| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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But what is impressive is to hear the thundering of the glacier as pressures of hundreds of pounds per square inch squeeze the ice to the water's edge. Harvard was actively calving and every ten or 15 minutes small chunks would fall off. No big pieces, but we'd see chunks fall into the water and set the water churning and bubbling, then a big blue piece would come bobbing to the surface. Then it would fidget and turn over.
When we went to Utah we had a hard time convincing anyone that it is impressive to see giant boulders. We will have the same problem making calving sound impressive. I mean my roof does it every winter. It is only the scale of the glacier that makes it impressive.
At the next table at dinner were some high school principals. One of them took pride in memorizing humorous poems and entertaining kids like Jack with them. I myself as a kid used to hear on a record Stanley Holloway (he played Liza's father in MY FAIR LADY) doing what I think was a music hall act, telling the story of Albert Ramsbottom and the Lion. Funny how this sticks with me, but I can still recite that poem. Anyway, I wrote it down for our principal while glacier watching.
When we went to dinner I performed it for him in Cockney and gave him a copy. This was our last supper on board. I ate vary well with oyster soup, salad, linguine with white clam sauce (this was delicious!), steamed lobster (a real disappointment, it had bread crumbs and it just did not taste very good), and baked Alaska. I don't think there has been one dinner and few other group meals where we were not posing for family pictures. This meal had its share also.
After dinner I took a shower. I had to do something to warm up. I was still cold from the day outside. I never did describe the shower, but it has stops so that the water will not get too hot accidentally. It is a good design. The bathroom seems to be a good design overall.
The only problem is size. But that would be true on any boat.
We went back to room for final packing and a nap, then the group got together in the Horizon Court for iced tea and lemonade and talk.
After tip time I found the waiters were just as attentive, the room steward was a little less attentive. Every night there had been chocolates on our pillow, not last night. (I know, life is tough, isn't it?) More importantly there is a handout of the cruise log. People from other parts of the ship got it last night. It would be useful in writing my log but we didn't get one. We went to the purser's desk and they said it would be in our mailbox in the morning.
I went to sleep watching INDEPENDENCE DAY. They have one TV listing per season. There broadcast is on a 7-day cycle as is their menu.
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08/02/97 Seward and Anchorage
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This morning I was up at 5:40am and about ready to debark. I am sorry to see the week coming to an end. We had breakfast with the group. Not Susan and the kids but the rest. Bagel, cream cheese, and delicate tender smoked salmon. Also there was James Beard's French Toast. This is one thing I make better than James Beard. He deep fries the toast. Yug! One nice touch... Leaving you can get a copy of all seven dinner menus.
After breakfast I drop off the evaluation form. On the way to our stateroom I see Rudy. He tells me that he thought he had distributed them the night before. I told him he hadn't. He got two, one for me and one for my parents.
At the stateroom I say goodbye to my parents. Walking into the room I find that what was a double bed is already twin beds. Whatever they used as a bed was pretty good with firm edges. It was hard to tell it was two beds. Now it is a lot easier. The beds are already made. I was thinking of writing a 'Have a nice trip' note and hiding it in the bed for the next group to find. I decided against mischief. Perhaps I am maturing a little.
Naw!
Waiting to be called for debarkation we dropped off some dead batteries at the photo shop and walked once around the deck.
They called us a little early and we boarded the bus. The service on the bus is pretty good. It is handled like a tour with the driver telling us what we were passing. Of course we are not passing much of any great historical interest. 'There is a church on our left.' That sort of thing. We pass a kiosk selling coffee. It is called Expresso Simpatico. What is interesting is the kiosk is shaped like a cup of coffee. They day was bright on the ship but now it is gray and ugly.
The trip to Anchorage is a scenic one. We made one stop of about 15 minutes to stretch our legs, but it looks just like I picture Alaska. Green forests, majestic mountains, clouds. Just beautiful.
In Anchorage they dropped us off at the convention center where our luggage has been dropped off. We picked it up. A man there has an announcement for people staying in downtown motels like we are. In simple words the announcement is from this point forward... you're on your own. We have come to the end of Princess service.
It is a five block walk. We could take cabs, but we might as well get some exercise. Besides, I have luggage specially chosen to hang onto me instead of vice versa. My hands are free and I can get caught up in my log as I walk.
