Alaska - Pretty little Ketchikan - Stories from the cruise

Ketchikan is the southernmost city in Alaska, 700 miles north of Seattle. Like all Alaskan coastal towns, it was originally a Native fishing village. Fishing is still a major industry and the town promotes itself as the "Salmon Capital of the World." And since the cruise ships stop here, tourism is the significant source of revenue from May to September.

The southern part of town serves the tourist trade, with rather high-end stores and shops right next to the new cruise ship docks. The more typical tourist schlock is available a few streets away on Creek Street; once a brothel district. It was said that both salmon and fishermen came to Ketchikan to spawn.

 Ketchikan is billed as the totem capital of Alaska, but most are located away from the downtown area in the Saxman Totem Park, Totem Bight State Park, Potlatch Park, and the Totem Heritage Center. I did find a few, located in and near a beautiful little park.

 This one was so tall, I had to take two pictures.

I thought the flowers in the park were more interesting than the totems, though.

Back on the ship, Barb and I sat and watched preparations for sailing. Departure time was 11:45 and at 12:20 there were still dawdlers wandering down the wharf. A final couple wandered up and the security guy got in their face and urged them repeatedly to hurry and board, so naturally, they stopped to take pictures! Evidently this couple told security that there were other passengers in a restaurant across the street, because two officers trotted over there to check, but returned empty-handed.

They got the gangways pulled away, and the gangway doors closed, and the ship was underway. It can move sideways, by the way. Then we saw one last couple wandering down the wharf. A Port of Ketchikan official who had been present for the departure met them, and you could see them looking at their watches and at the ship - the departing ship - and I'm pretty sure they were a bit excited at that point. We wondered what the airfare is from Ketchikan, Alaska to Victoria, British Columbia.

We were talking to a young Ukrainian girl, one of the waitstaff, and she said passengers get left on a regular basis (we found out later that 6 were left in Ketchikan). The ship waits for no one. She said sometimes crew members miss the departure; in that case they have to figure out how to survive until the following week, when the boat comes back. And then they have a lot of  'splaining to do.

Next port: Victoria, British Columbia

Monday Meanderings - 7.28.2014

Some six or seven months after the iconic burger chain In-N-Out came to Austin, we finally paid a visit. For the first several months, you had to be significantly more dedicated fans than we are - traffic was so heavy that it took a bevy of off-duty policemen to direct traffic in and around the locations. Now there are 3 In-N-Outs in or near Austin, and we only had to circle the parking lot four or five times before finding a place to park.

Our motivation for finally visiting was family related; Jana, Rob, Luke and Grace were here this past week, and since we have In-N-Outs (and Mighty Fine burgers) here in Austin and they don't in Lubbock... you get the picture. Come to think of it, they don't have a Pappasitos there either. Or a Fran's. We hit them all.

I think I have pretty much sealed the deal, as far as rainfall is concerned here on the homestead. After a fairly wet May and June, I put up a remote rain gauge. That's it on top of the little pole. You know what that means, don't you? Right. Probably won't rain again until December!

I had trouble finding a place to locate it. At first I thought I could put it on the top of the new fence. Too many trees. Okay, on the other side of the house. Ditto. The only open area is the middle of the back yard, but I guess that's a good thing, shade-wise.

You do remember what I had been using as a rain gauge previously, don't you?

From time-to-time I look at the statistics for this blog. I check the total pages viewed count, to make sure all four of my faithful followers are still checking in, and I look to see which posts have the most page views overall. For a long time, it was a post about Austin's Running Man - the dude who exercised daily on the grassy stretch by an HEB store. Then it was all about the Mystery Album, the odd set of 78rpm records I found in the shelf.

But for some reason, over the past couple of years, the post Traveling in Comfort, a description of early automotive evaporative air coolers has outstripped them all. At last count, nearly 5,000 folks have looked at that post. Why, I haven't a clue. But thanks for stopping by.

Alaska - Glacier Bay National Park - Stories from the cruise

On our journey, quite often the ship would slow its pace to allow pilots - experts in local navigation - to board or disembark. When we entered Glacier Bay National Park, we took on a group of Park Rangers and Naturalists, who stayed with us until we left the Park that evening, providing commentary and answering questions throughout our visit.

