onto the buses and drove another couple of miles down river to an Indian fishing village.

This place was a recreation of a diffuse village spread across about 5 acres used seasonally by local Indians during the salmon run. Judging from the number of buildings, my guess is that about 6 or 8 families would stay there for most of the summer, or as long as the salmon lasted, taking as much as they needed to carry them through the winter. They had a rustic community of wooden huts for living in, cleaning and drying fish, and some pens for keeping a few caribou. For the tourists, they have local college kids (Fairbanks has one of the larger campuses of the U of A) of native descent working there in native clothing to give brief talks on how life there must have been. One of them demonstrated how to clean a salmon. She started with a fish that must have weighed 8-10 pounds and had that whole fish cleaned and ready to hang on the drying racks in less than 10 seconds. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Another student gave a talk about the relative merits of different kinds of furs for different purposes. Some furs are better for outer linings on coats, whereas another species is preferred for the inner lining and yet another is preferred around the face because it’s softer and has the unique property of not freezing even if wet. She held up an ermine skin. This one was ivory white, and about the size of a ferret. She said they seasonally change color. She said the local joke is to refer to them as Texas polar bears.

So then we all loaded back onto the buses for a brief stop at the trans-Alaska pipeline as it passes near Fairbanks. The pipe is 48 inches in diameter and claims to carry 20% of the US’s domestic oil production. Some portions are above ground and others below. The pipeline is intentionally made very flexible to allow for earth movement either from earthquakes or from local loss of permafrost. The above ground portions are supported about eight feet off the ground by steel supports driven into the ground. The oil is transported warm, so special insulation and devices called heat pipes had to be used to ensure that heat did not get conducted into the ground. Also, in case of earthquake, the pipe is free to float as much as two feet on special teflon skids on top of the steel supports.

By this time is was about 3:00PM and everyone was getting hungry. So we all loaded back on the buses for a late lunch and tour of a big gold dredge. Lunch consisted of a family style meal of miner’s beef stew and biscuits served at long picnic tables in a mess house made of log construction. Dessert was said to be bread pudding, but some wise guy who will remain nameless cried out, "My God! This is moose turd pie. … It’s good though." From there, we went outside to see the gold dredge. This was a floating barge about the size of a good sized house with a conveyor belt of heavy buckets, all rusted and each about the size of a wheelbarrow. This conveyor would scoop up the earth from the bottom of the local pond, and filter out the gold. The process was not much different from gold panning although on a big, industrial basis. It looked like a dangerous place to work. It ceased operation during WWII, so OSHA never got a chance to look it over. The tour guide said that when it was operating, it was so noisy that it could be heard 10 miles away in Fairbanks. Just about everyone who worked there suffered permanent hearing loss. Near the end of the tour, they had some long troughs of water. Each tourist was handed a cloth bag of ordinary looking dirt and a pan, and invited to try his hand. Between the two of us, Jill and I managed to collect a dozen or so little flakes of gold. We took them into this stop’s tourist gift shop where they weigh findings and learned we had found about $12 worth. The dredging/gold collecting process they used there could have been a little too fine in some cases. If a piece of rock larger than the size of a large golf ball got into the dredge and which contained some ore, it might have been missed, and passed out the back of the dredge to join the mountains of tailings. I rummaged around for a few minutes there, and found one such piece of white quartz with what looks to me like a metallic, small, half-inch long vein of gold (it might be pyrite). I brought it home. The water troughs set up for the tourists to try panning merit a footnote. A look at the end of each revealed that they had been manufactured about 20 years ago by Lockheed under a US Government contract. We could see that if two of them were put together like a clamshell, they’d be just about the right length and diameter to contain an ICBM missile. As I mentioned, successful Alaskans tend to be resourceful.

We got back to town about 6:00. Along the way, we noticed that frost heaves are an obvious problem on the highways outside of town. But there within Fairbanks, we saw none of the kind. I don’t know why. Jill decided to take a nap, so I took a walk around town and found a store that specialized in a combination of sporting goods and work clothes. It was a good sized store. I never saw so much cold weather clothing in all my life. They had entire racks full of different styles and weights of bib overalls, and wool shirts and outer coats of varying materials and features, most with hoods, but some without. They had an entire wall full of more styles of gloves and mittens than I could count. They had similar quantities of hats and boots. Later that evening, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant and found a custom we had not noticed before. In Alaska restaurants, the custom for bringing bread to the table is with the main course, rather than at the beginning of the meal such as we’re accustomed to here. We may not have noticed at all except that we asked the waitress to bring some when we were in the middle of our salads, and she seemed surprised and asked, "You mean you want some now?" We got our bread with no further incident, but from them on, we watched that and found it generally true.

The local Fairbanks newspaper had some interesting items. Like many other’s, this is a small town newspaper.

Item- Someone is organizing an event called the "Challenge Alaska Glacier Dash". This seems to be a relay team event. Team entries must contain a downhill skier, a mountain runner, a roller-blader, a 3 kilometer distance runner, a mountain biker, a wheelchair participant, plus two normal people for a three-legged race. Barbecue follows. (It was not clear from the article if the barbecue figures into the teams’ scoring.)

Item- In July, the annual Moose Dropping Festival is staged by the Talkeetna Historical Society. The gathering starts on a Friday with the Mountain Mother Contest. Competing women are fitted up with dolls on their backs and then run an obstacle course, split wood, cast a fishing lure for accuracy, and pop a balloon using a bow and arrow. The following day, in the featured event, participants are allowed nine moose nuggets which are thrown at a paper moose target. Judging is based on a combination of style and accuracy. Saturday evening climaxes it all with the Moose Ball and softball tournament. (The article doesn’t say so, but I assume participants are requested to clean up some between events.)

