What Time is it Anyway?

Yes I know this is late, but I’ve been in Austria and working on that blog post. This is my longest post yet…Until the next one anyway…

After our extra long day of endless sunlight in Anchorage, we spent a morning going to the Anchorage Museum (where the ticket guy told me there’s someone from Alaska who goes to Grinnell-who knew?) and an afternoon eating at a seafood café where I ate a Reindeer burger just so I could say I ate a reindeer. Emily got an elk burger that tasted suspiciously like my reindeer burger, which probably tastes like the bison burger. I’ll keep my delusions though. After lunch we took a shuttle with 50-80 of our future friends to the boat we would be taking for our four-day Alaskan cruise.

This was not your typical humongous cruise ship filled with thousands of people. No casinos, or onboard pools. I think the only thing our ship really had in common with those huge cruises was an abundance of food. For some meals I would have to say “food again? Didn’t we just have lunch…and 3pm cookies…and cocktail hour.” Our cruise was on a small boat with less than 100 people, which means we could get much closer to glaciers (we could be ½ mile away, they had to be 5miles away) and wildlife. It was also a much more personal experience and we, as a family, were able to meet and know a lot of great people with very interesting back-stories.

Anyway, to get to the boat we had to drive to the most depressing town (if you can call it that) in the United States. The only way to get to the town is through a multi-mile tunnel that only goes one way (it switches directions every 30 minutes). The town itself (Whittier) is a seaport town where almost every town’s person lives in one building. Because Whittier gets 25 ft of snow during the winter (or something crazy like that) there is an underground tunnel that attaches the one apartment building to the one school. They said the school has 20 students and is K-12. Scary.

We boarded the boat and Emily and I were shown our room. Our beds formed an L, so one of us (Emily) didn’t have much legroom. But the most hilarious part of the room was the “bathroom”. Otherwise known as the Tower, Shoilet, or shower-toilet. The toilet and shower faced each other in a tiny room with a curtain that could be pushed between them. I laughed embarrassingly loud at the room. That night we had our first delicious dinner and saw our first two majestic glaciers. Beforehand I don’t think I knew what a glacier looked like and I must admit after seeing two (amazing and beautiful as they were) I thought they all kind of looked the same, though I eventually learned to notice differences. They were majestic though (Majesty Majesty Majesty). And it was awesome to see the big chunks of ice fall off and make waves. As I sat in bed being rocked to sleep by the waves…Oh sorry I just passed out.

The first half of the next day was filled with more majestic glaciers, adorable sea otters, and our first whale. The whale was really far away, we think it was an orca, but it definitely breached-lifting its entire body out of the water. After our first delicious lunch of many on the cruise, I passed out again for a nice nap. I was awoken by Oyster Dave, a man giving a talk on his oyster business. He was a funny fellow (intentionally) with great stories, but truthfully we didn’t think his heart was really in the oysters anymore. Oyster Dave, the most dejected Oyster Man in the world. Then it was time for dinner (already?) where we met a very interesting couple. The woman was originally from Germany and fell in love with America after going on many hikes. Luckily she also fell in love with a man who could get her a visa. They met, several weeks later they married, and twenty one years later they have never regretted it. Aw. For dessert was the most delicious, rich, chocolate lava cake I have ever…OMG “If you come to the front of the boat there are two HUMPBACK WHALES! I had never felt more conflicted in my entire life. Dessert? Whales? Dessert? We quickly scarfed our desserts and ran to the deck. The whales gave quite a show and ended with a fluke (it lifted its tail from the water and dived down). Post whales we were taken to a sea lion colony. They make the most awesome moo, bah, fog horn noise. Post sea lions we listened to a talk by the naturalist/animal person on board about the Exxon Valdez spill and learned about the worst navigator in all of history. Kagan. Some idiot apparently gave Kagan the wheel to the boat. Kagan: the guy who in later court appearances couldn’t tell his right from his left. “Don’t they know you never give Kagan the wheel?! The night ended with more ice. When I went to sleep at 10pm it was blindingly bright out side. What time is it? What season is it? The time? Day? Oh well.

The second full day of our cruise, we got to go ashore. First we were given the longest art store pitch I have ever experienced. Where they told us twenty times how to get there from the boat. So that was a right, left, right? Oh there’s a sign. Great. Then we watched a performance by Native Alaskan children/teens. It was cute, but super awkward. When we finally got to shore—ten minutes in—we got to witness dozens of crows mobbing a frickin Bald Eagle. The eagle fell onto a truck mere yards away from us. Twas awesome. For our shore day we opted to go on the rainforest hike, which was supposedly moderate-my ass. But it was beautiful and Emily spotted a small black dot/bear miles away. At the end of the hike. I got to feed an adorable three year old gold fish. Dinner was on the boat. We sat with some youngish people we had gotten to know during the cruise. One girl gave us (me and Emily) recommendations on what to do on our very imminent trip to Vienna Austria. She suggested the Sound of Music Tour (didn’t need to pull our arm) and…no no she couldn’t possibly suggest it, it couldn’t be nooooooooooo…the silver wear museum. Several years previous on a choir trip to Vienna I had been forced to go view infinite rooms of silver cutlery and dinnerware. I quickly shut down that suggestion. Never again. The loud speaker told us to go upstairs to look for bears. Instead we saw the most fun and cool animals in Alaska—Dall’s porpoises. They are small, black and white whale like creatures though they technically belong to the dolphin family. They playfully jumped and weaved at the front of the boat. To end the night was a whale talk that put the parents and many other adults straight to sleep. Emily and I however joined the young folk upstairs for another hour looking for whales that never came. We slowly walked back to our room, pretending we weren’t looking with the hope of luring the magnificent whales out, but no luck. “We’ll just go to bed now. No Now! I’ll just go…ha!.” Nope.