One of only a handful of National Parks accessible only by boat or seaplane, Glacier Bay has moved through a series of designations and expansions, beginning as a National Monument in 1925, and becoming a National Park in 1980, encompassing some 3,283,000 acres. It is also a National Preserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a Biosphere Reserve, as well as the home of a significant population of Hoonah and Tlingit Native Americans.

What can I say about Glacier Bay? Here's a quote from journalist Sherry Simpson, writing in a gorgeous book of photos by Mark Kelly:

"Every one of us who attempts to capture Glacier Bay fails and always will, because this is a place that cannot be preserved by words or photographs or statistics. Look away, and everything becomes new. The light shifts. The ice cascades. The tide ebbs. Glaciers carve up time and leave behind a stony blank space, and then life fills up the space slowly, slowly. This is the world on its way to becoming something else." 

About 4,000 years ago, the entire basin was a single glacier. Over the centuries, the ice has retreated and geologists now count 50 named glaciers within the park boundaries. From the limited view of the cruise ship, with less than a day to spend, we saw but a handful. The scope of the place is staggering, and the realization of just how much wilderness and habitat surrounds you is mind boggling. It truly cannot be preserved by words or pictures. So, I will share with you some trivial thoughts, some things that surprised me.

One is that some glaciers don't look like what we expect glaciers to look like. Some are barely distinguishable from bare ground.

This is the face of the Grand Pacific Glacier. It has scraped up so much rock and soil as it advanced, it resembles a rocky hillside. Interestingly, it is adjacent to the Margerie Glacier, pictured below.

Another surprise; the turquoise-blue color of the "clean" glaciers. The density of the ice absorbs most of every other color of the spectrum except blue, leaving a distinctive coloration.

Still another surprise, is the noise they make, ranging from booming thunder to sharp cannon-fire.The glaciers are in constant motion, either receding or advancing. The Margerie Glacier is stable, maintaining its 21-mile length from year-to-year, but it still "flows" six feet a day!

And that's another thing. You look at the mass of ice visible above the water and you think that you are looking at many centuries of accumulation. In fact, the ice at the face of the Margerie Glacier was snowfall less than two hundred years ago.

And when glaciers retreat, the earth "rebounds" - rises in elevation measurably. Freed from the billions of tons of overburden, the crust of the earth slowly regains some of the depression that occurred. In Gustavus, just outside the Park, the land is rising almost three inches a year; the high tide line has pushed almost a mile out to sea in the last 50 years.

So much for glacier trivia. On to Ketchikan.

Monday Meandering - 07.21.2014

It is always nice to have a neighbor who looks out for you. One who might, say, call you late at night and say, "I was out walking the dog and noticed that your garage door was still up." Or who might call and say, "I don't think you are aware that a large limb broke off from your tree out front - and it's blocking the street!"

No. As a matter of fact, I didn't see the limb. And it was blocking the street big time. Actually, I had heard a noise like fire crackers earlier and got up to look out the window, but I looked the wrong direction and didn't notice the ginormous limb the other direction.

Barb and I got out with our teeny chainsaw and got the branches out of the street, but I called a tree company for the heavy lifting - the big branch visible in the middle left of the picture. No wind, just heavy with pecans.

Something new at the Learning Ally studio this week. Instead of taking a printed book into the recording booth, they gave me a tablet with a PDF version of a book on it. Somewhat like reading from a Kindle, but without the ability to touch a word to look up the pronunciation and definition. A number of publishers are adopting this technology, rather than sending out a pair of expensive print books.

Enjoyed a brief interval of Springtime in mid-July. So far, only one triple digit day this summer, but August is coming. We are not deceived.

Saw a sign on a lawn service truck this week that advertised the name of the company as "Kickin' Grass." And in smaller type it stated, "We do earthy things."

Alaska - Skagway, gateway to gold - Stories from the cruise

During the night, the Golden Princess slipped back down the Lynn Canal and headed north, navigating some 93 nautical miles up the Taiya Inlet to Skagway (just above the "12" marker on the map). We came here, among other reasons, to ride a train.

Skagway has a long history of visitors just passing through. For centuries a sleepy Tlingit Indian fishing village, the discovery of gold in the Klondike region of Canada's Yukon Territory in 1896 changed everything. On July 29, 1897, the steamer Queen docked with the first boat load of prospectors and soon other ships brought tens of thousands of hopeful miners into the new town to prepare for the 500-mile journey to the gold fields in Canada.

