Good’s Day Stay in Glacier Bay Aye

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We’re still getting used to being awaken by light creeping in to our balcony view before five. Initially it purports to be a fine day for glacier scenic viewing, overcast some but good visibility. Sharon tried to post the two blogs to the internet; but, was unable to connect with the room WIFI. It seems to be rejecting her username and after being unable to get her hot-spot up yesterday after tour I think she’s becoming a bit irritated. We’re not talking meltdown here; but, Sharon doesn’t like it when things don’t work when they’re supposed to (or when people don’t do things that they’re supposed to). She has all of these rules for me about playing racquetball: Don’t get hurt, Don’t fall down, Don’t hurt anybody else… You get the idea. If I followed her rules maybe I wouldn’t need this vacation to recuperate from falling down four times in two weeks.

We had breakfast in the Vista Dining Room sitting by a window in the rear next to a couple from Australia and another from Canada. The Aussie lady mentioned that she was Catholic and Sharon asked if she’s been to mass yet on the ship. She hadn’t, and Sharon said there is a great Aussie priest on this voyage. The Aussie lady said that they’d just gotten a new priest in their parish who was much, much older, perhaps sixty or so! I was wondering if maybe this was something akin to Sharon being Erin’s much, much older sister, and then Sharon surprised me by objecting, saying, “Hey, now!” The lady then realized the context of what she had said, which if you think about it was a compliment, because she never imaged that Sharon was sixty (or so). Indeed, the other Canadian couple must have easily been sixty or so as well! The Aussie apologized profusely, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry…” and then admitted to being just five years off from that herself. I went with the big breakfast of Swiss Muesli, bananas, Italian Frittata, sausage and potato cake. Sharon had the American breakfast with scrambled eggs.

This morning we sailed into Glacier Bay. On our way back to the cabin we picked up today’s Sudoku game, not yet having done yesterday’s puzzle. Sharon was able to post two blog entries with pictures and as we waited to see to glacier appear on the TV stern ship camera view, we did yesterday’s puzzle. Sharon complained that there isn’t enough room in this cramped format to write down all of the possible solutions in each cell, and I responded that there is if you write down the right one the first time. Sharon’s approach to Sudoku is very organized, methodical, and on puzzles without trivial solutions (e.g. where annotation helps or is necessary for most people) she is very fast and will usually beat me if the computer game program and software user interface is good; but, on trivial paper Sudoku puzzles (which most of the Holland America puzzles are drawn from the New York times) her methodical pen and paper technique can’t compete with rapid scanning and number running seeking forced solutions rather than annotating restricted solutions. Glacial ice began appearing in the water; but, visibility had worsened substantially from when we woke this morning. The morning was turning into a gray dreary misty day. We were always able to make out the horizon as we had dined, but now as we maneuvered deeper into Glacier Bay the surrounding mountain tops blended into the gray fog. The glacier did appear off the stern and as we began maneuvering for the scenic viewing we say the glacier disappear from our balcony view as the ship maneuvered the view to the port side of the ship. We ventured to the port side Promenade Deck and had front row seats literally to view the one mile face of this tidewater glacier (a glacier that reaches into and extends below the water’s edge). We first heard several instances of the glacier calving, and saw several smaller pieces of ice fall into the sea. We may even have got a picture of one of the calving instances splash a significant spray many tens of feet into the air. Later review of our pictures confirmed that we did capture a couple of pictures of the splash following calving. The pictures eerily captured the stark black and white colorless greys of our overcast fog ridden day, and while this look may work in the crystal sharp images for Ansel Adams, our pictures needed some color (or something). Even the rich blue and aqua tones were absent from the ice; that, we had witnessed on previous trips to Alaskan glaciers. As the ship began to rotate, we made our way back to the cabin and viewed the glacier now coming into view on the starboard side of the ship. Sharon was determined to get her upgrade cost out of the balcony which we will be missing on the longer two week cruise next week.

As we began to head back towards the entrance of Glacier Bay, the captain announced that a nearby vessel had requested assistance due to an engine fire. Although the fire was now out, they requested that we take onboard their 40 sightseeing passengers and to take them to and tender them into the nearby park port that they had begun their tour. This would delay our departure slightly. We again ate lunch at The Dive In, and this time I had the grilled chicken sandwich and the sauerkraut hot dog (made with genuine Nathan hot dogs). Both were excellent; although, I did add some chopped red onion and jalapeno to both of my dishes. Sharon enjoyed her burger and fries au natural.

We attended a very informative presentation by one of the park rangers that had come on board when we first entered the park. Following this was a presentation by a Hoonah expert, descendant of the tribes that once inhabited the park area. She showed us a native technologically brilliant hook for catching halibut that her ancestors have been using for many hundreds of years. It lays on the bottom, and is sized to not catch the very small halibut; nor, the very large halibut (fertile breeding females). Halibut are bottom feeders, and when a halibut is hooked by this ingenious trap, it triggers a float to surface and the natives know to haul in the catch. She noted that this was an effective sustainable method of fishing. When Glacier Bay became a national park it was closed to all native fishing, eliminating a hunting and food gathering legacy that had extended back hundreds of years. Recent legislation will allow a resumption of some of their harvesting bird eggs from the cliffs; but, there are many young Tlingkat alive who don’t have memory of many of the delicacies that used to be their heritage.

