Greetings from the cruise ship "Sumit"! Aunt Ruth and I are continuing our journey through Alaska in style! I am typing this e-mail in a three-level atrium on the cruise ship with a live string-quartet that just finished playing. Aunt Ruth and I were up here for about an hour playing Gin Rummy before she went to bed.
We both are continuing to have a fantastic time here in Alaska! For both of us, it is a journey to remember the rest of our lives. Particularly being able to share it with each other.
GOING FROM DENALI TO LOOKING FOR MY FANNIE
Last Thursday, we took a bus tour of Denali National Park. It was very beautiful, but we didn't get to see much wildlife or Mt. McKinley (too overcast). Still, it was neat to be in the park and see some of the sights. That evening, our group went to a dinner theater and were treated to hilarious presentation of Alaskan humor. Our waitress' name was "Fannie" and anytime we wanted something, our whole table had to wave our napkins above our heads, yelling "Where's my Fannie?" :)
HUSKY HOMESTEAD AND TRAVELING BY DOME CAR
Friday morning, Aunt Ruth and I went on an optional tour up to "Husky Homestead" to meet Jeff King (four-time winner of the Iditarod race) and see his huskies. They had some of the cutest puppies there I've ever seen. I got to hold one for about 5-minutes and badly wanted to take him home with me. One of Jeff's employees told us a lot about raising and training huskies as sled-dogs and then Jeff took us inside a building and described in detail what it's like to compete in the 1,100 mile dog-sled race across Alaska. It was very fun!
That afternoon, our bus took us to the train station and we boarded a train headed from Denail down to Anchorage. We sat on the second level of a "dome car" -- a car with high glass windows, curving into the ceiling. We had nearly 360-degree view horizontally and a 180-degree view vertically. I have never traveled in such style on a train before! This and the Shinkansen in Japan are by far the two best train experiences I have yet had. Downstairs, was a dining room and they served us a tremendous meal at dinner time. We were on the train for 8 hours as we passed ~ 200-300 miles of spectacular wilderness, most of it remote and uninhabited. We saw mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers, moose, birds, eagle's nests, and more. I would have loved for it to have lasted another 8 hours. That evening, we checked back into "Inlet Towers", the first hotel we stayed in the first night the tour group arrived in Anchorage.
HEADING TOWARDS OUR CRUISE SHIP
Saturday morning, we had to get up early and leave our luggage outside our door to get collected for the bus. I'm still not used to that kind of service. (I'm much more used to carrying everything I have on my back, walking a few miles and throwing it into a locker at a train station or youth hostel.) We ate some breakfast and then boarded the bus for a 2-hour tour of Anchorage. (I'd already seen much of it from a bicycle before the rest of our group arrived in Alaska.) We stopped by a market where Aunt Ruth had fun shopping, ate some lunch and then boarded the motor coach yet again for a 120-mile trip down to Seward. Along the way, we stopped by a wildlife conservation area and saw reindeer, bears, a bald-eagle, a porcupine, and many other animals.
Once arriving in Seward, we were taken to our cruise ship in Resurrection Bay, where I had gone kayaking almost a week earlier. The boat we got on this time was much bigger than the one I had previously paddled around in. Our ship is called "Summit" and is an 11-story cruise ship of gigantic proportions. We got settled into our cabin around 7 PM and hung out there for the rest of the night.
GLACIER BAY
Sunday, we slept in as we sailed towards Glacier Bay. After all our running around the previous week, Aunt Ruth and I enjoyed being lazy for a bit. We had a late breakfast and finished up as we approached Hubbard Glacier, a four-mile wide glacier, spilling into the bay. Our ship was able to get within 1,000-feet of it and I was enamoured by the beauty of it. We saw pieces break-off and fall into the bay several time, immediately accompanied by a thunderous crack. Many regions of the glacier were blue in color, indicating it had trapped air inside it. It was orders of magnitude larger than any of the glaciers I saw in Antarctica last year. In contrast to that trip, it was also odd seeing green mountains next to the ice. I made poor Aunt Ruth sit on the top-deck for a couple of hours while I snapped photo after photo after photo of this magnificent glacier. Afterwards, we went downstairs to grab a late lunch, took a nap and then got up for dinner. (Like I said, we both enjoyed a day of laziness.)
That evening, we had dinner in a large, two-story dining hall with a large (30 foot tall by 100 foot wide) window looking out at the sea behind the ship. It was a formal dinner and Aunt Ruth and I dressed the part. I thought we cleaned-up pretty good! We sat with our tour director, Teressa, and her husband and another couple from Kansas City. All of them delightful people. After dinner, we went to an auditorium at the front of the ship and saw a Broadway-style play that lasted an hour or so. It was very good. Aunt Ruth then went to bed and I came out to the atrium I am in now, to read and listen to the string-quartet.
MORNING SURPRISE!!!
This morning, I woke up and had the unpleasant surprise of finding my sheets stained with hideous looking brown splotches where I had been sleeping. After several moments of fearing the worst, I discovered upon closer inspection that I had inadvertently falled asleep on the chocolate that had been left on my pillow by our room attendant. :P WHEW!!! Needless to say, I was relieved! Aunt Ruth and I have had many laughs about that today, as have our other traveling companions after I spilled the beans on my little "misadventure"....
SKAGWAY, A WORLD TRANSFORMED AND CIRQUE DU SOLEI
After recovering from my morning surprise, Aunt Ruth and I grabbed some breakfast and left the ship in Skagway, where we had docked earlier. Skagway is a small town of about 2,000 people that was the entry-point for most people coming to Alaska during the Alaskan Gold Rush in the late 1890s. We stopped by the visitor center and saw a 30-minute video about the Alaskan Gold Rush and then spent a couple hours taking Aunt Ruth shopping. I'd guess we walked at least a couple of miles today, mostly non-stop. Aunt Ruth kept up with all of it just fine. She was much more concerned about hitting more stores than she was about taking a break. Not bad for a 90-year-old if you ask me.
While we were walking around Skagway, we saw a horse and buggy. I asked Aunt Ruth if she wanted to go for a ride and she said no -- it reminded her of traveling that way when she was a little girl. I talked to her a little more about it later in the day. She grew up with (literally) a horse-and-buggy as the family transportation, used to ride a pony to school, remembers when they got running water and electricity put in the house, etc. Now she is flying around the country on jet planes, traveling on extravagant cruise ships, taking pictures with digital cameras, e-mailing, and surfing the Internet. (I don't know of any other 90-year-olds who e-mail, but Aunt Ruth does regularly.) She lived through the Great Depression, World War II, and
more. She truly has seen the transformation of the world in so many ways. I am doing my best to learn as much as I can from her.
We came back to the ship, took a nap and then got up for dinner. Tonight was a little more casual, but equally delicious. After dinner, they had a special presentation of Taste of Cirque -- a mini-version of Cirque Du Solei in the ship's theater. It was fantastic! They had an aerial performer very similar to the one at Le Nuba (spelling?) in Orlando. It lasted for about 30-minutes and the performers were every bit as talented as the ones in the large scale shows across the country. I have seen the show in Orlando several times and hope to see others in the future.
After the show, Aunt Ruth and I came up here to the atrium to play cards, listening to live music and watching the mountains go by. (It gets dark in this part of Alaska a little before midnight.)
As I type this, a bright orange harvest moon has just come up over the horizon and is shining down on the sea before us. It is so beautiful!
Aunt Ruth and I are continuing to have a wonderful time on our Alaskan Odyssey.
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