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Meg's diary (where Mom can write!)

Mom & Dad went to Alaska and didn't bring us anything! - (part two)

(this is part two; part one is under my brother Joe’s diary)

Tuesday Mom & Dad arrived in Juneau after lunch and hiked up near (and overlooking) the Mendenhall Glacier. That was their first glacier view, and they saw the blue ice (too compressed to have air, so it reflects back blue). They saw a mountain goat, and, at the end of the hike, a bald eagle came soaring right at us and landed in a tree just above them (it was probably looking for cats or other small animals!) It was really, really awesome to see it gliding along. It was also a much bigger eagle (maybe just because it was so close?) then they’d ever seen before. They had the bus drop us in town so they could do a little wandering around, and picked up a couple of ornaments as mementos (more for me to bat off the tree!) That night, they ate in the specialty Italian restaurant, which was pretty good; much better than anything else they’d eaten so far.

Which brings me to a few words about the food, which is very important to a cat. This was Mom & Dad’s first experience on Norwegian Cruise Lines. NCL has something called ‘freestyle cruising’, which means you don’t have a set seating time, you eat when you want (sounds perfect for a cat!) In reality, this meant be prepared to wait to eat, and waste a lot of time waiting once you finally get seated waiting for your food, or go to the ‘buffet’ (actually, a cafeteria) instead and wait in long lines there, or manage to get a reservation (they went fast) in one of the two free specialty restaurants (Mexican and Italian), or pay a per-human cover charge for the other specialty restaurants. Even if you changed your mindset (as they did halfway through as to what to expect in the eating), the lack of organization made it difficult to deal with. For example, if the ship is docking in Juneau at 2, and everyone’s excursions go out then, and the dining room doesn’t open for lunch until noon, even a cat knows there will be a long line of humans wanting to be fed! (Can you imagine the yeowling?) Adding to the difficulty was the fact that most of the specialty restaurants were only open for dinner. Dinner was pretty much the same thing. Also, since there was no arranged seating, if you went to the cafeteria, you spent a lot of time looking for a seat (and finding your partner) while your food got cold. I guess these days the cruise line doesn’t make any money on the basic room and food…it’s the extras they can sell you – like in the casino, the art auctions, the spa, etc. So I guess if they’d gone in with the mindset that the basic price got them only pretty basic kibble, and to instead pay a bit extra each night to eat the good stuff, it would’ve been better. They did have dinner in the French specialty restaurant (also very good), with wine, as part of the anniversary package.

On Wednesday, early, the ship docked in Skagway. There was graffiti all along the rocks across from the docks from all the ships that visit. Some of them had artwork in addition to the name. Mom says it was pretty neat looking. Their excursion had been changed from a hike to a snowshoe hike because of the conditions, something that gave them a little trepidation. However, they say it was the highlight of the Alaska trip. They first rode the Whitehorse Pass Railway up and over Whitehorse Pass. They saw a black bear on the tracks down near town (do bears eat cats?), then rode up through tremendous views down the valley (Mom couldn’t look sometimes when they got really high up.) Once over the pass, the train stopped to let them out, and they snowshoed away from civilization into the hills. The snow was thick and crunchy in the morning, so it was pretty easy to walk on. The scenery was fabulous, and, the weather was what’s known in aviation terms as ‘severe clear’. They had made sandwiches in the traincar (they had one to ourselves) on the way up, so they sat on chopped-out benches (courtesy of the guides (they called themselves ‘sherpas’)) with blow-up pads and ate and had hot chocolate or tea. They saw big kitty tracks (probably lynx), and heard and saw ptarmigan. At one point, the lead guide stopped at the top of a hill, then sat down on the backs of his snowshoes and ‘bum-glissaded’ down the hill. After some initial disbelief, Mom went down next (quite a bit slower, digging in her cleats to slow down), and Dad after, and all joined the fun. Most of the humans warmed up to the snowshoe sledding, and redid the bottom stretch waiting for everyone else to make it down. It became their normal descent tactic for hills, and was tons of fun. When they got back to the train pickup point, there was still some time (the train was running late), so the lead guide and 3 of the humans (including Mom) went off to the other side of the tracks for more sledding down a steeper hill. They took the train up a little farther inland (into Canada), to a spot where the road (which had been across the valley) could be reached from the train side, and then took a bus back down the other side (Mom says she liked the train a lot better; she had to look away more on the bus.) They had to stop to clear US customs (hide the beer!) and got dropped off back in Skagway, which still retains its frontier town setting, though more as a tourist thing these days. They stopped to tour the upstairs bordello (what’s that?) of the town bar. They were given red garters as their entry ticket for their arms, but Mom put hers on her leg (she had just worn leggings under the hike’s rain pants) and wore it back to the ship, getting some strange looks along the way. They were gone for 10 hours, and it was all a great time. The guides were really nice, and interesting. Most of them are humans who do adventure guiding all over the world, and they had interesting stories to tell. The lead guide had a degree in geology, and he gave them an interesting impromptu lecture about glaciers and the area during lunch.