Item- Someone has a need to hire a "Belly Dump and EDP driver". The preferred candidate must have at least 5 years of experience and a clean record. (We’re not sure what that is, but it does invite speculation.)

The next morning, they loaded us all onto buses again for a one or two mile trip to the railroad station. We all got off and stood in line for seating assignments on the train that runs south towards Denali National Park. Once we got on, we found it was big and comfortable with lots of window space for viewing. It was also fully loaded with passengers who all sat upstairs, and there were rest rooms and a small restaurant located downstairs. Again it was mostly staffed by chipper college students recruited from Northwest area schools. Each car had a more senior person (the car boss) who took up station at one end of the car and kept a running commentary on the PA system about what to see on the left, and what to see on the right. Our car happened to have a retirement age German couple who spoke very little English and who made a big fuss about not wanting to be seated at the end of the car. They insisted on being in the center of the car so they could see and take pictures both ahead and behind. But that meant moving someone else. She had a 35mm camera with lots of lenses. He spent much of his time with a video camera that looked expensive up against one eye. Eventually, they got their way, and with the floor show over, we all settled down for a pleasant trip. The ride from Fairbanks to the stop at Denali National Park took about four hours through mostly tundra landscape with lots of standing water all around. The road bed was raised on crushed rock, like most railroads. I’ll bet there were/are permafrost issues with that road bed, but I don’t know the magnitude. There were only occasional signs of habitation. One of those was a large, concrete bridge support over a river in the middle of nowhere. On the side of the bridge, someone had spray painted "THUNDER COOKIES". We weren’t sure what those are. Another was a small frontier looking town of about 500-1000 people called Fairy Moon. The local civic planners were unfortunate enough to put half the town on one side of a good size river, and the other on the other side. There are only three options for getting from one side to the other. One is a boat, but the river is kind of fast and cold, so not recommended. Another is to get into one’s pickup truck and drive 20 miles down river to the nearest road crossing, and then 20 miles back up to town. (As near as we could tell, just about everybody has a pickup truck there. This is a conclusion not based on any scientific sampling, but a general impression. We didn’t think to study whether one brand of pickup sells better than another.). Needless to say, that option is not popular. The third is to use the railroad bridge (which conveniently runs right through town) as a pedestrian bridge. The train only runs twice a day (one north-bound, and the other south-bound). The locals all know the trains’ schedule. So that became the preferred choice. What’s the big deal? Well, the railroad didn’t like the town’s choice. They had concerns about trespassing on railroad property, and liability if a local were injured by a passing train. So the railroad got an injunction prohibiting the locals from using the bridge. That upset the locals. In protest, for the last ten years on July 4, every Fairy Moon resident lines up twice along the railroad tracks and they all simultaneously moon the train as it passes by. In between the morning and afternoon trains, they hold a big town barbecue. Maybe they could start a petition to change the name of the river from Nenana to Moon.

About noon, after passing some Dall sheep high up on a cliff side, and a cow moose along a creek next to the road bed, we pulled in to the town of Denali. It serves as the main entry point into the park. It sits just outside the park entrance and has motels, restaurants, a variety of tour guide services, and the usual array of tourist gift shops (much like West Yellowstone, but much lower in population). We stayed at a nice mountain hotel called the McKinley Chalet, located down low in a pretty mountain valley right along the Nenana River. It reminded me of the rooms we get at the Jackson Lake Lodge. Mt. McKinley is not visible from anywhere I know of within that town. We had dinner that night in a big mess hall/dinner theater place where the waiter/actors put on a fun show with live music about settlement of the area during the Gold Rush. We had barbecue ribs, and salmon, corn, beans, and peach cobbler for dessert. This town is kind of spread out (for pedestrians) so the civic planners have a shuttle bus that runs what is supposed to be a scheduled loop through town. It’s also staffed by summer hires, most of whom haven’t been there very long yet at this point in the season. We learned the hard way (minor inconvenience) that this service (and maybe others too) runs on "-ish standard time". It’s a good idea to inquire locally what time the 10:30 shuttle bus leaves. In our case, it left at 10:15, about five minutes before we got there.

The next morning, we did our tourist duty and bought a few T-shirts. Then we got onto another bus for a wildlife tour into the Park. There’s only one road into the Park, and it’s mostly dirt. So to try and minimize wear and tear on it, the Park Service is very restrictive on the number of private vehicles allowed in. I’m told they manage it in much the same way wilderness permits are used in the lower 49 to limit hikers. The Park’s primary purpose, they say, is an animal preserve so in addition, they go to some trouble to ensure that the wild animals do not become familiar with the human form. Visitors are not supposed to get out of their vehicles at all except at certain, designated rest stops. So as a practical matter, most visitors go in the same way we did- via big school buses with school bus bench seats. Starting about noon, we spent the next nine or ten hours driving roughly 60 miles into the park, and then back again. It was a treat. We had beautiful, sunny weather (but sometimes cool). We could see Mt. McKinley off in the distance once we got about ten miles inside the park. The first time one sees that mountain leaves an impression. For most of the road into the park, the elevation is about 2000 feet. There are rivers and mountains and snow and beautiful, rough scenery all around. At more than 20,000 feet, McKinley sticks way up there. Another thing that surprised us is how quickly clouds would engulf the peak. Minute by minute, the view changed. It was almost as if the mountain was manufacturing its own weather. Over the course of the day, we saw more wildlife than I ever would have believed. I tried to keep a running census. As a minimum, we saw:

The German couple was on our bus. They insisted on sitting in the very front seats and wanted to stand up in the area ahead of the white line in the bus where only the driver is allowed. They complained about not being able to see if an animal was on the other side of the bus. They had a running, all-day battle with the poor lady who was our driver. She spoke no German, so getting them to behave included a fair amount of arm waving. Meanwhile, they motioned back, trying to get her to move this way and then that way so they could get a better view. At our point of maximum excursion into the Park, we were able to get off the bus. I picked up another souvenir quartz looking rock. On this entire trip, I only brought home three vacation rocks. Jill noted that sometime later, and thanked me for my restraint. The bus returned us to the hotel at about 10:30PM. The sun was just going down. The hotel’s coffee shop staff seems to be used to such late arrivals (thankfully) so we were able to get a bite to eat.

The bus driver told us that she and her husband live about 12 miles out of town in a small cabin. They stay there year round. Electricity provided by a utility company hasn’t yet made it to her area. She said that items needing refrigeration are kept in a cold box, a hole in the ground lined with wood. She said it keeps milk/dairy products really cold. Water comes from a hand pump. The get their heat from wood, and sometimes propane from a local tank. With that, we noticed some other cabins near the railroad having solar cells on the roof.

Spring arrived here in this part of the world in earnest in the last two days. Locals use an event they refer to as "breakup" as their indicator. That’s the day that the ice gripping the local river breaks loose. They say that can, and often does happen with surprising suddenness. Some towns set up a betting pool during the winter for the exact day and hour it occurs. The pool winner is decided by when a designated stick frozen into the ice has moved at least 100 feet. Not having ever seen that, Jill and I don’t identify with it. Instead, we use the budding green leaves litmus test. When we arrived in Denali, the trees and bushes were mostly bare. But during our stay of two nights, they turned distinctly green, with fresh, young growth.

On the morning of Friday, May 29, we checked out of the hotel. Leslie got up early because she had a reservation on one of those bush planes to see the park from the air. When we caught up with her, she said it hadn’t quite gone the way she had intended. She mentioned something about a close encounter with a belly dump, but we didn’t ask for details. Late in the morning we joined hundreds of fellow travelers in herding onto buses to take us to the train station so we could wait in line to be herded onto the train for the trip to Anchorage (about nine hours away). Along the way, we saw spectacular views of Mt. McKinley.

Our southbound train passed the other, northbound train along here. Shortly before passing, the car boss tutored us all on distinctive ways of waving at other people called the moose wave, and the caribou wave. They’re best learned by demonstration, but roughly involve putting one’s thumbs on various parts of one’s head and wiggling the fingers. We all did that to the other train as we passed. They did the same at us.

Also along the way, we passed the city of Sherman, AK, population 2. This city only consists of one building- a couple’s house with a pickup truck parked in a dirt driveway in the middle of nowhere. That building is proudly marked in big letters painted on the side for all on the railroad to see as the City Hall. As we passed, the city’s entire population was out in the back yard planting a vegetable garden. Both of them waved. We waved back. The town was named after the Mayor For Life, a retired railroad employee. We heard that the couple had a daughter who moved away some years ago, but then decided to move back. She managed to buy adjacent land for building her own house, and applied for annexation into the city. The matter was put to a vote and the count turned out to be 1-1. Since that was not a majority, the application was rejected. But such a vote makes it impossible to keep a secret ballot. It seems Sherman was concerned that having two women around might represent a united voting block that he didn’t want to contend with.

We arrived in Anchorage at about 7:00PM, but by the time we got on and off the bus and checked into the downtown high rise Sheraton Hotel, it was about 9:00PM. We found a bite of dinner and called it a day.

For the next morning (May 30), the tour company had thoughtfully set up a guided, narrated bus tour of the city for us. We said "No thanks", and spent the day walking around the downtown area instead. Downtown Anchorage is a good size for walking around in. It’s also a city whose downtown area is remaining vital and alive. There’s lots of shopping, and restaurants and galleries. It rained a little bit in the morning, but not long enough to be much trouble. There was an air show going on at next door Elmendorf AF Base. They had the Thunderbirds and F117s and other fancy aircraft showing off over both the Base and the city. Jill bought herself a knit wool scarf made of really soft hair from buffalo-looking arctic animals called muskox. This material (once it comes off the animal is called Qiviut) is as pleasant to feel as cashmere. There’s a coop of women in Alaska called "Oomingmak" who earn their living from these animals. They collect the hair which is seasonally shed. Once they gather a minimum of 500 pounds, they send it off to a mill that accepts short run orders where it’s made into yarn. The yarn is returned to members of the coop who knit it into scarves, hats, and things, which are then sold through their own small store in Anchorage. Each tribe has its own trademark knitting pattern, so people who know about such things can look at an item and will know within a couple of miles where it was made.

For dinner that night, we ate at a fun, energetic restaurant and microbrewery called the Glacier Ice House. I only mention it because the two functions are built right into each other. All the pipes and ducting and stuff necessary for operating a microbrewery are a part of the restaurant’s decorating theme. The beer on tap is fresh and unpasteurized and comes right out of the big stainless steel aging tanks and into the tap. I had a summer ale that tasted really fresh. It was unfiltered and had distinct taste of lemon. I think some people call that a shandy. It was good. Walking back to the hotel that evening, we stopped at one of the many Alaskan craft galleries and I bought a carved bear made out of pretty, brown stone. On the way out, we were passed by a truck advertising the colorfully named "Grubsteak Land & Auction Company".