After the rescued tourists had left on one of the lifeboat tenders to drop them ashore, we had a medical emergency that could not be handled onboard; and, one more person needed to be evacuated by tender. Because the local port also had no facilities to handle this emergency, they would need to be evacuated by air to the neighboring town. Sharon only hoped that they had purchased the trip insurance offered by Holland America. While people often view this as an unnecessary extra expense, because they see it a trip cancellation protection, its real benefit is covering the cost of getting you to help in case of a medical emergency, even back to the states if you are overseas, and potential could cost many tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Unfortunately mass and trivia were both at 5:00pm, so I went to one while Sharon went to the other. Can you guess who went where? I met up with the British couple who played with us two days earlier, and discovered that they had won just the two of them yesterday. We were also joined by three others that they knew, so it was up to me to handle and US sports questions (which fortunately, there really were none). Well, they did ask, in the last Summer Olympics, what was the longest “Track and Field” event completed by a single athlete (e.g. no relays or team events)? There was much pointless discussion about whether the marathon was considered a “track and field” event because it is not run entirely in the stadium. We eventually chose that as our wrong answer. The correct answer was the 50 Kilometer Walk (about 4 miles longer than the marathon)! Sharon would have known what fruit is the international symbol of hospitality; so, I guess we can blame our loss on her absence! We didn’t know what subway system handles the largest number of passengers per day: Take your pick from Moscow, New York, Tokyo, London, Paris… Our team kept debating whether Jupiter or Saturn was the fifth rock from the sun, even though I kept saying I knew that is was the former. Just one colonist voice from the wrong side of the pond against four Brits I guess. They finally concluded that it was Jupiter too. I didn’t know that it was up for debate! I suppose I’ll remember next time where chocolate was invented: No not Switzerland or anywhere in Europe; but, Mexico. The best man at our wedding could have helped us out as to what the fastest shark is: No man will outswim it, that’s for sure. Not the great white, not the orca. We just couldn’t come up with mako. We might have salvaged some degree of respect if we’d gotten the bonus question, “What movie has been seen by more people worldwide, than any other movie?” Sharon could have helped me make them listen to me; but, they finally went with Sound of Music. What do Americans know about movies, anyway? We were two hours late leaving the park, and the captain announced that tours in Ketchikan the next day would be slipped by two hours, and the Noordam staff would be feverishly working with the people and tour operators ashore to accommodate the change. Material printed for tomorrow would reflect the originally planned times; so, any changes would be announced. The captain also made it clear that only he would announce any changes in the ship’s arrival or departure times.

For the first time on this cruise we sat with a compatriot American couple, as well as two women from the eastern coast of Canada. The American couple joined the cruise in Skagway following a land tour through Denali. One of the couples we’d had dinner with the previous night had also been on the land tour to Skagway and the woman insisted she’d seen a Polar Bear running across the field in the Yukon. Sharon bit her tongue and allowed the lady to beam from the recollection of the highlight wildlife encounter for her trip. However, when one of the Canadian women across from us tonight was claiming that penguins can be found in Siberia, on some remote island there, Sharon had to explain that Coca-Cola had made a huge mistake when they first came out with their polar bear and penguin advertising campaign. Nonetheless, the lady insisted she would forward Sharon the information so that she wouldn’t go around misinforming people about penguins. Sharon laughed and didn’t push the point though she knows she’s right.

For dinner I chose the fish cake and Sharon tried the Italian wedding soup for appetizers. Sharon said that she didn’t care for the long green skinny things in the soup. For my second course I also had the wedding soup and thought it was quite good (at least better than it’s been in the past). Mine had just three very tiny meatballs in it. Sharon ordered me a Caesar salad which I also enjoyed. My entrée was the vegetarian chili relleno and Sharon had the roast turkey dinner and fixings. I chose the chocolate avalanche cake and we agreed to share that along with the coffee baked Alaska with fudge. Both were very good; but, I think we both thought the baked Alaska was the best. The others at our table also got the baked Alaska; but, chose it with the whiskey caramel sauce. They were enviously eyeing our chocolate laden dish with the fudge sauce and all of them seemed to agree that maybe a rum sauce would have been better, they could taste the caramel but the whiskey sauce wasn’t quite working for them.

The Holland America Dancers and Singers did a performance on the theme of Love. I didn’t recognize most of the songs that they sang, so I was missing the pleasure from experiencing a new presentation of something familiar; instead, I was trying to follow the songs to understand how they related to the theme. The performers were excellent.

Sharon went to play her slots; but, found that the casino was still closed. The “today, ON LOCATION” paper that everyone gets for each day’s activities did note that the casino would be closed while the ship was inside the national park.

If you thought any of those epic movie multipart series, such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Indiana Jones… you would have been wrong. If you were thinking Titanic, that would be wrong too! But, if you came up with Gone With the Wind, con

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