We checked into the Days Inn. Normally I would say this place looks like a college dormitory, but considering what we have recently been used to... Hey, wait a second, it STILL looks like a dormitory.
This is not really interesting so I will go over it quickly. We went out to the tourists information center. There was not a lot doing in town. The sidewalk around it smelled of human urine. I don't know, maybe it was the flowers, but I doubt it. Anchorage on a hot day, and this apparently is one, looks like something you would expect to see in some Southwestern desert.
A block or so from the visitor center is a flea market, just three little rows and much of what they have seems to be on an Alaska theme. We walked around, quickly, and picked what to have for lunch. I got a barbecued turkey leg, Evelyn got chicken and Philippine noodles. I thought they looked pretty tasteless and they pretty much were. We had to buy the lunch and move it elsewhere because they had Karaoke near where we bought the lunch an we would not have been able to digest the food in the presence of such awful tones. After lunch we headed out and who should we run into but the Glotzers killing time until their plane out. We went with them back to the same flea market. They look a flea market differently than we do. I think they have the expectation of buying something. David got a cap and Sherry got a sweatshirt. The four of us walked around Anchorage to the Alaska Public Lands Information Center. They had a films on the Spruce Bark Beetle and the Tongass Forest. Neither David nor I could stay awake for the films. We also went to a display on wolves near their local mall. Finally we saw them off on the bus to the airport.
We walked back to our motel stopping at Cook Inlet Book Company, a fair-sized book store. Of course if you just look at the books that have nothing to do with Alaska it is a really tiny little store.
You know there is a local magazine called HAULIN' 'BUT that is just devoted to Halibut Fishing? I don't think we're in Vancouver any more.
We returned to the motel to rest. I worked on my log and probably napped a bit. Evelyn fell well and truly asleep. At 8 I put on THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT. At 8:30 I noticed Evelyn was awake and watching it. I asked her what were her dinner plans. She said to eat it. I asked if she intended to perform this feat before 10pm. She looked at the time. Is that really 8:30? 'No, actually now it's 8:33.' The problem was it looked like 5pm or so. Sundown tonight was still two hours off.
We went out looking for dinner. We chose a place called the Alaska Salmon Chowder House. Somewhat down-scale. Plastic garden furniture. I had Salmon Chowder (New York Clam Chowder with salmon instead of clams) and Halibut Olympia (a patty of melted cheese with pieces of fish). I was not impressed. The place seems quite popular, however.
Back at the room I went to bed watching GET SHORTY. I was less than comfortable. There is no air conditioning. In Anchorage you just open a window. Unfortunately the window opens on a bar to noisy that it is hard to hear the TV. This seem a less than high class neighborhood. I have to close the window and sleep in a wet T-shirt to keep cool. This is not the Dawn Princess any more, Toto.
It's 11:03pm and it is still fairly light outside. It is past sundown, but the sky is still light. We are further north than St. Petersburg where we were for the white nights.
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08/03/97 The Museum and the Trip Home
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I woke up before 5am after having been up past 11. That's fine. I want to be a bit exhausted so I can sleep on the Redeye flight tonight. The sky is a milky white. I don't know if it ever goes black this time of year.
One of the reasons I write a trip log is that it recaptures a lot of the feel of the trip for me to write it. It is a way to go back in time and re-experience the trip in an orderly way. I was already on the Dawn Princess for a day or two when I wrote about first coming on board and somehow I got the same excitement and anticipation again. One part of my mind was racing wondering what it would be like on board even though another part intellectually knew already knew from memory what it was like. This morning I am writing about the visit to the Mendenhall Glacier and wondering what it will feel like to be in a helicopter. Of course I can remember it, but that is a different corner of my mind.
One advantage of entering the log on my palmtop is that I do not have to write about activities in chronological order. I have a separate file for each day and can be writing about the current day and then when I get some time I go back and write about the oldest thing I have not yet covered. I flag where I am in a given day's log file with a string of equals so I know where to go back to. Back when I hand-wrote logs into a book I kept in my back pocket I had to write in very close to chronological order. Typing into a palmtop is perhaps just as fast and I can let myself become unstuck in time, like Billy Pilgrim in SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE. Also handwritten logs had to be typed in when we got home. Evelyn would do that because she is a lot faster at copying material. Keeping my log in palmtop, I just have to concatenate the files, and spell check and proofread the original and it is ready to publish.
