| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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Among them were Nordstrom who founded a line of department stores and Alexander Pantages, a Greek immigrant who used his money to found a chain of movie theaters. Then there was Augustus Mack. He went over the Klondike trail with a small dog named Little Mack whom he thought to be forever loyal to him. Talk about dogs who have had statues to them, there is a statue of Little Mack as a hood ornament of every Mack Truck.
It seemed to take forever to go through the town getting back to the ship as we got told a little of the town's modern social history. We were concerned since the play was to finish the tour, get back to the ship, get lunch, and be back for our next item all between 1pm and 1:50. But our tour went over by 20 minutes. We rushed to the boat, I got film, we rushed up to the Horizon Court, grabbed sandwich fixings, made sandwiches, and ran down the dock eating them. Then we ended up waiting around for 15 minutes or so. A fellow in a cowboy hat was rounding up people for two horse tours, one of which we were on. This was Adrian (a cowboy named Adrian?) and he was waiting for the other tour leader to show up. That was Vicki. Adrian does not like Vicki and makes no bones about it. Vicki is from West Texas and is a little flighty and tends to be late for things. Adrian browbeats her. Of course she was late. When she arrives we file into her van.
We are told many of the same things we were told earlier in the day. The only way in to town is by plane or boat. Even the Indians did not want to live in Skagway. The town was and is a wind trap so Indians would not settle here. On the other hand Vicki claims that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were in town the night before, probably buying furs.
Well Vicki drives us out into the woods and there are the horses ready. Adrian has a group of slightly more experienced riders. At least that was the theory, though some of them had not ridden before. Evelyn and I were relative newcomers having ridden in Kenya and perhaps when we were little urchins. There are riders that qualify as riders or perhaps jumpers. I think from the point of view of the horse we were still in the 'freight' category.
They gave us instruction on how to communicate with your horse. Evelyn says they gave us so much information in so little time she forgot it all. And she has the better memory. But I found when I needed to know something it came back to me.
Next they brought out the horses. Mine was named Gypsy. I found out later that Gypsy was a 20 or so year old pack animal and what's more this was her third ride of the day. She would be just anxious to carry around her freight and get it over with. I had the feeling she knew I communicated like a newcomer and she didn't care. She could tell she was the experienced one and this was sort of a buttermilk run. She knew where we were going and was just doing her last task of the afternoon. The whole thing was a little depressing.
As horse rides go, this one was probably overpriced and was not much. It was just a walk through the woods, over a watering hole, and to a point of just OK scenery, as Alaska scenery goes. We rode single file, though Gypsy seemed to want to pass the horse ahead of her and ride toward the front. Evelyn was two or three horses back. I tried to photograph her but it is really tough to turn that far around in the saddle.
We let the horses drink at a watering hole and continued on our way. This ride gets you wet, as they say at amusement parks. On the way back I started feeling I really had the hang of this and could communicate with the horse. As we approached the starting point we heard the most God-awful howling in the woods. Apparently they train huskies nearby. I was afraid the sound of all these baying hounds would spook the horses, but they knew the neighborhood better than we did.
As for my control, I then discovered I was wrong. When we got back to where we picked up the horses we were supposed to take the horses back to where we got on them. Gypsy saw her dinner however and decided to ignore my signals and go for the food. I tried to communicate with her where to go, but the food spoke louder.
They rounded off the tour by giving us a snack of soda, salmon dip, Triscuits, and Ritz Crackers.
While we are waiting somebody brings in two husky puppies. They are absolutely darling and probably not at all happy about being photographed. They are about five weeks old. They have an instinct to pull things. While the adults are waiting for a sled race to start they will bury their heads in snow and kick their legs trying to bulldoze it. It is their idea, but they have been bred as pullers. Their genes are just encoded with the idea that pulling is fun and exciting. Apparently you can breed animals to think a certain way. What are the implications for humans? How much of our thought patterns do we get from logic and how much from our genes?
We again filed into vans and returned to the ship. As I tipped Vicki I told her not to let Adrian's browbeating get her down.
Dinner was escargot (without the shell, Evelyn and I were the only ones in the family to try it), French Onion Soup (most at the table had it), and duck (just me). The latter was medallions wrapped in fat. I cut off the fat. Dessert was Cherries Jubilee.
After dinner Evelyn and I went to the back of the ship to watch us start the engines and be guided out of the harbor by a blue and white tugboat called Le Cheval Rouge. (!) It didn't tug either. Its real responsibility was to guide us. We have gone from an economy of rendering physical services to an information economy, I guess. It is, however, a beautiful sight to see the harbor surrounded by mountains and beyond it yet another mountain shining with the sun reflecting off a hanging glacier.