Not everyone headed to the gold fields however; many realized how difficult the trek ahead would be and chose to stay behind to supply goods and services to miners - known as "mining the miners." Within weeks, stores, saloons, and offices lined the muddy streets. By June 1898, with a "permanent" population nearing 10,000, approximately 1,000 prospective miners a week passed through town. Skagway became the largest city in Alaska at the time.

The most heavily-traveled routes by "stampeders" to the gold fields in Dawson City were two treacherous passages from the port of Skagway and nearby village of Dyea across the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains to the Canadian border; one by way of the Chilkoot Pass and the other over the White Pass.

At the border, the Canadian North West Mounted Police would not allow prospectors to enter unless they had one ton of supplies. And not just any supplies - there was a very lengthy and very specific list that included, for instance, how much rope, how many blankets, how many picks and shovels and even how much soap to bring into the promised land! This usually required several trips across the passes. 

With an obvious need for better transportation than pack horses used over the White Pass or human portage over the Chilkoot Pass, the White Pass and Yukon Route narrow gauge railway - the WP&YR - was constructed as a means of reaching the gold fields. It was a prodigious engineering feat, costing $10 million 1890 dollars. At one point, 35,000 men were employed in its construction. It was completed in 1900, just as the gold fever was ending.

 Hauling freight and ore kept the line in business, in one form or another, until 1982, when it finally shut down. And then the cruise ships showed up in the Taiya Inlet. Today, the WP&YR is thriving as a "Heritage" rail line, carrying over 390,000 passengers during the 2012 May to September tourism season.

As you can see, that old wooden trestle is still in use, a fact that did not please a certain tourist on this excursion.

Today, diesel locomotives pull vintage parlor cars on the line ( a steam engine is available for charter). The most popular route is a 20-mile excursion up the Skagway River Valley to the White Pass, rising some 3,000 feet in the process. At times the grade is nearly 4%, and the hair-pin curves hug the twisting, turning route blasted out of solid rock, or cross the canon on narrow trestles..

 The gold and the miners are long gone, and the current population of Skagway is 920 hardy souls. The visitors, however, are still coming. More than 900,000 people visit Skagway each summer, coming, as we did, on the cruise ships that dock daily. Today's economy is based solely on "mining the tourists."

Next destination: Glacier Bay National Park.

Monday Meanderings - 7.14.2012

The Pres was in town this past week. For some reason, he really loves to come to Austin. I'm not sure that all Austinites return the love. Not only does everything come to a screeching halt while he's here - the airport, the city streets, the downtown sector around his hotel - it cost upwards of a quarter of a million dollars of Austin taxpayer dollars to manage everything. And no, the Feds don't reimburse.

He did have his priorities straight; after his speaking event he stopped at Franklin's for some barbecue. For those of you who don't keep up with the art of burning meat, Franklin's is considered the barbecue Holy Grail; the wait in line is usually 3 or 4 hours.

The Pres, however, jumped to the front of the line. Aaron Franklin wasn't happy about that. He's been known to evict people who try to cut in line. But it's a little hard to tell the Pres no, what with all the armed dudes surrounding him. Obama did pay for the meals of some of the folks he jumped ahead of, and dropped another $300 for "enough barbecue to feed a small village," according to Franklin. Which  meant that there were a bunch of folks at the end of the line who went without.

I planted a flowering shrub out back on Thursday. I was able to walk again by Sunday. Getting old is not for the faint of heart.

I mentioned the VBS theme at Skyview Baptist was "Weird Animals."  Last week I saw another church advertising the same theme. Much to my surprise, "Weird Animals" is a published curriculum, not some misguided committee's brainstorm. Who knew?

Well, the World Cup is over. Sixty-four games, ranging from ridiculous to sublime. Most thought Brazil and Spain would be in the finals. Multiple-times World Champion Spain didn't even get to the knock-out round. Heavily favored Brazil lost back-to-back games by a margin of 10 goals to 1. Brazil had not lost 2 games in a row since 1937!

Watched Brazil and Netherlands in the consolation game Saturday and remembered that we saw these same two sides live in Dallas 20 years ago. Brazil won that game, and the Cup. But that was then.