Well, that is a little insight into how and why I write a log. I suppose these days I am aware that there are unselfish reasons for writing a log. I really like hearing from people who have enjoyed (or did not enjoy) reading the log. But for me it is the ultimate trip souvenir to bottle the trip in a computer file and to have it to uncork when I want it.
We packed to TV showing TOBOR THE GREAT on TV. Hmmm! Hot and cold running 50s SF films. We left our bags checked and headed for breakfast at the Downtown Deli. The prices for food here are pretty high. It is tough to have a small breakfast for under $8. The waiter puts down two empty water glasses. It has a speck on the inside. I scratch off the speck. The waiter sees me and asks if it wasn't clean. I say it had a speck. He pushes the glass over to Evelyn and fills both with water.
But at least here what you see is what you pay. There are no sales taxes in Anchorage. I don't mind the sales tax at home, but I don't know why they don't know why they cannot fold the tax into the advertised price.
After breakfast we continued on the walking tour of downtown Anchorage. I would like to say this is exciting, but it was more just time-filler. We went into a fancy (now retired) movie theater with some nice floor-to-ceiling bronze murals. We looked at a nice Cathedral, but nothing of much excitement.
Our final stop was the Anchorage museum of History and Art. They have a nice display on the centennial of the Klondike Gold Rush. They had a good collection of artifacts of the stampede. Some of them were a little questionable. There was a 46-star flag that had a whole history for it in the stampede. The only problem was that it wasn't until well after the stampede that the flag had 47 stars. There was a nice offer for people to work with pick and shovel underground for the princely sum of $5 for a ten-hour day. They had a crooked pinball game. It dropped ball bearings, pachinko fashion, into one of several slots. It had a control on one side that could be used to make sure the ball did not fall in certain slot. It was there next to Soapy Smith who might have used it.
One humorous touch, the miners found how to have a sort of rudimentary thermometer from the medicine kit. Depending on which bottles froze they could get an idea how cold it was. Mercury, whiskey, kerosene, and patent medicine tonic. These had successively lower freezing points. If only mercury was frozen it was not too bad. A day cold enough to freeze tonic was a day to stay inside.
There were exhibits of musical instruments and a phonograph. Of course there were pieces of machinery used in gold mining. There were articles of clothing like mukluks, a raccoon coat. There was a replica of a bicycle that was used to traverse ice. The exhibit had assay kits, water conduits, a pre-fab boat kit that was suicide to use. There was a nice relief map showing the Chilkoot and White trails. There also was a piece on the impact of the gold rush on popular culture. There were posters from films set in the Gold Rush, pulp novels, photos, popular books, and children's games on a gold rush theme.
At 11am we took a tour of the exhibit on the native population. starting 10,000 years ago in the migration over land bridge from Asia. One diorama showed a village before Western contact. It shoed two totem poles. At least two other museums we had been told that the making of totems was a recent art that started only in the last century and really required European metal tools. You really do hear contradictions going from museum to museum.
One thing we have hear elsewhere also, Eskimos did not live in ice houses in Alaska. All the igloos were in Canada. In one of the exhibits ice is used as a building material, but only in a hunting blind. They had more of the bentwood boxes. There were baskets made from grass, 5 strands were chewed per blade of grass. With such fine strands the baskets held water. There was an exhibit of Seward buying Alaska from the Russians. Here they said that Russia needed the money after the Crimean War. Elsewhere we had heard it was because the fur source had been pretty well used up. The hand-over ceremony was a real fiasco. In taking down the Russian flag they at first tore it, then let it drop and fall on top of the soldiers standing under it. The argument for buying it was not the resources but to get the last monarch out of the Americas. The Aleuts lived so far north that they had no trees, yet wood was one of their main building materials. They used to pray for the ocean to bring them driftwood. I have heard of praying for sheetrock but not driftwood. (Do people really find the details of what we saw in museums interesting?) We saw Athebascans birch-bark canoes. I do find it of interest that the Catholic Church, the Presbyterian church, and other churches have officially apologized to Eskimos for trying to suppress their religion and culture. It was all a big mistake, apparently. These things happen, ha-ha-ha!
On a more serious note he islands of Alu and Kiska were occupied by the Japanese in WWII. They were the only American territory occupied. The guide was just getting to the 9.1 earthquake when a second tour started on the gold rush of '98.
Much of what was said was already covered in my write-up of the gold rush earlier.