Thursday brought them to Glacier Bay National Park. They sailed in to where two glaciers end an arm of the bay and watched for a while. They got to see ice calving off with thundering drops. It was amazingly beautiful, as was the scenery and the whales and seals (they saw one catch a fish (NOM!!)) on the way in and out. The glaciers have retreated quite a bit over the last 30 years.

Friday the ship docked early in Ketchikan and Mom & Dad took a boat ride out to the Misty Fjords National Monument. Once again, beautiful scenery. Dad suggested Mom take a picture with her phone so she could turn it into wallpaper (why didn’t he mention that yesterday???) So she did, and now she has a reminder every day of the trip. They saw several black bear, and a deer swimming between islands. They also learned that the 7th and 8th grade human school trips are wilderness survival learning experiences, because you never know when you might be stranded overnight or for a few days on one of the many islands. By this point, as was inevitable, Dad’s cold had passed to Mom, so they stopped in town after the boat returned to restock on cold meds. During dinner Friday night (at the French restaurant), the weather (which had once again been gorgeous) turned steadily downhill. A little while after dinner, they went up to the fitness center to bike (what IS it with these people?) Mom said it was too rocky for the treadmill, and that it was weird to feel the bike drop out from underneath while riding. They cleaned up (in the shower, not with their tongues) and tried to go to bed, but the first massive boom of a large wave hitting the bow (where their cabin was) and sending spray up filling the window (they were on the 9th deck...) brought them out to find some more human company (safety in the pack). So they sat and listened to the last hour of a lounge pianist/singer, then headed back to the cabin. Every 5th or 6th wave would be one of the massive ones that would boom, reverberate, and shake the ship. Around about 2am, the worst of that abated, and they finally got to sleep. This was on the open Pacific again, coming back down on the far side of Vancouver Island. Now why, given that there’s a perfectly good passage on the inside (next to the mainland) did they cruise in the open waters? Well, because 12 miles out into the Pacific is international waters, which means the casino can open. (Note to Mom: take a ship without a casino next time.) Mom found out from an officer the next morning that the max wave height had been 32 feet. And the wind was up at 45 knots. In actuality, Mom says the ship, given its high center of gravity and stabilizing fins, didn’t roll much at all (roll is side-to-side motion), but it did pitch fairly aggressively as it sundered the waves (pitch is up-and-down). Dad had taken more of his pills, so he didn’t get sick again.

Saturday early was still poor weather, but they did do some more exploring of the ship and were finally (in the afternoon) allowed back on the outside decks so they could walk again. The pools had been drained in the bad weather, but the hot tubs were still going. Mom had gone down the waterslide earlier in the cruise, but says it was pretty disappointing. The rain hadn’t started in Victoria when the ship got there at about 6pm. Mom & Dad had a jetboat whale watch scheduled. They got suited up, strapped in, and headed out. And then the rain came back, cold and in their faces at about 30knots. Tough to look for whales all hunched over and curled up like a cat. After a bit, the tour operators decided to cancel (and refund the excursion fee), but they were still out for almost 2 hours. They did get a little tour of the harbor (and the Parliament building, outlined in Christmas lights.) Mom says Victoria looks to be a lovely city, but they didn’t have much time there, and the conditions weren’t amenable to much touring. Interesting reason why they stopped in a Canadian port – there’s a law that says foreign-owned companies cannot cruise entirely within US ports, they have to make a foreign stop or be a US company. Mom & Dad went back to the room and stuffed their backpacks for the morning (with the exception of the stuff that needed to dry from the rain.)

Mom & Dad had signed up for the ‘express walkoff’, which means if you keep and carry all your stuff off, you can get off without having to 1) send out your luggage the night before, 2) find it the next morning in the middle of all the other luggage, and 3) be stuck behind all the humans who found their luggage first. They didn’t know this before they sailed, so they had a 1:15 departure flight (NCL had warned them not to book a flight before noon.) They went to the airport hoping to get out earlier (and get back to us sooner), but there wasn’t much happening with that, so Dad read while Mom used her laptop to catch up on email and SOMC. They got into Hartford (after stopping in Chicago) around 11pm, but had to wait another half-hour for their backpacks (which is why Mom hates checking luggage). However, since they’d been on west-coast (and Alaskan) time for two weeks, it didn’t seem late. Joe & I (who’d been looked after well by our friend Raelene) were really glad to see them, and we stuck to Mom like glue all day Monday (when she was home from slog for one more day).

They missed us a lot, but it was a really nice trip. Alaska is beautiful; go if you get a chance.