And the final was an excellent game; the Germans were probably the best team in the tournament and got a pretty win. Now we have to wait for the Women's World Cup next summer. However, only 47 days to UT Football kickoff. You know, the other football, where they use their hands.

Reached 100 degrees yesterday, the first triple digit reading of the summer. Actually, we have done quiet well, temperature-wise, but can't help but think about how nice it was in Alaska!

Alaska; first stop Juneau - Stories from the cruise

When you look at a map of Alaska, you see an enormous land mass top center that accounts for most of the 586,412 square miles in the state. There's a long line of some 300 islands, the Aleutians, that extend 1,200 miles to the west, and a narrow band of coastline and coastal islands that descend southeastward, interposed between the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean and the northern edge of British Columbia, Canada. This last area is known as the Inner Passage, and that's the Alaska we visited, as have many thousands of others.

Alaska was surprisingly warm for early June; here's the temperature from the daily shipboard update. Pretty humid, too.

In fact, the weather was wonderful for the most part. We did need jackets from time-to-time, especially when we were on the exposed areas of the deck in the wind, but often, we enjoyed shirt-sleeve temperatures and low humidity.

Our first port of call was Juneau, the state capital, and the only U.S. capital city with no automotive access.

 Every brick, every automobile, every tour bus, every manufactured item, every drop of gasoline comes to Juneau by way of airplane or boat (surprisingly, gasoline was only $4.15 a gallon). By area, it is the 2nd largest city in the US, almost as large as Rhode Island and Delaware combined, but with a population of fewer than 33,000 citizens. The eastern city limit is the Canadian border!

Our excursion from the cruise ship in Juneau was a combined visit to the Mendenhall Glacier and later whale watching. The glacier is a scant 12 miles from downtown, and certain versions of the tour allow you to set foot on the glacier. Our tour was limited to a view from the visitor center, and the exhibits of the center itself.

Unfortunately, our first excursion was almost our last. The ship was two hours late docking in Juneau, due to rough seas (I mentioned that in an earlier post), and the excursion schedules were a mess. Word from the bridge was that we would be informed about the new schedule, but after docking, no word came. We finally set out to find out for ourselves and learned that we should go ashore and find our tour. Let's just say that this was not Princess Cruise Lines finest moment (the revised schedules were waiting for us when we returned). We did finally find our tour and set off by bus to the glacier.

By this time, it was raining steadily, one of only two occasions the entire trip. Our bus driver dropped us off at the visitor center and told us she would pick us up at that same spot in an hour. This was significantly shorter than the time set out in the tour description, but when we realized that about 10 times the number of people you could comfortably fit in the visitor's center were in fact, already in the center, time became unimportant.

So, in the rain, after viewing the glacier, and a brief visit to the center, we trudged back to our drop-off point to re-board the bus, only to run afoul of bureaucracy at its best. A park ranger vehemently denied us access to the pick-up point, pointing instead at the front of the queue of 20 or so tour buses, insisting - nay, demanding - that we should not pass. From our distant viewpoint, we could not see our bus number, but time was passing. Finally, our driver came and found us and we boarded the bus in shame, as the other 48 passengers had had obviously been un-cowed by the park ranger traffic-Nazi, and had been waiting patiently for us.

On to whale watching. The company that fulfills the whale-watching excursion prominently touts that they will hand you $100 cash when you disembark if no whales are seen during the 3-hour trip. They have never paid off. During the summers, thousands of Humpbacks and Orcas return to the waters of Alaska to feed and fatten up for their long migration to warmer climates like Hawaii.and Mexico for breeding. Biologists count a consistent population of about 65 whales in Auke Bay, where we were.

We encountered our first Humpback within minutes, and saw probably half-a-dozen during the cruise. They were "lunge feeding." leaping partially out of the water to scoop up the krill and sea-life that they feed on. Unfortunately, seeing and photographing are two different things. The rain had stopped by this time and we were back in shirtsleeves, checking out Humpbacks, Steller Sea Lions, and an extended observation of a pair of bald eagles feeding. And we had no problems with the bus ride back to the ship.

Next port: Skagway.

Monday Meandering - 7.7.2014

Technology is encroaching into our everyday lives. Yesterday we stopped at a Chili's for lunch, and on every table was a little battery operated interactive terminal. Sort of like your cell phone, it was there to entertain you with games and news, and the daily specials, of course.