The art part of the museum included two Rockwell Kents but some of the nicest art was by Sydney Laurence.
The Air Force sponsored a concert in the park at 2pm. Air Force concerts are just not what they used to be. This one was mostly rock music. There was no classical at all. Ah well, I guess I am just not keeping up with the times.
Lunch was the Salmon Bake at Blondie's Cafe. The choice was 'long grain rice, French fries, or potato salad.' I specifically asked if all the rice was long-grained. Yes, she said. Au contraire. She probably didn't know the difference between long-grain and short-grain. Ah well, it is going home day. Perhaps I am just in a bad mood. The salmon was good, that is the main thing. I was listening to the conversation at the next table. It was about the film CONTACT and the Roswell incident. They claim the film proved that Carl Sagan knew all along there were aliens. Sigh. Sagan believed all along that aliens existed SOMEPLACE in the universe. He did not believe Earth had been visited.
We don't usually get much for ourselves beyond a chachka and books. I did however see some pieces of china with Netsuke-like realism and detail and I bought myself as a souvenir a piece of a crab and a fish.
Well getting to the airport and onto the plane was pretty much as would be expected. Our flight is a packed redeye. That is going to make it tough to sleep. We were a little late taking off. There is no meal, only a snack. That should be enough.
The snack is a turkey and fresh vegetable wrap-up and an apple. The roll-up drips as I eat it. There is a tomato in it. I have to wrap it in the plastic bag that it came in. It is really difficult to eat without eating a bit of the paper wrapper. The apple was nice. Not a Granny Smith but this isn't a Princess cruise. (They had Granny Smiths on the ship. Apples fall naturally into two categories. There are Granny Smiths and there are other kinds of apples.)
While I eat I talk to the man next to me. He had to cut short his trip for an attack of direticulitis. He was on a Holland America cruise and they had their best food when he could only drink apple juice. Boy, that is lousy luck. Here I was feeling sorry for myself.
Well that lasted a while until I tried to sleep. I am two rows ahead of someone traveling with the noisiest babies I can remember on a plane. The whole flight they have been shouting and crying and crying and shouting. I have earplugs for just such an eventuality but I dropped one and there is no room to find it. Two earplugs are effective, one is not nearly half as effective.
The seats on Northwest Orient are 19 inches wide and the plane is packed. Even Evelyn is more than 19 inches wide. I myself am a 23 inch wide person. I can compress to 21 inches for periods of more than an hour. My duration for 19 inches can be measured in minutes before severe internal damage occurs. This model is just not certified for widths of 19 inches for hours on end. If I am not constantly holding my arms in I will flow into the two seats beside me. I feel like I am waiting anxiously for someone to rub my lamp.
This is the longest seeming flight I can remember and in the past I have flown places like Hong Kong and India. Northwest Orient is squeezing every person onto this flight they can manage. I cannot even put my elbows out enough to type on my palmtop.
I do get a little sleep eventually but not enough. Along about 4:30a they hand out faux bagels. Evelyn looks out in the sky and says there are light streaks. I warn her this is just the thin end of the wedge. Soon there may be more light. It may even take the form of disks in the sky.
The woman behind me told her companion that she is seeing a herpetologist and the first thing I thought of is whether this is or is not covered by her health care. That sounds made up, but it happens to be true.
The plane steward seems to talk in incoherence in a thick Spanish accent. He said something about when we deplane that people from back parts of the plane should give preference to people from the front part of the plane. I think what he means is that since the exit is from the coach section that first class passengers should be allowed to cut into the line leaving the plane. They should have special access to the door. Right! It is nice to know for some like this plane steward America is still a land of dreams. Of course I think they knew that nobody who had just gotten up from a 19 inch wide seat was going to step aside for someone who had just travelled in comfort, but at least it will look to the First Class passengers like they tried.
In Newark it took about 40 minutes and a carousel change to get our luggage. For a while it looked like the US was going to compete with other countries for quality and service. It turned out to be too much effort.
Well, there is no point in carrying this to the bitter end. I am on the last leg of my trip home. Alaska was a good trip. Everybody says it is the most spectacular place in the country. I would still give an edge to Utah. The Dawn Princess is a comfortable way to travel but somehow insulates the passenger from the true experience of travel. Now I wonder how many pounds I gained.
(Post script: two pounds that I lost in the first week back.)
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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