On the morning of May 31, (you guessed it) we climbed back onto buses headed this time for Seward where we would join our cruise ship. On the way, we made a terrific side trip to a place called Portage Glacier. Like most, this glacier has been in retreat for the last hundred years or so . When it started its retreat, it left a large moraine and behind that has grown Portage Lake. The water is so full of glacial silt that it looks milky white. Because it’s so cold and opaque, we were told that nothing lives in the lake. It was there that we saw our first real icebergs. The weather was clear, but cool (in the high 30s to low 40’s). There’s a boat that now operates on the lake called the MS Ptarmigan which takes visitors out for a tour right up near the glacier as it drops off into the lake. It’s hard to judge distances there because there are few familiar references, but the boat stopped at a distance of what I believe to be about a hundred yards away from the face of the glacier, and the skipper turned off all the engines so the only sound was the wind and camera shutters clicking. The ice cliff face loomed high overhead about 150 feet above the water level. Its surface was rougher than I ever would have imagined. But we weren’t there for more than a minute before we realized that the glacier makes noises of its own. It pops and cracks as the ice shifts and breaks. Some of the sounds are like rifle shots. We waited there for about an awed hour hoping to see a piece of the glacier break off into the lake (called calving). We saw two relatively small ones. Back on the bus, the driver kept up a lively discourse on the PA system of colorful, local anecdotes, and history. He recited from memory the unabridged version of "The Cremation of Sam Legree (sp?)". I was impressed. Another thing he advised us is that the town of Seward is not much to get excited about, and that by far, the biggest thing in town was going to be our cruise ship. In fact, you could put the town on the ship and still have room left over. He was exactly right. We came around a bend in the road at about 5:00PM and there it was about a mile ahead of us- clean and blue and white, and really big.

The MS Ryndam is 720 feet long, and about 101 feet wide at is maximum. It displaces 55000 tons, making it a mid-size ship by today’s cruise ship standards. Its passenger capacity is 1498 persons with a crew of 604. In addition to the main propellers, it has side thrusters in the bow and stern so it can move itself sideways in the water for docking. It also has dynamic stabilizers to keep the ship from rolling too much. These are fins in the water connected to a system that senses rolling of the ship. The fins are computer controlled and adjusted in real time to counter-act the tendency of the ship to roll, keeping it steady. We walked into a big tent on the dock next to the ship where they had some check-in and security stops (like at an airport). After those, we headed for the gangplank to climb aboard, ready to explore. It was then that we discovered that such cruise ships include a staff photographer to take photos (for subsequent sale to the passengers) along the way. Still in awe of everything around us, he motioned, told us to step over here next to a "Welcome Aboard" sign, and look at him. Before we knew it, he’d taken our picture. We looked rather rumpled and in need of a shower (having been on the road all day), and didn’t even get a chance to comb our hair. Oh well. That may have been the intent- bedraggled, worn passengers before, then calm, and sophisticated after getting on board and settled in (I guess). We climbed up the gangplank and were welcomed by a smiling officer who had someone escort us up several decks to our cabin, room 178 on B-deck, located just about amidship on the port side (selected because we figured it would have a good view on a south-bound cruise). We’d arrived!

The room was about the size of a small motel room, and seemed to be a model of efficiency. It had plenty of closet and drawer space, so the room didn’t look cluttered once we’d moved in. It was thoughtfully laid out, and had a balcony so we could walk outside and enjoy the view or test the weather whenever we wanted. We paid extra for that, but we decided in about one minute that it was worth it. I paced the interior portion of our room off and estimate its size to be about 9.5 feet wide, and about 29 feet long. The outside balcony was as wide as the cabin, and another 5 or 6 feet long, so there was plenty of room for two people plus deck furniture. Separating the balcony from the room were full length picture windows. The closet contained a safe that we could select the combination for, so jewelry and cash could be kept secure without needing to carry it.

We got ourselves unpacked and finished moving in at about 8:00PM. That was just in time to attend a mandatory lifeboat drill. Everyone was required to put on bright orange life vests found in each cabin and report to a particular life boat identified for us by a notice posted in our cabin. There, an officer checked our names off and we listened to PA announcements about what to do in the unlikely event of an emergency. The "all clear" sounded and we were released in time to have dinner in the large, elegant, 2-story dining room with fancy draperies and thick carpeting (located in the stern, with big picture windows all around) at about 9:00PM. A smartly dressed maitre ‘d hotel showed us our table. It was set with crisp linen, crystal glasses, and Rosenthal china (commercial grade). Waiters appeared to fill our water glasses and give us menus for what would be the first of a five course dinner- appetizer, salad, soup, entree, and then dessert. The food was comparable to what one would get at a nice restaurant, and the service was wonderful. If someone wanted something a little out of the ordinary, or seconds, hey- no problem. The staff was anxious to please. The only thing they charged extra for was for drinks from the bar- liquor, wine, beer, and soft drinks. A coke was $1.60, a mixed drink was between $4- $5, and a moderate bottle of California wine was about $20. Everything else was included.

