| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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Zion National Monument , what we saw of it, would be pretty hard to beat. And the really scenic part was closed off.
After a while of watching the glacier we were really hoping to see a calving. Our ranger who has been talking on the PA system let us watch in silence. Maybe if he had made a little more noise we might have seen a piece fall off.
Eventually we went in for lunch. Afterwards we dressed up warmer and went out to look for whales. No luck, unfortunately. There was a humpback sighting but it was just a distant blow. I think that there was no sighting of actual whale flesh.
One guy came along laughing at all the whale watchers. 'Want to see everyone run for the other side of the ship? Just say they're seeing whales over there.' 'Don't you know this trip is about *** and food?' On and on he went.
Well, ads for Disneyworld show Mickey Mouse coming up to welcome your children. Ads for Atlantic City show people winning the jackpot. These things happen, but only if you are lucky. We have seen only short glimpses of whales. So far we have seen no glaciers calving.
'You know what would make my day to see down there 20 feet from the ship poking his head above the surface, just for a second?' 'Him,' I said pointing to our skeptic.
I do have to admit that we are spending a good part of this trip looking for salmon, whales, sea otters, and calving glaciers. So far all these hunts have ended in frustration. Most of what we have come to see we are seeing only on videotape. If this had been a sunny day there would have been a much better chance of seeing pieces break off the glacier. The ranger this morning said we were lucky to be seeing the park on a gray day because this was the kind of day that builds the glacier in the first place. Nuts to that. They have plenty of glacier. I want to see something spectacular. Next winter will do plenty to build the glacier.
Well, at a little after three we saw the tender come to pick up the rangers. We went off looking for a cup of hot chocolate to warm up.
We passed Sherry. She went to the ranger talk. We had a choice of whale watching or going to the ranger's talk at 2pm. Evelyn and I whale watched to little effect. Sherry went to the talk. It apparently put many people to sleep. The ranger even commented on the fact so many people fell asleep on his talk.
They had hot chocolate at the patisserie, but they charged and who wanted to pay for it? We tried the Horizon Court. No luck but they did have bean soup and that was more than adequate.
After that it was back to the room to warm up and write. Well, I did not get a lot written, but I did get some needed sleep. Evelyn woke me up at 5:50 to get dressed for dinner. I found out from Sherry that after having been out in the bone-chilling cold all day, in large part looking for whales, about half an hour after I quit looking a school showed up. This really was a bitter disappointment. I guess it is for people like me that aquariums were invented. Have I ever told you about Luck of Leeper? This is why I don't gamble. Luck of Leeper is never terrible-I still have both my feet-but it is frequently bad. After being out in he cold I figure I had paid my dues to see whales, but that doesn't cut it. You have to be lucky and I am not.
Dinner for me was pheasant. Pheasant was pleasant. For dessert was an Anniversary cake in Evelyn's and my honor. Of course it was not my anniversary. That won't be for another four weeks, but they are willing to stretch a point apparently. It was something of a surprise. Over dinner we mentioned that other people on the net had said they liked the play of the evening 'Pirates.'
Apparently it is a long way to College Fjord. Since we left the park the ship has really been barreling. You can tell when the ship is speeding in part because the ocean goes by the window quickly, but also because it feels like you have something wrong with your inner ear. It is a sort of subtle rocking that makes you just slightly feel that you are losing your balance and are about to fall on your face. I like it, but then I am weird.
After dinner we went to the Princess Theater for the production on Pirates! The play was actually fairly good for a shipboard production. it certainly was better than OdysSea. The main problem is that the story is a little too simple and straightforward. Gilbert and Sullivan plays, which this resembles, would have given the story some twist. But the music was decent for once. One feels that on repetition some of the melodies would grow on you.
The story deals with some male pirates looking for adventure when some would-be female pirates produce a stolen treasure map. The male pirates want the map but don't want the women as pirates. They give in when the women prove they can equal the men. There seems to be a scene when the men are stealing the map, but nothing is ever done with that plot. The pirates get the treasure, but the real owner, a captain in the English navy, shows up. He is promptly defeated and to save his life, he suggests he marry the chief of the men and the chief of the women. He does.
There is not much to this story though it is a Classic compared to OdysSea. Again the main purpose is to show off costumes, dancing, and acrobatics. Two or three of the major characters have (all too visible) mikes. The rest lip-synch.
The play seems set too recently to be Elizabethan and too early to be Victorian, yet the British claim to be in the Queen's Navy. Of course, the plot of whether women should be allowed to be pirates is not quite accurate. There were women pirates who did not care if they were allowed in the profession or not.
The acrobatics are often show-stoppers, which may or may not be a good thing. There is an impressive balancing act. The use of explosive effects create more smoke than the air circulation can take care of.