At 9:45 we went to a reading of poetry of Robert Service poetry. Service is considered the poet of the Gold Rush since his poetry is mostly about the harshness of the conditions the miners faced. Service really was describing the Gold Rush second hand. He was English and went to Canada in 1905 after the rush was over. But he liked to talk to miners about the days of the Gold Rush. He entered the Bank of Commerce and was transferred first to Whitehorse (that was where the miners first hit after crossing the White or Chilkoot passes) and later to Dawson in the heart of mining country. In his spare time he also and performed dramatic readings of D'Arcy's 'The Face on the Barroom Floor.' For fun he wrote poetry about the Klondike and then put the poems in a drawer. But his friends liked his poetry and one year for a Christmas gift he decided to get his poems printed in book form. Apparently there was sort of a mix-up at the publisher where they did not realize the poetry was supposed to be of only limited interest. Somewhere the publisher got the idea that Service's poetry could be a big seller and without Service's knowledge they started taking orders for the book. Service was already a success as a writer before he knew his poetry was being offered. In the next two years he became the most popular living poet in the world.
Following the profile of Service the tour director read The Face on the Bar Room Floor, The Shooting of Dan McGrew and The Cremation of Sam McGee.
Log-writing, a little TV and bed.
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07/31/97 The Glacier and the Pirate Play
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Well, so far we have had phenomenally good weather. Weather that is usually gray and rainy has been sunny. Today it may catch up with us. Just when visibility should be good, in Glacier Bay, it looks foggy.
I have been up two or three times since 4am, but had gotten back to sleep. I woke up at 6am and so did Evelyn.
We were able to watch only a short piece of their tape on what to expect in Glacier Bay. I did find out that only two cruise ships were allowed in the park-Glacier Bay is a National Park-at a time and that there are ice worms.
We were having breakfast in the horizon court and a voice came on the PA describing what we were seeing. They had some Park Service maps and I got one for me and one for my parents. I went to the cabin to get jackets and met Evelyn and together we went out on the promenade deck. The announcer said we have already passed two humpbacked whales but we will see fewer as we get close to the glaciers.
We passed Reid Glacier. It is a little misty to see really well. We are passing small icebergs. The glaciers have rapidly retreated over the last 250 years. Too long for the primary cause to be industrial-generated warming.
We are following glacial retreat north past Russell Island. Most of this area used to be under glacier but the glacier has receded. We pass more icebergs, dirty with the mountains they rubbed. There are tidewater glaciers bulldozing their way down from the mountains to a lake where the ends calve and form icebergs or dissolve in the water. The glaciers look like dirty snow painted blue. Here is obvious stratification in the layers of the glacier. When these things calf, blue ice that is many hundreds of years old ends up in icebergs.
A man next to me asks why it is blue ice. 100 feet a year of snow can fall. The pressure really compresses the ice and squeezes out all the air. The natural color of ice when it is not frothed up with air is blue. There is an outlet of melt at the base of the glacier so we see water bubbling up. Lines are horizontal and vertical Horizontal because of stratification of the snow falling in strata, vertical because of forward pressure. I have not seen any calving but I hear the thunder. The side of the ship has gotten downright crowded with gawkers.
By this point we have gathered my parents and my sister and brother-in-law. It is pretty cold. The speaker says that a glacier is coming up on our starboard side. We look around and Evelyn and David Glotzer have disappeared. It is not like Evelyn to disappear. I wait a few minutes, then leave her a note by our chairs. All the time it bothered me that it was not like Evelyn to just disappear.
We watch the glacier go by on the starboard side. Then I decide it is time to figure out what happened to Evelyn. She slipped away to surprise us with coffees. Only it backfired. What is more she was not sure exactly where we had been sitting so she had given one of the coffees to a woman whom she found there.
I take her to the Starboard side. Now my parents and Sherry are missing. We found they moved into the ship to warm up.
According to people who study such things only 27% of planned rendezvouses-is that the plural?--actually come off as planned. While the results are not always the disaster it was at the Battle of Austerlitz (a small problem over whether the date of the attack was on the Julian or Gregorian calendar), it is an important statistic to factor into your planning even if I did just make it up.
The rangers say there are some bears on the beach in front of the ship. Of course we are on the side and cannot see straight forward. As the ship turned I see the bears, two adults, two cubs. (Maybe it was one and three.)
The rangers call our attention to kittywigs on the cliffs and puffins. The kittywigs are colorful birds with white, black and gray markings. In the arctic, that passes for colorful. Kittywigs turn out to be seagulls. Oh boy!
We sidled up to the Margorie Glacier. (Well, maybe we were a kilometer away.) My parents, Sherry and David Glotzer and the two of us watched, hoping to see pieces break off of the glacier. Little pieces did fall, but no big dramatic calving. Nevertheless I think that we were all impressed. This is supposed to be the most visually spectacular trip you can take in the US. I think I might still give the edge to our trip to Southern Utah. |
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