After dinner, we explored the ship some. We learned that it has more to offer than we’d ever be able to take advantage of in only one week. It offers live shows several times a day in a large, two-story theater/lounge in the bow. It has a movie theater showing recent films listed in the ship’s newspaper provided to each cabin each day. A crew member stands in front of the theater entrance handing out bags of popcorn to anyone who wants one. There must be a half-dozen different bars scattered around, many having live music of different kinds. They have a casino, and an ice cream parlor so passengers can have freshly made ice cream just about any time they want, a health spa, exercise equipment, boutiques and shops on board, a beauty parlor, several swimming pools and jacuzzis, and on and on. A promenade deck all in teak lumber went around the ship on one deck. It had freshly varnished deck chairs all around, and for persons wanting to sit outside, crew members would come by to offer lap blankets and hot drinks. The deck was easily wide enough so that four people could walk side-by-side without feeling crowded. One complete lap around the deck was a quarter mile. Other public areas also felt very spacious. In the entire week, there were only a few, brief times that I had a sense of feeling crowded on this ship (one was the lifeboat drill). There was never any line that we saw to get seated in the dining room.

After the first night’s dinner, we made a deal with Lacey and Leslie to meet them for breakfast at 8:00AM and returned to our cabin. We found the sheets turned down, and a chocolate waiting on both pillows. My tuxedo was there on a hanger waiting for me. The only minor trouble I found with it was that the shoes were a little too large, but the cabin steward was able to get them exchanged before we departed port. The shower felt wonderful with fresh, soft water. We settled into bed. The beds were firm. Sometime before we went to sleep, ship left port at Seward and headed out. But we were surprised to see that it was so quiet that we had no sense of exactly when the ship’s engines were started. The only cue we had of being underway was a slight , gentle rolling motion from the ocean and a soft vibration in the deck of our cabin, the frequency being too low to hear.

The next morning (June 1), we awoke just in time to find the ship entering College Fjord. The ocean was glassy smooth, the air still, the weather cool and clear. We were the only ship in sight. College Fjord is roughly two miles wide (distances were hard to gauge) and ten miles long. A series of at least a half dozen independent glaciers end their journey here. The ship sailed slowly up to the head of the fjord as we enjoyed breakfast in the dining room. I had fresh fruit, and an omelet with mushrooms and reindeer sausage. It was good. There, we stopped and enjoyed the view for about an hour. Wow!! By late morning, it was time to move on, so the ship turned around and sailed out the way it came in, and then headed southeast out across the Gulf of Alaska for our first full day at sea.

We had lots to do. The ship’s daily newspaper reported that at certain times, there were activities available such as shuffleboard up on the Lido deck, scarf folding techniques, bingo, how to pack luggage, napkin folding, and others. We declined all of them. The newspaper also said that tonight is the captain’s welcome aboard dinner (formal wear required), so we had to get ready. I talked Jill into treating herself, so she got an appointment early in the afternoon at the beauty parlor to have her hair done. I noticed that the theater was going to show the latest James Bond movie so that’s where I headed. Near the end of the movie, I decided to leave to see if I could find Jill. Just as I was heading out the door, I saw movement in the corner of my eye. A strange lady was sticking out her arm trying to grab me. I looked. It was Jill! She was finished at the beauty shop and had gone to see James Bond too, but because she was late, had sat right next to the door. She looked good! She looked real good! So I survived the attack of the strange lady in the theater. We stopped laughing about the time the credits ended and we headed back to our cabin to dress for dinner. I opted for the black tuxedo jacket. It was then that I realized that I had a problem with my tuxedo rental. I had ordered black socks, but they had not been provided. I was completely dressed to the nines except I had no socks, so couldn’t put on my shoes. I called room service, and after a few minutes there was a knock on the door. A man with a petty officer’s uniform stood in front of me. He looked me in the eye, then scanned me down to the floor as if I were being inspected. When he got to my feet, he couldn’t help laughing. He handed me my black socks and departed, shaking his head on the way down the hall. Jill helped me tie my new bow tie, and we headed for the dining room for dinner at 8:00PM. The ship’s photographer was there to take our picture again. (We learned that this ship carries a staff of four photographers!)

Dining room seating is assigned by the maitre ‘d hotel. Once assigned, it doesn’t change for the rest of the cruise unless there is a special request. That allows passengers and the dining room staff to develop familiarity with each other. Lacey, Leslie, Jill and I had been seated at a table for eight people. We shared the table with two other, retired couples from Atlanta, GA. Both seemed like bullish, executive types. One was a retired vice-president at a big insurance company named Safeco. The other was a CPA and seemed to have an interest in taxes. I would say that they fit the average passenger profile on the ship- mostly older, active, upscale people. Dinner conversation for the cruise was pleasant enough, but a little forced at times. Our two groups did not have much in common. Their idea of a swell evening was to go to the casino. For dinner that night, I ordered an appetizer of crab cakes, lobster bisque soup, a caesar salad, and filet mignon.

On the morning of June 2, we awoke at about 7 o’clock to an overcast sky and lots of white caps on the ocean. The ship was rolling as much as we’d ever see it during the entire cruise, although not enough for anyone to appear sick. It just made walking down the halls meant keeping one hand ready to put up against the wall for support. As we rounded a point called Cape Spencer and entered more protected water, we entered Glacier Bay National Park. It’s accessible only by float plane or by sea. It encompasses all the land around the bay as well as the bay itself which is roughly 50 miles long today. The complete length is beautiful, but the portion we tourists think of as Glacier Bay is at the head of the bay, and consists of two narrow fjords about two miles wide and ten miles long, guarded at the entrance by Russell Island. The local rules require that cruise ships such as ours have a ranger on board so as we entered the Bay, we slowed to about ten knots and were met by a small shuttle boat from the Park Headquarters who transferred two staff members (a ranger and a naturalist) onto our ship. With that, we proceeded in. We also learned during an introductory slide show by the naturalist that the National Park Service gets $6. per person for visitors coming into the park via ship, making this one of the few national parks able to operate on a self sustaining basis. The NPS limits the number of cruise ships authorized to enter the Bay. They allow up to two large cruise ships per day (one in the morning, and one in the afternoon), plus a maximum of 25 smaller boats per day. That helps ensure that people don’t end up loving the park to death. With the cruise industry doing well these days, and Alaska being a popular destination, there is plenty of demand for those available cruise ship reservations. The NPS allocates them (so the ranger said) to those cruise lines that have the best records for environmental cleanliness. I don’t know how that’s administered, but it sounded interesting.