There is a major unresolved loose end in the men betray the women, but no mention of that betrayal appears in the rest of the play. Also it is not clear why Captain Hornbottom has a treasure map he can use a Queen's ship to defend.
When the play was over, the cruise director got up and said that this was the first time the play was being performed. Of course we had heard reports over the net that the play was good. I don't know how to reconcile the two other than to think that the tour director was stretching the truth. Evelyn thinks that he meant this was the first time on this cruise. I guessed that he might have meant that this was the first time with this cast. Sherry suggested they had another play called Pirates. I doubt that one.
At 11:30 there was a final event, a sort of party with Champaign, crepe suzettes, and a Champaign cascade. There were a bunch of passengers dancing the Macarena, that jazzy post-modern version of 'I'm a Little Teapot.'
We headed back to the room after a few minutes.
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08/01/97 The Small Animals and the Large Glaciers
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Well this is the last day of our cruise, unless you count getting up and being taken off the ship tomorrow. This is certainly a comfortable way to travel. I guess the real problem is that there is only limited time on the shore and virtually nothing inland. I don't know if you really can get a feel for the country by just taking little four hour excursions. Of course even going to a country for five weeks and traveling on your own, if you stay in tourist hotels you are not seeing the real country. But there is no royal way to visit a country (or in this case a state.) Still seeing what we do is better than not visiting at all. You really want to get a feel for the diversity of humankind. There will be enough people who with the best of intentions-usually-will tell you that we are all alike under the skin and it is a small world after all. It makes a convenient excuse to not get an appreciation for the huge variety humanity. Those familiar with my writing know this is a common theme, but it really is what makes travel worthwhile. What we have on the Dawn Princess is a terrific experience, this is a marvelous hotel with great food and service. But it is not really the travel experience. One thing that does make it worthwhile is the tour director's lectures on history. I love when someone makes history enthralling. Maybe I am a time traveler at heart. What do you think my chances are?
I was falling asleep off and on watching a movie last night so I did not get to sleep until about 1:30, at least the final time. Now I am up four hours later.
Breakfast in the Horizon Court was Meuselix, cheese, and a fried egg.
We went back to our room and picked up our library books to return. They would be due this evening anyway. I don't know if there is an overdue fee. If they don't get the book back they charge your account $50. That seems steep. We sat in the comfortable surroundings of the library and worked on our logs. These are big soft chairs with foot rests and CD players built in. They are placed with a view out on the water. They really thought of every comfort.
At 11am we had a tour of the kitchen. It was a lot of stainless steel. Somehow this was not as interesting as I had expected it to be. There are only a few people working on food. Most is battened down. I suggested to Evelyn that we liven he tour up by yelling 'rat,' but she was finding the tour quite exciting enough without yelling 'Rat!' Sometimes we have different tastes.
At noon the family all gathered for lunch. I ate too much as usual. I had shepherd's pie and it was good. For desert we had my brother's anniversary cake from the night before. That was why we got together. Our cake we had last night, my brother's today. Of course it wasn't his anniversary during the cruise either, but where a fat tip is concerned no service is too great.
After lunch we were approaching College Fjord and Evelyn went out to watch the scenery. Most of the rest including me went to a lecture on the Romanovs and the Russian Revolution. it may have been a mistake, but I decided to go whale watch instead. If I am destined to not see whales, and that is quite possible, at least I want to have done all I could.
I found Evelyn and I watched the scenery and worked on my log. Well, no whales. I should have stayed for the lecture. We enter College Fjord. I guess it is so names since the glaciers are all named for ivy league colleges. On one side they are men's colleges, on the other side women's colleges. Of course this is an artifact of bygone days. It is sexist to discriminate by gender so these days there are women's colleges and co-ed colleges. Harvard glacier cut College Fjord in Harvard's better days. However it has since been receding. I guess education is in decline. We passed Holyoke Glacier (not Mount Holyoke?), Bryn Mawr, and Smith. You see them coming down the mountain bulldozing a black mound of dirt and debris in front of them. Sometimes they will level off a peak in their path. You will see a black stripe down the center of a glacier. The dirt will be pushed into the water and then will rest on top of it.
Along the way we did see some wild life, though at a fairly distant. We saw families of otters and some seals. Otters get air into their fur to keep warm. That is why you see them roll over quickly in the water. This pulls in the air.
The high point was turning our starboard face to Harvard Glacier and just sitting there. At a guess it is something like 400 feet thick. It is a tidewater glacier running into the water. It has caves on the two sides carved by runoff. You often see water bubbling at the base of a glacier where the runoff comes out with something like fire-hose pressure but the outlet can be many feet across. |
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