I seem to have lost my notes on the last full day of our cruise, but I know we saw more humpback whales, more glaciers, and more Dall’s porpoises. Boring. I kid, I kid. And at night we watched a documentary about the most handy man in the world. He went into the wild, built his own cabin and built his own everything. He made it sound so easy. “Forty five minutes later I had built a washer and drier set and started carving a real life replica of a grizzly. The weather here can be fickle, like a woman.” Fun stuff.

The next morning was the end of the cruise. We returned to the town that shouldn’t be…Whittier…where we saw what we could have spent our vacation on…a ginormous Princess cruise ship that was as big as the one apartment in town. It made me nervous b/c it was so big, but it also made me laugh because it was called the Diamond Princess-the performance name of the rapper Trina. We took a shuttle to the Anchorage Airport to pick up our rental car and head off to Denali. The second and last phase of our trip. I know this post has been long long long, so I’ll try to stick with the highlights of Denali.

We stayed at the Princess Lodge, so it was teeming with people who take the huge cruises. Our first evening there (that would be a Saturday), to shake of the long car ride, we decided to go on a short walk near the lodge. At one point we came across a sign that recommended living wildly within the park. Going off the marked trails and coming close to wildlife. Um, that did not sound like a good idea. “Go ahead and wonder off the trails that tell you where you are. Get lost in the woods. Kick a bear in the face. This is your vacation.” In various other brochures it heavily discouraged straying from the trail, seeing how it’s dangerous and all. However, we did eventually found they were a little more relaxed with people doing their own thing…to some extent.

Sunday was a day of wacky weather. We went for a hike in Denali National Park, where we encountered a very weird park ranger who assured us this wasn’t the kind of park where they actually enforced the requirement of paying for the park. They have an “integrity system” which means you can just not pay. We also asked him for a good three hour hike and he recommended a nice river trail that ended up taking less than an hour. Thanks guy. The hike was nice though, except the weather was absolutely insane. One moment it would be sunny and pleasant and the next it was pouring rain. Back and forth back and forth. Driving away from the park we saw a bazillion cars stopped by the side of the rode. Thanks to them we found wildlife cause Lord knows none of us in the car would have spotted them without help. Karibu! In the evening we attended a corny, but admittedly, enjoyable dinner theatre. The actors were good, though we had no idea how these poor folks could do this show everyday because the play itself was pretty horrible. My Dad put it best; it was like they had to find some way to incorporate women into the show about the first men who reached the highest point of Denali (Mount McKinley). So they had a nonsensical romantic plot and made the silly women interrupt the men’s story.

Speaking of Mount McKinley, on Monday we had an amazing experience. We took a small plane ride (about ten people) literally to the peak of Denali. We came about half a mile from the tallest peak in North America. I can’t describe how beautiful it was, so I’ll include a picture:

Late aternoon we took a nice, moderate hike to a sled dogs demonstration. I actually learned quite a bit, mostly that the dogs they usually show pulling sleds in movies and TV (huge huskies) are pretty far from the truth. The real dogs are pretty small and scrappy, but they love to run. They barked like mad when they were getting the sled ready.

Our last full day in Denali, we took a three hour bus ride to a nice hiking area. Along the way we saw much wildlife, including a lynx! I had always thought of them as shy, elusive creatures, but this one walked right behind the bus and sat there staring. There were people on a bridge about ten feet away from it. At our final stop, we took a short, but strenuous hike basically straight up hill. Emily and Dad went up really fast, but Mom and I dragged behind because of the altitude change, in addition to being “mildly” out of shape. The view at the top was great though. It started getting stormy on our way down, so we hurried down to the bus. On the ride back we finally saw moose up-close. A mother and her baby, grazing right there.

The next day, Wednesday, we drove from Denali back to Anchorage. We stopped at another Denali park, however, to take a short, ultimately very wet, hike. My jeans were soaked through by the end b/c of our unintentional bush whacking. Back in Anchorage we stayed at the Captain Cook Hotel, which was very nice. That evening we saw another sled dog demonstration, that was much more comprehensive and much fun.

Our last day we stopped at a nice little town viewing various sights. Mid-afternoon we went to a musk ox farm. Musk ox is actually a complete misnomer cause they aren’t part of the ox family and they don’t have musk glands, but really who cares. They were cool. Then, because some crazy person scheduled our flight for the middle of the night we had to kill a little more time. We went to “Ginger” for dinner. Then, before we left for our 1:45am flight we played a rousing game of hearts. Well in the first three rounds I was being slaughtered, really through no fault of my own (for reals) just because of bad bad luck. Then the unthinkable happened and I ‘shot the moon’ for the first time ever. Meaning I got all the points available in that hand. That gave everyone else 26 points and by the end of the game I was firmly in second place only a few points before my mother. After the game we played the giggliest game of old maid ever in history. You would think kids would have worse poker faces than us mature folks, but nope. The highlight of the airport was actually the security video. It was brilliant, because it actually made us pay attention. They had various animals (people in costumes) teaching us lessons about going through security, including a moose, a bear, a possessed beaver, and the best one-an eagle. When the eagle showed its passport, the name inside was Liberty Justice America. “Nough said.