Before arriving there, I read a story about Glacier Bay written by John Muir. He visited the Bay around 1890. He wrote that the first European explorer to visit and record this part of the world was a fellow named Vancouver. He first came to the area in around 1780. Vancouver was said to be a good observer, and made excellent charts and records of his exploration. But Vancouver made no mention of such a bay in his journals. By the time Muir visited, the glaciers had retreated something like 40 miles to Russell Island, which is as far into the Bay as Muir was able to go then. Since then, the glaciers have retreated another ten miles or so to what we see today. As we proceeded from the Bay’s entrance towards the head of the Bay, there was a clearly visible trend- the forest gets younger and younger until near Russell Island there is no more green. It’s just rock and ice (with occasional small patches of bushes), blue sky, and glassy smooth sea water. In their own way, such areas are themselves severe deserts.

We arrived at the head of the Bay by late morning. The good weather we’d brought with us all along the trip so far did not fail us. The captain pulled the ship up to within a few hundred yards of the face of the glacier and turned off the engines. The ranger said the cliff face here was as high as 250 feet. I took her word for it (again, familiar references were non-existent). It was clear they were huge. These glaciers, like those we’d already seen, also popped and cracked, sometimes like thunder. We all spent the day on the bow of the ship. In the early afternoon, crew members set up a table on the bow where they offered hot drinks and cheese and wine. About mid-afternoon, the four of us wandered upstairs to have ice cream sundaes. It was a wonderful day. Except for just one small matter- as we enjoyed the view, I realized I was coming down with a sore throat. Jill said she too felt like a cold might be coming on. Damn. By mid-afternoon, it was time to move on, so the captain headed back out the way we’d come in and by about 8:00PM transferred the NPS pair back to their own shuttle boat.

For dinner, we had freshly baked sun-dried tomato bread in the bread basket, and I ordered an appetizer of gravlax, the soup of the day was New England clam chowder, a salad, and I ordered fettucine alfredo with jumbo prawns for my entree. Jill had the prime rib. I don’t remember what we had for dessert- the selections changed every day, and they were always good. Dessert options always included at least one (and usually more) with chocolate, so Jill was never disappointed. Meanwhile, the ship made a slow course for the town of Sitka, which we’d visit the next day.

We woke up the next morning with the ship anchored in a harbor ringed with small islands, all of them covered with tall evergreen forest. There were homes built on several islands that looked like places rich people use for vacation retreats. The weather promised to be another pretty day- this one warm enough to be short sleeve weather. After breakfast, persons interested in going ashore were requested to go down into the ship to near the water line. There, we stepped across into a shuttle boat that would ferry us to a dock at the town center. From there, we walked ashore. As we headed up the ramp, an officer reminded us that shuttle boats would be available to/from the ship every 15 minutes or so, and to be back aboard by not later than 5:30PM because the ship was going to lift anchor and move on at 6:00PM. OK, no problem. Sitka is a pretty little town of several thousand people. It has a strong Russian influence. Today, it appears to be affluent, although highly reliant on the cruise ship industry for income. There were so many bald eagles soaring overhead, and sitting in the trees that they looked like pigeons or crows here in our part of the world. All the azaleas and rhododendrons were in full bloom. We spent the day wandering in and out of tourist shops and visiting the Alaska Raptor Rehabilitation Center. This is a place set up to care for injured eagles, owls, falcons, etc. It claims to be non-profit and accepts no government support. There, we learned that they get birds shipped to them from all over the North America. The majority has been injured as a result of collision with something- often electrical wires. They also get gun shot injuries, but they said those are less common. Of the birds they get, roughly a third can be rehabilitated so they can be released into the wild. Another third’s injuries are sufficient so that they would not be able to survive if released. Those are kept at the center or placed at other zoos all the country. On the day we visited, they were showing three owls, a peregrine falcon, and at least three eagles. A typical one was an eagle which had hit an electrical wire and had severed its left wing near the wrist. It will never be able to fly again. So, it will have a comfortable home in the care of the ARRC, or some other zoo if they’re able to place it. As is typical of such organizations, they’re always looking for support, but it was not a hard sell. We bought T-shirts from their gift shop. We also spent a couple of hours walking through pretty, old growth forest dedicated as a park around the town with totem poles placed all over. There must have been at least 20 of them spread around the park on various trails. Some of them were surprisingly tall, and carved from head to toe. Each totem pole was different with varying symbols and sequences of eagles, ravens, bears, frogs, man, woman, salmon, killer whales, and others. Some were brightly painted, but not all. Later that day, we bought our major souvenir for the trip- a turned wood bowl by a local dentist and part time artist. We also stopped in at the local pharmacy and got some Contac for our colds. By about 5 o’clock, it was time to shuttle back to the ship for afternoon ice cream sundaes and get ready for dinner and that evening’s show in the lounge. I know its rough duty, but somebody had to do it.