But do you see the little bulge on the right-hand side? That's the credit card reader. When we got ready to leave, we tapped the screen appropriately and our check came up in detail, with instructions to swipe a card. I did, and a screen appeared to facilitate the tipping process (it will even split the check, if you need to do so). Once the tip is figured in, you have multiple receipt choices, including a printed slip that feeds out below the screen.

Though it may soon, the Chili's device does not take your order, unlike the kiosks being installed at Panera's.

Order, pay, and take the pager to your table. The table is already wired to tell the staff where you are sitting, and the folks who previously took orders now deliver your food. So far, our Panera's only has "smart tables" and no kiosks, but they are coming.

Technology-assisted menus are not so very new, though. Nearly fifty years ago, the Towne Crier Steakhouse opened on Highway 80 in Abilene, featuring an electrical menu board. There was a limited selection of steaks offered, and at the beginning of the the buffet-style line, you picked your meal by pushing buttons beside your choice of steak, indicating to the cooks with lighted buttons what you ordered and how it was to be cooked. The restaurant is still there. I am told the menu board, however, is no longer operational.

On the subject of dining, while we were in California we went to one of those Japanese-style restaurants where the chef slices and dices and cooks your meal at your table.

It's a pretty stylized eating experience; first the chef astounds us with his ability to twirl sharp knives, tongs and spatulas, then he proceeds to cook the meal, one course at a time, on the hot cooking surface that we are seated around. Somewhere along the way, each table gets to enjoy, and I use that term loosely, the flaming onion volcano.

Our chef was pretty conservative with his pyrotechnics; the dude at the adjacent table decided to test the fire-suppression system.

I heard the next morning that there was a wildfire in our area. I'm pretty sure it was caused sparks from a flaming onion volcano. Order that on your kiosk!

A very big ship - Part II - Stories from the cruise

A cruise chip is actually a large, floating, resort hotel with all the amenities; 1,500 or so guest rooms, multiple restaurants (5 on this ship), art galleries (2), spas (9 of them), swimming pools (4 plus hot tubs), a front desk (where you can go - repeatedly - when your key card quits working), casinos, theaters, bistros, night clubs, video arcades, a gym, a golf course (!), a wedding chapel, numerous bars, a pizzeria, a BBQ grill, a Sundae shop, a library, an Internet Cafe, room service, and a picture puzzle table.

There are also large kitchens on the ship, churning out food 24 hours a day. Barb and I opted for the less formal buffet for our meals. They handed you huge plates and bid you Bon Appetite as you tried a little of this and a little of that, and ohh - that looks good. Pretty soon you needed help carrying your plate! And of course, you could always go back for more.

And you could come back later in the morning/afternoon/evening for cookies/desserts/sundaes.Or you could just order from room service and it would magically show up at your door. We did not, however, find any Tex-Mex on board. No chips and queso.

Waitstaff was omnipresent, bringing drinks, whisking away empty plates, and constantly replenishing your coffee or coke. For every few servers there appeared to be a manager, and for every few managers there appeared to be a supervisor.

The crew members were largely multinational; we met several from Peru, one from the Ukraine, many were Filipinos. The Captain was a Scot, the First Officer was Italian, and we never did place the accent of the person who made the public announcements (or understand him, either).

Each meal began with an obligatory Purell hand sanitizing; they wouldn't let you in the buffet line without one; Princess must buy the stuff in fifty-five gallon barrels - there were dispensers everywhere you turned. Of course, there's good reason for this; cruise ships are floating petri dishes and a boat load of norovirus-stricken passengers is everyone's worst nightmare. I think on average, we washed our hands forty times a day!

Leaving the ship, there was always a photo opportunity, with crew members dressed in costumes representative of the area (bear, moose, lumberjack, etc.) Security scanned your card and large signs informed you when to be back on board. That didn't always work out - we watched a tardy couple get left behind in Ketchikan. Later we learned six passengers missed the ship in that port.

When you returned to the ship, you went through security again, including an ID check and a pass through the metal detector. Some failed that part, and we saw the security staff confiscate some purchased items. For the most part, these seemed to be Ulu knives (I had to look it up) which were considered weapons, so security held them for you until your final disembarkation.

Some resort hotels have ocean views - on one side of the hotel. A cruise ship has ocean views on all sides, and the view is continually changing.