The following day was similar except this time in Juneau. We were tied up at the dock there by the time we got up. After breakfast, we headed in to town. It’s built into the side of mountains, so there are a lot of hills to climb up or down. The mountains, in turn, are surrounded by glaciers so that’s why Juneau is the only state capital one cannot drive to. But there is a road system with plenty of cars and buses and such. Its just that they don’t go anywhere beyond a couple of miles outside of town. Juneau is like being on an island. The cars all got there via ferry along the Alaska Maritime Highway, starting in the Puget Sound area. We were told that getting a car to Juneau adds about $750 to the cost. Buses and recreational vehicles can be more- they charge by vehicle length. The price of gasoline was about the same as we pay here in Southern California (about $1.25 per gallon at this writing). We signed up for a local tour to the nearby Mendenhall Glacier. It too was tremendous. But they were starting to look alike. Juneau has the feel of a government town- one of the brochures we picked up told us that about half of the city’s 30,000 population is employed by either federal, state, or local government. There are many in Alaska who consider Juneau as an ivory tower which is not in touch with real state issues. Also, it costs locals a lot of money to get to Juneau from the rest of the state. So there has been a recurring idea to move the capital. Several years ago, the idea went as far as to choose a particular site somewhere between Anchorage and Fairbanks (but closer to Anchorage, of course since their larger size gives them a little more weight). Then somebody did a study to add up how much it would really cost to move the capital. That included the costs to put up new buildings, expand local roads and other infrastructure, relocate people, get new stationary printed, …. The number added up to be several billion dollars. When it was put to a general vote, the public said they don’t need it that much. So Juneau is it for the foreseeable future, mostly due to lack of alternatives. By that afternoon, Jill and I were both feeling tired out by colds so we retired to our cabin and took a long nap.

The next day was similar too except this time in Ketchikan. We arrived about mid-morning and tied up at the dock. That morning, the ship’s kitchen was opened for a tour. This was another of the few times I felt like the ship was crowded. There must have been hundreds of people who wanted to take that tour. So, single file, we all paraded through the polished stainless steel kitchen. It was all very organized, roughly in the shape of a large letter U with entrance and exit at the tops of the U. There were special circular doors at both so that persons entering could not have unanticipated collisions with someone else exiting at the same time. The kitchen was physically organized into departments. The first (as we entered) was the wine cellar (actually a wall full of stainless steel refrigerators sized specially to fit wine bottles). Next were dishwashing areas separated for glassware and silverware vs. dishware. . At the bottom of the U, we passed through an area for baking bread, and pastries and next to that was a special dishwashing area for pots, pans and other big pieces of equipment. On the other side of the U they have areas separated to prepare fish, vegetables, a grill for other meats, an area for soups and salads, and then an area for doing breakfast foods. Each area had at least a couple of people working in it. The executive chef told me that the kitchen employs about 85 people who staff it 24 hours a day. His office was in the middle of the U and was a glass walled booth, about 8 feet square with video monitors for areas he could not directly see. His office shares the middle of the U with an up and down escalator for staff members to efficiently go between the two dining room floors. In between each department, there were refrigerators for raw goods and holding racks for orders ready to be taken to the dining room. If there was a logic to this overall organization it was not apparent to me. I believe the way it works is that waiters bringing orders in from the dining room split the orders up and deliver them to the applicable preparation area of the kitchen. Then, he makes a second pass a short time later to collect the orders for delivery to the dining room. The executive chef told us that in an average day, his kitchen prepares and delivers something like 5000 meals.

After the kitchen tour, we left the ship to tour the town of Ketchikan. It has a western flavor drawn from their Gold Rush heritage. Near the dock, they have a tall rain gauge which claims they’ve had almost 200 inches of rain this season. But on this day, the weather was clear and sunny. In this maritime part of Alaska, the snow is gone and the weather feels mild. There are a lot of galleries and gift shops there. Many sell local Alaska made crafts. Others sell jewelry- some of it obviously intended for upscale cruise ship customers. There are at least three competing outfits that sell fur coats along the Trail of Tours. Jill and Leslie were both partial to the ones made with sheared beaver, but we agree we wouldn’t actually spend money on one. Most of these stores are clustered around the dock area where the cruise ships stop. Nearby is a colorful place called Creek Street. It was built on stilts over a stream during the Gold Rush as the local red light district. As far as we know, that business has been superseded by boutiques and jewelry stores. Entering any one of these shops always means answering the same icebreaker question- "Where are you folks from?" I got a little tired of that one. Like Sitka, Ketchikan has a lot of totem poles. These are an important part of the local natives’ heritage. We visited a place about a mile’s walk from town dedicated to the preservation and restoration of these things. The native woman who did the presentation said that many local tribes are matri-lineal (i.e., they trace their family line through the mother). Their society also incorporated a caste system. Totem poles were made to honor the elites. Untouchables are not supposed to be discussed.

Dinner tonight was scheduled to be the second formal night. I used the chance to try the white dinner jacket. Jill wore a turquoise blue dress with lots of sequins. We made a sharp looking couple. Needless to say, the ship’s photographers were on duty again. Jill and I both had an appetizer of foie gras, french onion soup, salad, and venison. Most others at our table had lobster. For dessert, they closed all the curtains in the dining room, and then all the waiters marched through carrying trays of baked Alaska illuminated with fourth of July type sparklers. That was fancy, and good too. Afterwards, we went to the lounge and enjoyed what I think was the best performance we saw there- a young magician who did most of the usual tricks with cards, doves, silk scarves, and sawing a lady in half, but managed to freshen each of them up with special little twists. He was good.

The last full day of our cruise was spent quietly (nursing colds) heading south along the inside passage between the island of Vancouver and the British Columbia mainland.

The policy on HAL ships is that tipping is purely optional, and I believe they mean it. For those who want to offer a gratuity to a crew member, it’s suggested that it be done during this evening. Plain white envelopes are available for discretion. In our case, we thought the dining room staff did a nice job, so we tipped them.

The highlight of that day was surely a special event they called their midnight dessert extravaganza. The kitchen staff spends considerable time over at least the previous two days preparing for this. Guests are encouraged to eat lightly for dinner that evening. The restaurant staff set up a huge, brightly lit buffet table with nothing but desserts. There must have been a hundred different choices and they all looked terrific. At the head of the line, they had a table top ice sculpture they’d carved that morning by the poolside. Sprinkled throughout the buffet, they had relief sculptures made from watermelons carved into eagles, and other wild animals. Wow! It was also one of those popular events that felt crowded to me. But it sure was easy to see why.

The following morning (Sunday, June 7) during breakfast, we docked in Vancouver. It’s a pretty city and from what little I’ve seen, has much to recommend. The cruise ship facility dock is right downtown. The buildings there are new and clean, and there are lots of shops and parks all around. It’s a downtown area like San Fransisco’s where people want to be there. Passengers disembarked according to a priority system determined by the timing of their travel arrangements. Lacey and Leslie had an earlier flight than we had, so turned in their room keys and got off the ship at about 10:00AM to catch the transfer bus to the airport. Our number was called about an hour later, and we too got on one last bus for a 40 minute drive to the airport.

The Canadian and US Governments have gotten together to combine the Customs and Immigration functions all into that one airport. It makes things easier on the arrival end in the US but there at the Vancouver Airport, makes for the longest gauntlet of checkpoints to have to pass through that I’ve ever seen. The first step is to grab one of those airport carts for carrying around luggage. Then we checked in with the airline for seating assignments. Next we had to go through a long line for US Immigration where we had to show proof of US citizenship. After that, we had to go through a separate checkpoint for US Customs (in case we had bought anything that needed to be declared). The next step was to pay a $10 "airport improvement" tax to the Canadian’s. Then we were able to check our luggage. Finally, a last checkpoint required us to show our receipts that our $10 tax had been paid, and we were cleared to enter the waiting area for our flight. An uneventful, non-stop flight on Alaska Airlines had us back at LAX by about 6:00PM. At the baggage claim area, Jill’s bags arrived, but mine was not to be found. Finally, the baggage conveyor stopped rolling and my bag was not there. That never happened to me before. I made a report at the service counter. Jill and I took the shuttle van home. I didn’t have much to unpack. Jill spent the next two evenings after work getting unpacked.

The next morning (Monday, June 8), we went back to work. But it didn’t take long to realize that my cold was going to get the better of me, and by noon, I decided to go home and sleep it off. Jill claimed she felt OK, so took no additional time off. Colds just seem to knock me down harder than her.

At about 11:00PM on Tuesday, just about the time we were about to turn out the light, the doorbell rang, and the gate rattled. A man from the airport was delivering my bag. He had no idea what it’s story was, but my dirty laundry all seemed to be there. Tags and stamps on my bag suggested that it had been diverted to American Airlines and something called Horizon Air, but those were just clues to a mystery I’m sure I’ll never get to the bottom of.

Now that we’ve been home a few days, we’ve had some time to reflect on a couple of postscripts:

• Seeing Alaska via a combination land and sea tour gives one a better sense of how huge Alaska really is. One would not get that same sense of size with a cruise only. Seeing some of the interior does not have to be done via cattle car tours such as this one. Independent travelers are also welcome.
• Alaskans, by and large, seem to be more polite than most other people (at least by Southern California standards). For example, if we wanted to cross the street in some town we were visiting, cars would often stop and give us the right of way. That simple, small courtesy has mostly been forgotten here in our area.
• We saw a few mosquitoes along the way so are able to say that they are indeed large, but they were so few that they were no trouble at all. The insect repellent we brought was never used.
• The bottle of 18-year old Glenlivet Single Malt Scotch came home nearly full. Lugging that along was not a successful idea.
• A gentle sense that the world is rolling slowly back and forth has persisted for both Jill and I for several days after getting off the ship.
• We are both glad to be back home now where it actually gets dark at night. The combination of never getting dark, plus the unfamiliar hotel rooms and beds added up to neither of us feeling like we’d slept well during most of the trip.
• Binoculars are good to have on a trip such as this. The wildlife one sees so much of is seldom right up next to the bus or ship. These are wild animals some distance away, doing their own thing. A camera is also good. Since both are normally carried via shoulder straps, the two together were too much (at least for me). We were not able to find a comfortable solution to carrying both without one getting in the other’s way, while keeping hands free.
• The camera we brought had a 35-70mm zoom lens. That wasn’t enough range. If I had it to over, I’d bring at least a 28mm lens on the wide angle side, and on the zoom side, more would be better, but as a minimum, I’d want a 200mm.
• The cruise line industry seems to set air travel arrangements up more for their convenience than for us, the customer. And we didn’t get a chance to see the specifics until we got our ticket packages. By then, it was too late to make any changes. In the case of our tickets, our flights and connections were pretty reasonable, but Lacey and Leslie (who live near Denver) got lousy flights. If I had it to do over again, I’d pester the travel agent to give me that information early enough so I could see if they suited me. Also, we found that the cruise line buys air travel tickets in big blocks. Both coming and going, the airline got on the PA system and said that the flight was over-booked and they were looking for volunteers to be bumped. None of the four of us got bumped, but our tickets all required check-in at the airport, so it was a concern.

And that’s about all I can think of for our Alaska adventure. It was a trip to remember for a lifetime.